Why Gladwell is wrong about the recent revolts in the Middle East from Iran to Egypt.
Protesters take part in an anti-Mubarak protest at Tahrir square in Cairo February 1, 2011. At least one million Egyptians took to the streets on Tuesday in scenes never before seen in the Arab nation's modern history, roaring in unison for President Hosni Mubarak and his new government to quit. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem58. Protesters hold a banner during a demonstration in Cairo January 30, 2011. Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei told thousands of protesters in central Cairo on Sunday that an uprising against Hosni Mubarak's rule cannot go back. REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih
I’d bet my bottom dollar that somewhere in Tahrir Square today they’re blasting Bob Marley’s revolutionary lyrics while chanting down Babylon. We’re going to chase those crazy baldheads out of town–Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights–Rebel Music–Burnin’ and lootin’–almost every one of his songs yields a line of sheer rebellion and his music is all-pervasive. As @kristainchicago said on Twitter today: Universal truth: no matter what country you’re in, there’s a bar somewhere playing No Woman, No Cry.
Clovis, Sunday Observer, February 6, 2011
Malcolm Gladwell has been shooting off his mouth insistently about whether or not social media played a role in the latest set of insurrections in the Middle East. His thesis is that revolutions took place before Facebook and Twitter from which he concludes that the recent uprisings had nothing to do with social media and even if they did, this is ultimately fundamentally unimportant compared to the reasons for the respective revolts.
People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the Internet came along. Barely anyone in East Germany in the nineteen-eighties had a phone—and they ended up with hundreds of thousands of people in central Leipzig and brought down a regime that we all thought would last another hundred years—and in the French Revolution the crowd in the streets spoke to one another with that strange, today largely unknown instrument known as the human voice. People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place.
A respondent to Gladwell, AliaThabit, succinctly pointed out the flaws in his thesis:
I just got back from Egypt last night. If the internet were of no consequence, the govt would not have shut it down–along w/ the mobile network in Cairo, and FB and the SMS network over the whole country, which is how most people there communicate–everyone has a mobile, and sms are free (calls are not). I spent most of the first week of the revolution in Aswan with a hotel full of Cairo students who were on holiday–we (and the whole town) were all glued to the television, and they were also glued to their phones. Information raced around the country. The French may not have had Twitter, but they would have used it if they had. There are twenty million people in Cairo alone. How many lived in Paris?
There is a crucial point that the prolific Gladwell (whose mother is Jamaican) is missing. The celebrated revolutions of yesteryear all had heroic leaders around whom sustained acts of dissent, rebellion and revolt were mobilized. What is noteworthy about the recent wave of popular uprisings everywhere from Iran to Tunisia to Egypt is that they have been ‘leaderless revolutions’. This marked change in modus operandi between traditional revolution and its contemporary counterpart is worth studying; the reasons for the shift are attributed to the speed with which information is collected and disseminated by groups of people using the new social networks. The era of the charismatic leader may be over.
I’m indebted to Nicholas Mirzoeff and his new blog For the Right to Look for these insights:
Whether or not the revolutions will have been fully successful–and no-one has really defined that success–there is a palpable and electric sense of change, not just in North Africa but globally. The events have revealed that there is already a network for change and how it has worked. One tweet widely circulating from Egypt outlined the method: “Facebook used to set the date, Twitter used to share logistics, YouTube to show the world, all to connect people.” The dispersed co-ordination shows that the network has learned from Iran that social networking can also be used by the police to track down activists. Mubarak tried to cut off all Internet access, hoping that this would quell the street actions. Facebook went first, followed by Twitter, then all connections. It was a revolution watched on social networks, but acted in the streets.
