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Oh, how we love bangarang!
BARBARA GLOUDON
Friday, April 27, 2012
AGENDA FOR THE DAY: The meeting is called to order. There’s much of importance to discuss. Imagine you’re the minister of finance faced with bringing in a budget with promised pain… Looking for a new profession? How about rat-catching – both the four-legged and the twolegged kind?
And what of a tourism attraction to explore potholes… or inventing an electronic game to distract attention should GCT be placed on basic food items leaving the poor and the hungry to march? Or, if all else fails, join the Gossip Society in tearing others to pieces? If it’s one thing we love, it is bangarang.
The greenless flag story is now dead. Flag stories, on the whole, are out. Who cares that another decorator’s bright idea to create a carpet in Rasta’s sacred colours of red, green and gold threatened to ignite another flag fire, an unwelcome distraction at the premiere in the park, where the spotlight was on “Marley”? According to reports, attempts were made to disarm the bomb of disaffection by adding white, then purple to the discredited carpet. The rainbow effect was quickly “bunned” as the flag was deemed to be not of the day but of the gay. The drama was soon brought under control and the events of the evening progressed in a spirit of One Love.
TIME TO LIGHTEN UP…
Up till now, we’ve failed to make capital of the national pastime of finding at least one squabble a week to distract us from the realities of real life. As we explore the possibilities of Brand Jamaica, here’s one with potential. For people whose lives are too calm, too placid, too boring, here’s a chance for rejuvenation. Imagine a tourism campaign with the slogan, “Come for the suss of the day.” Clients would be assured that they can quarrel about anything and turn on each other at the drop of a hat. Where there were no facts, we would create them. The less we know, the more we talk. Suss sells. Ask the media.
AND SO IT CAME TO PASS
this week, that we’ve got a real one to chew on – the drama of the Beauty and the Baby. It has all the ingredients of a Lifetime movie. Music up as the Beauty climbs down from the pedestal on which devoted fans had placed her and proceeded to make an announcement to friends via Facebook that midnight feeding and diaperchanging are in her future (or words to that effect). It is impossible to keep a secret with one’s closest million friends eavesdropping. So now, the secret is out and the Chat-bout Society is in session.
In tales of fantasy, the baby is supposed to come after the Wedding March. Nice girls didn’t “do it”. When the baby bump intruded, it had to be camouflaged by any means for the walk down the aisle. Much used to be made of children being born out of wedlock, but in the 70s the Bastardy Act was repealed, giving rise to the song, No bastard nuh deh again. That didn’t stop the people from arguing about whether unwed and pregnant teachers should be allowed in the classroom. Old prejudices are hard to die.
THERE WAS A TIME when Civil Service regulations forbade unwed women with “baby bumps” from keeping their jobs. The story goes that many a child grew up believing that they were being reared by an aunt who was a postmistress or teacher. The convention was that such responsible ladies would not dare to “do it” before the ring went on the finger. We’ve come a long way, babymaddah. Today, women are supposed to be free to do what they want. It’s their bodies, their lives. So why the fuss now? The Bible-thumpers have moved in to get their share of the spotlight. Some have actually dug up the word “fornication”. We haven’t yet got to “stoning”, but you get the feeling that if the righteous had their way, you see... Notice that Baby-faadah don’t come into this. We’re talking strictly about the curse of Eve, and that wily old serpent. (What century is this again?)
Enough ugly things are being said to keep the suss-mill going until we can segue into the next round. Miss Beauty must know why she made the choice which led to this day. She’s an adult free to make her own decisions. In an ideal world, it would be none of our business, but this is the age of electronic news-carrying, “when my business is everybody’s business”.
We’ve become gossip junkies, with an insatiable appetite for every private detail in the lives of public people. We want to be informed about everything: from their reproductive cycles to financial status. Knowing that, people still ask, should this week’s suss be headline news? Does it deserve front-page attention? Aren’t there other matters of national importance which deserve the big headlines? Sorry, dears, that was back in the age of the dinosaurs. How many times do we have to say the news must not only tell, it must sell.
AND LIFE GOES ON… Not everyone has the luxury of suss… Minister Deacon Thwaites is determined to take the education discussion out in the open, in language which everyone understands. I heard someone saying he is impressed by the evangelical fervour which has him visiting three or four schools a day as he tours the island to gain firsthand information on the state of his portfolio. The people love it. He recently appealed to parents to prepare to make sacrifices to help fund their children’s education. The appeal goes like this: “There are too many who believe that if you can just buss a tune, or if you are a lady, that you can just go on the catwalk and take off enough of your clothes at carnival time or whenever, or master the lottery scam; that somehow there are other ways that you can get through in life, so that education becomes a nice thing to have but is not really essential.” Okay?
HAITI - JAMAICA RELATIONS: Philippe St Cyr, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti, was reported in Wednesday’s Business Observer as saying in response to the closure of the Haitian Embassy in Kingston that it wasn’t any indication of serious malice towards this country, but part of routine changes in the Haitian foreign service, following a change of Haitian prime ministers. So why is nobody in Kingston talking about it? Will we always settle for bad name? Come on, Foreign Affairs. Say something.
MORE KASS-KASS… The prime minister’s visit to New York to collect the TIME magazine’s Most Influential Award and her visit tomorrow to the Penn Relays seems to be upsetting some people. Why? Politics as usual? What if we just took pride in the honour offered to Jamaica, or we can’t let go of the bangarang?
