“Why should people be sacrificed so as to allow others, wrongdoers, to prosper? That is what we are being called upon to do, colleagues, […] What we are being called upon to do by a small clique of people in the country is to support wrongdoing, pretend not to know …
Read More »Gibbons’ new calypso drama: Voices from the ghetto to sing de chorus?
What, I asked myself, might a Part IV of “Sing de Chorus” look and sound like if the dramatist decided to write one? What quality material would he have to draw on? Would any such production be what a recent Express story about an upcoming concert called “an ode to …
Read More »Media Monitor: “Disgrantle” resident and “prioritarise-ing” minister star in messy flood coverage
The one thing that disaster should never be is haha funny. Regrettably, nobody bothered to tell TV6. Or sister OCM station i95.5fm. On yesterday’s 7pm TV news, there was this guy from Greenvale fuming about the inadequacy of the $15,000 grant that Government has offered certified victims of last weekend’s …
Read More »Media Monitor: Does moving T’dad Express editorial finger find sport nothing to write home about?
Yesterday’s Express leader, headlined “Victory for all,” purports to be a celebration of the recapture of the CPL title by the Trinbago Knight Riders on Sunday evening. However, if editorials can be viewed as the equivalent of Test matches, I submit, then this one was a T20-type effort, a brief, …
Read More »Media Monitor: Best reviews PNM government’s continuing “communication” challenges…
Meaning, every competent Communications person knows, is made at the receiving end; whatever the message you intend to send, there is no guarantee that that is the message that will be received by those in whose garden the despatched message happens to fall. Whether or not it bears fruit at …
Read More »Media Monitor: NIF, NoF, Nuff; can Government really bank on OCM?
If you watched the TV6 7pm News on Thursday, then you should have a clear idea of how deep in the doodoo our media are. And since One Caribbean Media (OCM) is one of the five companies on whose entire or partial assets the National Investment Fund is “collateralised”—not my …
Read More »Media Monitor: The problem with the T&T media’s World Cup coverage; aite!
The Trinidad Express probably thinks that the World Cup craze is so all-pervasive that they don’t need to bother too much about the rest of the paper. Here is a sentence from last Friday’s Editorial, headlined “Facts the antidote to fake news:” “Evidently hot under the collar, he—the reference was …
Read More »Father’s Day reflection: today’’s dads, yesterday’s granddads and different attitudes to the three Rs
Back in the 1970’s and 80’s, there was a Family Planning Association (FPA) bumper sticker which reminded the world that “The challenge is not in becoming a father but in being one.” After all, all it takes to have a child is a little rudeness, a little luck, (good or …
Read More »Monitoring Me (Epilogue): A Mother’s Day message for present-day parents to ponder
The voice on the other end of the line was female but it was neither family nor familiar. And without so much as a perfunctory greeting, she got right to the heart of the matter. “Mr Best, yuh eh have no mudder?” “I beg your pardon?” I said, taken aback. …
Read More »Monitoring Me 4: The Sisyphus miracle of rolling stones, uphill tasks and labours of love
My first encounter with Sisyphos came in Sixth Form Latin class at QRC when I was in my mid-teens. And a decade or so later, I was halfway between 18 and 28 in 20th Century French Literature class at UWI when I was introduced to the Camusian version of the …
Read More »Daaga make we do it! Black Power stories of the Q and the 1970 Coup
“Power alone,” the poet Syl Lowhar wrote in Tapia’s “Black Power in Human Song” special somewhere in the 1970’s, “will never make us strong. The heart must also sing the human song.” Almost half a century after Geddes Granger’s NJAC empowered Black people in Trinidad and Tobago, the politically most …
Read More »Media Monitor: Go brave, Guardian Media; just keep right on maccoing Michelle-Lee
As a once respected media house, the Guardian may well believe maccoing to be its thing. But as a former journalism lecturer, I am very sure it isn’t mine. I am not, therefore, in the least interested in knowing who Michelle-Lee Ahye’s partner is. Or his or her sex. Or his or her gender. …
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