…The result has been the now-characteristic “leaderless” revolutions, as the Western media have depicted them, as if expecting new Castros and Lenins to materialize. Unable to comprehend networked change, those working in hierarchical companies are already writing banal opinion pieces predicting the collapse of the revolutions for lack of the very kind of leadership that provoked the uprisings. Should the revolutions fail, it will be following the combination of local state violence and globalized governmental and corporate hostility. Israel and Saudi Arabia found an unusual point of agreement in opposing the Egyptian revolution, while stock markets plunged on January 29 as it became clear that the revolution was not going to be crushed. Oil prices hit $100 a barrel on January 31, the usual profiteering from democracy. Israel has begun leading a movement to support Mubarak for fear of the unknown.
Tunisia exploded first, and a domino effect spills over multiple countries. Yemen, Algeria, Jordan. And now Egypt, cradle of humanity, that threatens to remove the Mubarak cancer by the force of the protesters…
…I wonder: why not Cuba? As I watch TV, listen to the demands of the volatile Egyptians. Listen, for example: “We got tired of lies, misery. For decades we endured the dictator Mubarak who has ruined this country.” We hear Egyptian scholars say:” I am a lawyer and live like a beggar. I earn $60 a month, and my rent alone is $75.” And we can not avoid the immediate association with our island.
I’ve heard all the arguments of the Egyptians. And I do not think there is one, I repeat — not one — which does not apply to my country. The same hunger and hopelessness, the same distaste for an inept government; the very low wages that don’t stretch even to survive, the underground corruption; the warning, just look at the living standards of the ruling class; and now, ironically, Cuba is also added to the list of countries with high unemployment.
And then there arises, inevitably, the pointed question: Why not Cuba?
If I had to respond I would start by pointing out a subtle reality: The control of information in my tranquilized country is, aberrantly, more fierce than in countries such as those that have just exploded. For those who don’t believe information has such an important role, I suggest they ask themselves: Why has the opening act of every classic dictatorship in History been to seize the methods of communication?
So this is what Gladwell glibly elides–how messages of revolution are transmitted is crucial–this is why as Licea observes dictators and powerbrokers have always tried to control the media, whether these were the drums of the enslaved signaling revolt on Caribbean plantations or more contemporary forms of broadcasting which now include Twitter and Facebook. Sorry Malcolm you can’t just blink this one away…
One thing’s for sure, the Golding government could definitely use a shot of VITAGOV, the miraculous tonic recommended for ailing democracies everywhere. In Jamaica the Farcical News Network (Left, Right and Centre, Nationwide Radio) is sponsored by this super syrup whose ad goes like this:
VITAGOV!…Vitalize your Government!
Is slow representation getting you down? does the bad road leading to your house get on your nerves to the point of nausea? Then reach for VITAGOV! VITAGOV’s new and improved, time-honoured potent formula is crammed full of the major indices of development, including civil rights and liberties, the rule of law, effective representation and economic growth.
Combined with every hyper-caffeinated drink on the planet, VITAGOV is guaranteed to get your member of parliament and prime minister working in unrealistically fast time. Use our aerosol pump and spray your MP when he finally turns up in your constituency. Pour the VITAGOV syrup into your Minister’s drink at a party function or sprinkle it on a chair that he’s about to sit on. Whatever the method you’ll be sure to get him working. For governance on the go, it’s VITAGOV!
Meanwhile Messrs. Brooks and Co. need to develop a similar product for our ailing media, the print media in particular. I wonder if 2010 will prove to be the year when Jamaican journalists finally discover Twitter. Their silence on/in this increasingly crucial new medium is deafening. Where are @Boyne, @MartinHenry, @Wignall, @Hughes and @emilycrooks? Don’t you know that Twitter is how news is telegraphed nowadays and audiences created?
Photo by Colin Hamilton
Ah well, i continue to scratch my head in perplexity at the lagging behind of those who claim to be our watchdogs. Their caginess and timidity would be amusing if it wasn’t so tragic. While the formal, English-speaking posse bury their heads in the sand the Patwa-speakers are off and running with the new technologies. I was able to get a blow-by-blow account of the rather uneventful Sting finale this year because the dancehall massive and crew were tweeting comments and photos, alternately transmitting their disgust at the lack of clashing and fear when shots were fired amongst a range of reactions which i wouldn’t have missed for the world.