Read more: http://m.jamaicaobserver.com/columns...#ixzz1tG5TxYwS
BARBARA GLOUDON
Friday, April 27, 2012
AGENDA FOR THE DAY: The meeting is called to order. There’s much of importance to discuss. Imagine you’re the minister of finance faced with bringing in a budget with promised pain… Looking for a new profession? How about rat-catching – both the four-legged and the twolegged kind?
And what of a tourism attraction to explore potholes… or inventing an electronic game to distract attention should GCT be placed on basic food items leaving the poor and the hungry to march? Or, if all else fails, join the Gossip Society in tearing others to pieces? If it’s one thing we love, it is bangarang.
The greenless flag story is now dead. Flag stories, on the whole, are out. Who cares that another decorator’s bright idea to create a carpet in Rasta’s sacred colours of red, green and gold threatened to ignite another flag fire, an unwelcome distraction at the premiere in the park, where the spotlight was on “Marley”? According to reports, attempts were made to disarm the bomb of disaffection by adding white, then purple to the discredited carpet. The rainbow effect was quickly “bunned” as the flag was deemed to be not of the day but of the gay. The drama was soon brought under control and the events of the evening progressed in a spirit of One Love.
TIME TO LIGHTEN UP…
Up till now, we’ve failed to make capital of the national pastime of finding at least one squabble a week to distract us from the realities of real life. As we explore the possibilities of Brand Jamaica, here’s one with potential. For people whose lives are too calm, too placid, too boring, here’s a chance for rejuvenation. Imagine a tourism campaign with the slogan, “Come for the suss of the day.” Clients would be assured that they can quarrel about anything and turn on each other at the drop of a hat. Where there were no facts, we would create them. The less we know, the more we talk. Suss sells. Ask the media.
AND SO IT CAME TO PASS
this week, that we’ve got a real one to chew on – the drama of the Beauty and the Baby. It has all the ingredients of a Lifetime movie. Music up as the Beauty climbs down from the pedestal on which devoted fans had placed her and proceeded to make an announcement to friends via Facebook that midnight feeding and diaperchanging are in her future (or words to that effect). It is impossible to keep a secret with one’s closest million friends eavesdropping. So now, the secret is out and the Chat-bout Society is in session.
In tales of fantasy, the baby is supposed to come after the Wedding March. Nice girls didn’t “do it”. When the baby bump intruded, it had to be camouflaged by any means for the walk down the aisle. Much used to be made of children being born out of wedlock, but in the 70s the Bastardy Act was repealed, giving rise to the song, No bastard nuh deh again. That didn’t stop the people from arguing about whether unwed and pregnant teachers should be allowed in the classroom. Old prejudices are hard to die.
THERE WAS A TIME when Civil Service regulations forbade unwed women with “baby bumps” from keeping their jobs. The story goes that many a child grew up believing that they were being reared by an aunt who was a postmistress or teacher. The convention was that such responsible ladies would not dare to “do it” before the ring went on the finger. We’ve come a long way, babymaddah. Today, women are supposed to be free to do what they want. It’s their bodies, their lives. So why the fuss now? The Bible-thumpers have moved in to get their share of the spotlight. Some have actually dug up the word “fornication”. We haven’t yet got to “stoning”, but you get the feeling that if the righteous had their way, you see... Notice that Baby-faadah don’t come into this. We’re talking strictly about the curse of Eve, and that wily old serpent. (What century is this again?)
Enough ugly things are being said to keep the suss-mill going until we can segue into the next round. Miss Beauty must know why she made the choice which led to this day. She’s an adult free to make her own decisions. In an ideal world, it would be none of our business, but this is the age of electronic news-carrying, “when my business is everybody’s business”.
We’ve become gossip junkies, with an insatiable appetite for every private detail in the lives of public people. We want to be informed about everything: from their reproductive cycles to financial status. Knowing that, people still ask, should this week’s suss be headline news? Does it deserve front-page attention? Aren’t there other matters of national importance which deserve the big headlines? Sorry, dears, that was back in the age of the dinosaurs. How many times do we have to say the news must not only tell, it must sell.
AND LIFE GOES ON… Not everyone has the luxury of suss… Minister Deacon Thwaites is determined to take the education discussion out in the open, in language which everyone understands. I heard someone saying he is impressed by the evangelical fervour which has him visiting three or four schools a day as he tours the island to gain firsthand information on the state of his portfolio. The people love it. He recently appealed to parents to prepare to make sacrifices to help fund their children’s education. The appeal goes like this: “There are too many who believe that if you can just buss a tune, or if you are a lady, that you can just go on the catwalk and take off enough of your clothes at carnival time or whenever, or master the lottery scam; that somehow there are other ways that you can get through in life, so that education becomes a nice thing to have but is not really essential.” Okay?
HAITI - JAMAICA RELATIONS: Philippe St Cyr, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti, was reported in Wednesday’s Business Observer as saying in response to the closure of the Haitian Embassy in Kingston that it wasn’t any indication of serious malice towards this country, but part of routine changes in the Haitian foreign service, following a change of Haitian prime ministers. So why is nobody in Kingston talking about it? Will we always settle for bad name? Come on, Foreign Affairs. Say something.
MORE KASS-KASS… The prime minister’s visit to New York to collect the TIME magazine’s Most Influential Award and her visit tomorrow to the Penn Relays seems to be upsetting some people. Why? Politics as usual? What if we just took pride in the honour offered to Jamaica, or we can’t let go of the bangarang?
Read more: http://m.jamaicaobserver.com/columns...#ixzz1tG5TxYwS
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