Save me from my 'friends'
Cassandra's Candid Corner
* Brainwashing is truly an ill. As colonial servants, we have seen it in all its forms - and believed in its messages. From an early age, we were fed with junk in cinemas, in books and even by our parents. Blacks clapped when Hollywood's Tarzan beat up black people. The comic strip character, Mandrake the magician, used to make the black Lothar, his sidekick, look insipid. Mr Walker, the Phantom, the Ghost who never dies, solved all the black natives' problems, as did Jungle Jim. I know you will say that such cerebral rinsing is all in the past, and that we are now more enlightened. Such garbage could never get a foothold in our modern, freethinking minds. Really? So how come we did not notice that The Lion King movie (truly one of the supremacist Disney's best) was subtly sexist, homophobe, deprecatory towards ghetto culture, and, yes, racist. Ask me how, and I'll tell you. Just as a hint: didn't you find it inexplicable that Nala who used to beat up Simba when they were children (sorry, cubs), had to wait for the master's return for the problem of the pride to be solved? * Only very recently, when the Egypt Air flight crashed, the western media rushed to condemn the Arab co-pilot as a saboteur. They concocted a horrible story, based on the doomed man's last prayer to his God, which they conveniently interpreted as solid evidence of his misdeed. Specialists in Arabic and in the Quran had to be summoned to exculpate the smeared man and his family. Of course, no apologies for their calumny emerged in the pages of the western press. Is it any wonder, therefore, when a large percentage of Americans, on being polled on their image of an Arab, answered that he was a man with a crooked nose, shifty eyes, a curved dagger in his belt, who rode a camel with his wives following behind on foot. I wonder how often American schoolchildren are taught about the contribution of Arabs to medicine, mathematics, astronomy, culture, language, architecture, and to civilization in general. * In the Sunday Stabroek 21.11.99, the 'Woman's-eye View' columnist begged that she be saved from decent people. This was a spin-off from a letter which appeared (no name quoted) in the Jamaican Gleaner of 4.11.99. Well let me add my plaintive plea to be saved from the liberal, avant-garde, revolutionary, decent people. I pray, Oh God, that I be saved from those who purport to be my friends, who explain to me how they have my interests at heart, by telling me that so-and-so says, without telling me who so-and-so is, and who slander my name with their associates, who listen to the most vile innuendos and blatant falsehoods, which they themselves know to be untrue. Then, under the guise of concern, they come and give me the Kiss of Judas. And then, Great Saviour, save me from those hypocrites who tell women not to take hard card and to leave their abusive spouses, while they themselves continue to live with men who flaunt their concubines, who insult them with their every action and who generally give them agony and distress day-in, day-out. And protect me, dear Jah, from revolutionary women who seek to inspire members of their gender, rural and urban, while waving a cigarette in one hand, a hard drink in the other, and viewing the world in light of their own experiences, oblivious to the fact that many of those whom they seek to elevate and counsel, cannot identify nor relate with their physical personae and mores much less their gems of advice. Defend me too, Dear Great One, from those who have no family to provide for, but whose arrogance cannot fathom why a person would 'grumble and criticize in private while genuflecting to the authority in public.' Oh, Almighty, All Knowing, Most Merciful, accept that there are genuinely decent people in this world, and save us from this Guyanese malaise in which commitment and dedication is seen as opportunism and where hard-working conscientious citizens must be damned by those whose claim to fame lies in criticism and negativism and whose eyes will never be opened to the beauty and charm in their midst, preferring to see the cup half empty rather than half full. AMEN. * In the Sunday Stabroek of 14.2.99, Cassandra asked a question on which Tony Vieira now, ten months later, has given an opinion (SN 8.12.99). It had to do with co-ed schools. At the risk of tautological absurdity, allow me to repeat once more again, the question: "...do we still believe that co-ed schools perform better than single gender schools? ... Who will research the matter? Who is prepared to say that we made a mistake? Who will effect a change, if we discover that a disastrous blunder has been made". * I am happy that some people are giving their opinions on the severity of the punishment meted out to the two children who were fooling around, as surging hormones made them throw caution to the wind. Let me also hasten to point out that the young man who burnt down Queen's College, never received an expulsion letter, and quite casually entered another of the nation's top schools. But let me go a bit further. Many of these same holier-than-thou teachers, who demanded the expulsion of these students, because of the latter's supposed immorality, gave the nation's TV viewers an exhibition of their own appalling standard of virtuousness during a recent strike action. I wonder if VCT still has the tapes which depicted behaviour which was described, by one of their own colleagues, as the quintessence of depravity. In fact, that teacher resigned rather than continue working with them. I myself, not being a good Christian, would have used some other choice words to describe the actions of some of those St Rose's teachers. I don't know if the two amorous youths read this column, but I would like them to know that there are many, many people in this society who do not condemn them harshly, and that this episode should be placed squarely behind them. Learn from the totality of the experience and don't even listen to the pompous and the pious who are throwing stones your way, while they themselves live in glass houses. * Finally, pardon the following oxymoron (the moron part, I accept), but would like to ask some funnily serious questions: 1. When is TV going to make my evenings happy by transmitting basketball, NBA, that is? 2. Can laws be introduced to protect our citizenry from themselves and from faith healers and deliverers, who supposedly exorcise a miscellany of demons? 3. Which genius placed James Rose's name at the bottom of a letter (SN 30.11.99) supporting Dr Marlene Cox's appointment, while the same letter was signed "The Guys" in the Guyana Chronicle?
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