And after all the boasting and pre-Sting publicity (see trailer below) LA Lewis didn’t turn up giving rise to many jokes about the Queen, the new taxes, the coffin he had prepared to bury Goofy and much else.
tplayfair RT @SuppaKid: @tplayfair at least he made the coffin b4 they pass the taxes. so him save some $$$
tplayfair Twit Classified> One white coffin red velvet interior comes w/4 cans of spray paint & 7 pairs of white sox. Vampires get 17.5% off purchase
KandeeAppl Everybody’s FB status is about how lame sting was, glad I opted to watch it on TV, big up ER an Anthony Miller, pon top a tings-as always!
anniepaul But of course! RT @RoryLeif: La lewis said he was unable to attend sting becuz he was meeting with the queen
LivUp_Records Reach home. Laing biggest joka. Bout kartel & vado pon stage 1 time di prezi alone can do that!!
A funny misunderstanding happened when Kartel’s fans thought that their fanpower and enthusiastic tweets had made #Gaza a trending topic on Twitter (Gaza is the name Kartel also known as the Teacher adopted for his community after its original name ‘Borderline’ was besmirched by association in a popular play) only to find that it was no such thing. It was just that their beloved Teacha’s performance in the wee hours of December 27th coincided with a Twitter campaign to raise awareness about the ORIGINAL Gaza that unfolded at 3 pm middle eastern time but early morning for us:
In honor of the one-year anniversary of Israel’s attacks on Gaza in December 2008, a number of activists have planned a targeted “tweet for Gaza” campaign on Twitter. The campaign, widely promoted by Twitter usernmoawad, is meant to draw attention to the current siege on Gaza, and will be implemented on Sunday, December 27, between 3pm and 7pm GMT, in an effort to make#Gaza a Twitter trending topic. . . a great number of people are using Twitter to share their own personal thoughts about Gaza, one year after the attacks which left 1,417 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. Rime Allaf, a Syrian Twitterer, explains what it means to her:
May i recommend that our celebrated journalists follow Joelle Hatem’s example and take a crash course in Twitter? The lagging behind in use of new technologies from the most literate segments of Jamaican society contradicts the ‘English is better than Patwa’ message that the English-speaking elites are constantly advancing, claiming that English is necessary to ‘move ahead’, converse with the rest of the world, keep up with new knowledge and so on. It would seem from the example that they’re setting that English is actually holding back the learned, speaky-spoky elites.
Even the latest Shebada play Serious Business, pivots on the plot-bending detail of ‘Facebook and Twidder’ for he plays a Revival preacher from New York, with 5000 Facebook friends and 3000 Twitter followers. Those are his qualifications for being hired to replace the crufty, corrupt old Preacher who is busy ripping off the Church at every opportunity he gets.
It’s an amazing development when the less literate massive and crew get the new technologies before those who benefited from the highest education this country can offer. What can it portend for the future?
It took virtually twenty years but a Jamaican government has finally taken my father’s advice to tax petroleum. 1990 was the first time my Dad came to visit me here and he couldn’t believe how cheap gas/petrol was. Your government is subsidizing petrol? he would incredulously ask my friends who dropped by. They should be taxing it! In India we have just raised the petrol tax again. People drive too much, there’s no need to drive everywhere etc etc. (I should say that my Dad is generally full of good ideas that have earned him quite a reputation. He was recently in the news in India for having launched a ‘child-tracking system‘).
Needless to say my father gained instant unpopularity with my friends. i remember Victor Chang kissing his teeth as he left my house one evening. The fact that my Dad (Samuel Paul) was an economist who had been adviser to the current Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he was Finance Minister and a member of various five-year plan committees didn’t endear him to my friends any further. They were simply enraged by the idea that gas should be taxed.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there is some irrational link between the price of gas in Jamaica and public tolerance levels. Like the proverbial red rag that provokes the bull to charge, price increases in gas have repeatedly been the trigger for Jamaican rage: the only thing that is guaranteed to make public patience boil till it erupts into violent social disorder. People will willingly put up with torture, rape, murder and corruption but touch the price of gas and you’ve gone too far.
Las May, The Gleaner, April 24, 2009
You will therefore understand why the Jamaican government had to put its security forces on alert the night before Finance Minister Audley Shaw (Oddly Sure i call him in private) announced his tax package. The Prime Minister even made a TV appearance the evening before to address the nation. As someone put it on Twitter “He was on TV basically begging us not to set Jamaica on fire come tomorrow when the new taxes are announced.” After all that the country is still recovering from the fact that for the first time in decades the much feared gas tax has been imposed without social repercussions of any sort. Surely some credit is due to the Opposition for not opportunistically inciting violence as happened in April 1999. And congratulations to the ruling party for biting the bullet and belling the cat. The gas tax was long overdue. I am my father’s daughter after all (I do deplore the tax on ‘printed material’ and computers though).
Las May, The Gleaner, April 2, 2009
Anyhow! Those of us who Twitter and Facebook had a great time before, during and after Oddly Sure’s presentation. Below is a sample of the kinds of conversations to be had on social networking sites such as Facebook. It was initiated by a Facebook friend whose status update the night before Minister Shaw’s presentations said: “Wonda if me fe work tomorrow or start black d road fram tonight?” On G-day this was her status update and the conversation it generated:
WC: MEMO TO ALL CONCERNED: Due to budget constraints I will have to surrender my internet so no more FB after 2:10pm, it was nice knowing you all, to the foreigners, pls send a likkle barrel now and then as I will be facing some harsh times, to those i owe – i plead ‘mentally unstable’ so pls write off those debts! to ma fellow roadblackers…..’keep it blacked’! over & out!
OW at 8:54am April 23
talk the tings Winnsome what a gwane a yard!!!!! dont tell me say a de Change what dem ask fa….. a tek place….lol
Memba Seaga wen seh di pnp economy was like a bus going dung mount rosser hill wid no driva. Dis yah one yah is like a hijack plane wid out pilat
OW at 9:19am April 23
Winnie me feel say U vote fi the change to talk up……..
WC at 9:21am April 23
rahtid!!! a true…..yes, but u know say Seaga did mix up an love war!! (lol) but me dear…dis even wos dan hijak plane….a doh even know what fi call e……u memba how Man a Yaad did say jus few weeks ago dat ‘the Jamaican economy not affected by the world crisis an how we criss’ an fram den me say da man d really tek we fi dunce an now him tun… Read More him mout….but we did know an eediat Mike Henry a say we need d gas tax fi fix d badly neglected roads an even dat not going to be enuff!! u shld a see him face!! bwoy Steve….it no pretty
Lawks Winnie, mi very sarry fi hear bout di sudden heconomic downturn pon di rock but noh worry as di barrel is being packed as I tab. Just remind me of yu haddress and pray seh dem noh seajack di ship….have mercy dear Faadah and pilat we chu lifes tempestuous seas…. roger dat, 10 4, ova n hout!….an til wi meet ah farin again mi fren, walk good!!!
In recent times a wave of people on Facebook have been obligingly listing 25 Random Things About Themselves in response to an invitation “to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. ” While i shy away from any such disclosures myself (why give away information for nothing?) i do enjoy reading them and in this post i pass on the most interesting and provocative of the 25 Random Things responses i’ve seen to date. It’s by Peter Dean Rickards of Afflicted Yard and the Rickards Bros (whose video Kingston Logic premieres on TV tonight on TVJ’s Entertainment Report, 9 pm Ja time).
Peter Dean’s 25 Random Things About Me:
25. I have been waking up very early in the morning lately, usually because of a dream that initially seems traumatic but upon closer analysis is actually pretty stupid. As a matter of fact, that is why I am up at 4:17 am writing this foolishness now…I just woke up after dreaming that I had somehow qualified to race some famous runner (I think Usain Bolt), and somehow I was going to turn the event into some sort of PLUS despite my knowing that I would come in last. I am not making this up…I just dreamed it.I thought the best thing to do would be to make sure I don’t look silly on worldwide television. I told myself to remember to write down a bunch of clever stuff to say when asked about my chances of winning the race as well as things to say once I lost. I even started to write down things to say if i WON! As usual, I procrastinated, and on race day I had nothing witty to say and forgot to buy shoes that looked like I was taking the thing seriously. My hair was doing strange things as well and before long I was scrambling around looking for a clean t-shirt. Then stuff went wrong with my car and my laptop died and someone from the credit card company found out where I lived and started dragging her keys across the gate and repeating the words : ” I know you’re in there Rickards, and I know its raceday. We’ve got you now Rickards. We’ve got you now.!”
24. My earliest memory is being bathed in a bathroom sink. I recall that it was just the right size to lie down in and my grandmothers rings were flashy.
23. My biggest childhood fear was ‘the big bad wolf’. As a child I had a read-a-long record version of it and I would play it over and over again, astounded at how this wolf was allowed to just go and kick in people’s (well, pigs) doors. At night when I heard cars drive by the house I envisioned the big bad wolf pulling up in his limo outside the door getting ready to blow it down. I would creep out of my bed and crawl (on my hands and knees in the darkness) approximately 70 metres to my grandmothers room on the other side of the house. 22. I once lit my friend Freitas on fire sort of by accident ( I didn’t think the fire would spread the way it did all over his nylon jacket). I put him out by bashing him with a snow showel.
21. I worshiped my father so I didn’t think it was a bad idea to take his advice about using one of his old briefcases as a schoolbag in grade 7. Turns out it was a bad idea.
20.When I was 21, I smoked hashish at dusk on one of the great pyramids at Giza (Khafre). The complex was empty as all the tourists had gone home. I bribed a guard to do it…he also sold me the hashish.
19. I have slipped on a banana peel. 18. I have been escorted out of the Vatican by a Swiss Guard for lying on my back taking pictures of the ceiling. I returned the next day and stole a 3-D hologram of a blinking Jesus out of the Vatican store.
17. I like a beautiful woman but I like her a lot more if she can make me laugh. I don’t meet many of those, so I usually settle for just the beautiful part…shallow I know; but if a funny AND beautiful woman ever comes along..woo-hoo!
16. I used to read a lot more books before the Internet and I used to write a lot more before meddling with cameras. To combat it, I’m trying to use a camera that won’t be worth much unless you read its manual and write stuff telling it what to do.
15. My father still uses a fountain pen.
14. I was not a spoiled child. When I was disobedient my hockey stick was hurled into a lake.
13. Even though I knew it would be confiscated the minute my parents saw me with a boomerang, I bought one at the Ontario Science Centre with lunch money I had hoarded for over a week. I snuck it home in my briefcase and went to nearby Brebeuf park to try it out. After 8 or 9 throws (none of which produced the desired effect of RETURNING), the thing got caught in a gust of wind and came back with amazing precision–striking me in the side of the head. My immediate response was to run…in any direction as fast as possible. I never retrieved the boomerang but the next day I accused Brian Jardin of stealing it (his house bordered the park and he was always looking out his stupid window waiting for kids to forget their stuff in the park so he could run out there and get it after they had left). He denied it so I ran over him with my BMX in the alley when he wasn’t looking.
12. I once found a pair of severed horse legs in a plastic bin at the side of a rural road in Caledon, Ontario. I thought this was amusing so I put one of them in a plastic bag and took it home. I put a scarf on it and laid it in my little sister’s bed. When she came home from school she knew I was up to something and got very suspicious when I told her to go check her room. She didn’t know what the lump in the sheets was at first but then she peeled back the sheets and saw the hoof and ran like a bat out of hell.
11. I once used an old hair dryer (connected by several extension cords to the next door neighbours flat) to keep warm in an abandoned house in the a place called Plumstead (a depressed area on the outskirts of London) in the winter of 1997. It was not a regular hair dryer either. It was one of those huge things that look like a giant helmet. Take it from me, it’s no fun sleeping with one of those. 10. In 1993 the door of my 1985 Honda Civic fell off in traffic. I replaced it with a door that was a different colour from the rest of my car and wrote the word PORSCHE on it with a felt pen.
9. When I first arrived in Canada and was told the words ‘FUCK OFF’ for the first time, I thought the best reply was ‘SHIT OFF’.
8. When I was 15 I underwent a test called a lymphangiogram. This process involved cutting 3 inch incisions in both of your feet and pumping radioactive fluid into the veins found there so you would glow in the dark under an x-ray machine. Later after the test, they sew up the incisions and keep you overnight with your feet elevated. But I had to go to the bathroom and so I got up and started waddling to down the corridor of the hospital at around 2 am. Then I felt the first foot ‘pop’ and when I looked down it was squirting up like a fountain. I kept waddling until I heard the second foot pop. I said ‘HELP’ and blacked out. Later when I woke up back in the bed, the nurse told me I should use a bedpan next time…then I think she tried to molest me…but she was cute so I didn’t mind.
7. When Hurricane Ivan came, I somehow managed to get myself locked out of my apartment (twice) right when giant trees were starting to snap and fall into the pool.
5. I don’t like being called a photographer. I know I can take pictures but my sister once dated a photographer and I remember thinking at the time that he must be out of his mind to be doing that sort of shit for a living.
4. I’m happiest when I’ve accomplished something that was not easy to accomplish and I stand back and look at it and think — how perfectly pointless.
3. I don’t like cops of any sort. It doesn’t matter if they are supposedly decent people or if they have arrested 900 murderers. It takes a certain mentality to be a cop and its the sort of mentality than I despise…the same people who everyone beats up in school. Like Kayne West.
2. My sisters would find their Barbies with genitals and nipples drawn on them.
1. I thought that if I ever found a small person living in my house. Like a person who was maybe 5 inches tall…and they wanted to be friends; that I would hear them out and probably make them feel comfortable enough to be able to coax them into a jar or a shoebox.Then I would try to sell it to a lab.
I’m really glad the Jamaican government decided to spend $12 million (Jamaican of course; J$80=US$1) on fireworks at the waterfront on New Year’s Eve. It was a mere series of blips compared to the displays in Hong Kong and Australia but they were our blips and we enjoyed them. I hear the mutterings and rumblings about how the money could have been put to better use etc but it’s not as if Jamaica is Zimbabwe or Iraq. We haven’t been ravaged by disease or war in quite the same way and there’s a limit to the difference a hundred and fifty thousand American dollars could make to the general well-being of the population.
In fact a firework display for all to enjoy was one of the few ways the money could have been used to benefit many. All things considered the fireworks did briefly manage to prop up a generally sagging public morale I think. As bad as things seemed by the end of the year at least we weren’t too poor to afford fireworks. Thousands turned out to reclaim the normally abandoned downtown and waterfront areas of Kingston and I hear Tivoli was popping with a more rollicking session of Passa Passa than usual. I’m sure vendors and hustlers did a roaring business that night. And it wasn’t just downtown. Cars and people lined the Palisadoes road all the way to the airport to watch the fireworks and set off their own.
I surveyed the numerous firework displays from the lofty heights of Stony Hill where we enjoyed a commanding view of the city. A private home in Jack’s Hill threatened to rival the fireworks at the waterfront. We viewed it as a struggle between the private sector and the public to outdo each other. The latter won, just about.
So 2008 was a rough year and 09 doesn’t promise to be any better. The Israeli pounding of Gaza underscores the grim future that awaits many of us. Meanwhile that ingenious merchant of hope, Barack Obama, gets ready to occupy the most powerful throne on earth. Will he actually make a difference? What will we be thinking and saying of him a year from now? And when is someone going to invent fast forward and rewind buttons for life so that we don’t have to leave such matters to speculation?
My new year’s resolution in 2007 was to start a blog in 2008. Determined to join the blogging caste I managed to kick start Active Voice last January and it picked up momentum during the course of the year. What an odyssey into the unknown it’s proven to be, this excursion into the blogosphere; this deepening acquaintance with the internet and cyberspace. The world wide web is a sticky place and blogs are like mini-webs spun by human arachnids who aim to trap you with silky tripwires. Not to eat those who wander into their webs but to entice them to return, again and again, leaving trails of page views and visits and occasional comments— blogfood—that rich humus that feeds the growth of blogs.
How bloggers who never receive comments or a minimum of visits continue to maintain their output is beyond me. But then again its all relative. I think i’ve done well to have received close to ten thousand hits over the last year but when you compare that to Indian bloggers whose page views number in the hundreds of thousands you may as well retire coz it’ll probably be the year 3000 by the time you get there. I mean Domain Maximus will soon reach the million viewer mark and the Compulsive Confessor is already a million plus .
So although advertisers would have us rate the success of blogs by the number of hits they attract on a per diem basis—apparently anything less than 2000 hits per day is not considered worth spending advertising dollars on —there are other indicators of blog health and success that may not be as easily quantifiable.
The other highlight for me has been allowing myself to get into Facebook in a serious way. At first I couldn’t understand why I should join such a network. It seemed to me like entertainment for the feeble-minded or ultra young with its good karma requests and its past life, monster birth and mob wars invitations (all of which can be safely ignored). Then I read a New York Times article about ‘Digital Intimacy’ or something like that which explained the whole concept of the thing and suddenly I got why it’s as innovative as it is.
Haven’t looked back since. Life without Facebook is pretty damn unimaginable today. The poverty of the print media in Jamaica was brought home to me when I read Eve Mann’s review of Sting 08 (Jamaica’s top dancehall event, held every December 26) that she posted as a note in Facebook. Her excellent account underscored the anodyne, barely competent writing we tolerate from print journalists here. It remains a mystery to me why Jamaican newspapers offer their readers a third-rate product when first-rate writing is so readily (if not as cheaply) available. Surely they realize that like anything else you get what you pay for?
This preference for second and third-best isn’t confined to Jamaica. In Trinidad and Tobago (and elsewhere) stunned readers of his column are expressing dismay that the Trinidad Express has terminated B.C. Pires’s provocative and acutely critical weekly column. Ever one to lay bare the truth with wit and originality Pires probably wasn’t as biddable as the Express would have liked. Without more information one can only speculate. In one of his last columns for the Express he interviewed himself. He was nothing if not hard-hitting and original.
Closer to home the Gleaner seems to have terminated the column of the punderous Dr. Orville Taylor (it never fails to amuse me the childish glee with which people brandish their titles here. Even ‘Mrs.’ is an honorific in Jamaica and she who has earned the right to be called ‘Mrs.’ is likely to rub it into your face with all the zeal of a Pond’s Cold Cream salesperson). Dr. Taylor liked to announce his witticisms with an advance marching band of quote marks and both bold and italic type just in case there was a reader who didn’t get it. In many ways Taylor was the opposite of B.C. Pires, lacking his finesse and acrobatic way with words and ideas, so his departure is likely to be met more with sighs of relief than regret, although he did have his fans (Stero?). Of course no one could be more grief-stricken than Dr. Taylor himself. Contrast his parting column,Swansongs and Auld Lang Syne with that of Pires, Write time, wrong place.
But guess what guys! The twenty-first century piece of all-purpose advice is no longer “Get a life!”; its “Get a blog!” Come join the blogging caste–the only caste you don’t have to be born into. So what if your papers have cut you loose? Its their loss…light a candle, sing a sankey and find your way to blogger.com! Your readers will follow suit.
18. I have been escorted out of the Vatican by a Swiss Guard for lying on my back taking pictures of the ceiling. I returned the next day and stole a 3-D hologram of a blinking Jesus out of the Vatican store.
Active Voice 