ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for September, 2011.

America’s Language War

These are interesting times in this country. I have been watching a lot of television lately (something I haven’t done in a while), usually the frontline of the many ideas competing to take hold in the national mind. Today’s issue is about language use, and rhetoric, in politics. Fox News had just juxtaposed the video of President Obama talking in February about civility in political discourse with the video of Labour Leader Jimmy Hoffa calling the Tea Party activists “sons of bitches” though not directly.

President Obama had made the remark at the memorial for the dead at Tuscon, Arizona, calling for people to tone down the heat in their talk and bring civility back to public discourse. However, now after such a pummeling by an unrelenting army of conservative activists in his own political career, he seems to have now been tacitly endorsing a retaliatory verbal retort by his own army of union workers. Sean Hannity, on his All-American show this evening, stacked the set with a group of people who believed that the president needs to step up and censure his own people. What is not being verbalized is that if that is not done, the Conservative right will return to do the same and won’t listen to any entreaties.

What I find mostly interesting about it all is the spin that confronts the viewer depending on which television station they watch. I had been watching Fox News, the mouthpiece of the conservative movement (as contrasted – by their own words – to the mainstream media*). When I am watching MSNBC, I get a different perspective. I grew up in Nigeria watching CNN so I had a pretty “mainstream” access to the American news world. There was Larry King, Wolf Blitzer and a host of others. Watching Fox News today is like watching a different country. It finally dawned on me that there are many Americas, and each of them has a different window on the world which they often defend to the exclusion of others.

In his exclusive interview with Vice President Cheney yesterday where he did all he could – sometimes superfluously – to make the former Bush Administration powerful man discredit the current administration, Sean Hannity played a clip of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and then asks the Vice President whether he was offended by Colin Powell referring to him as Mr. Cheney rather than Vice President Cheney. When the latter said “no”, Sean Hannity seemed surprised. The irony of the situation, of course, was that for many more times than the former Vice President in the same interview, Sean Hannity referred to the current president as “Barack Obama” or “Obama” and the current Vice President as “Joe Biden”, but the ex-President as President Bush without a hint of self-awareness.

So here is what I see: that the ideological underlining of these media enterprises makes it hard for them (and thus their viewers) to admit a simple universal truth whenever it favours an opposing ideology. Ed Schultz of MSNBC needlessly puts a racial slant on Rick Perry’s “black cloud of debt” speech while Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh – no matter how much it comes out of the mouth of even their own favourite interview subjects – would never agree that the current administration ever did anything right. It’s strange that each of them believes that their viewpoint represents what America really is. On the one hand, some viewers are able to see this spin. On the other hand, there are many more who views the world and the country only through these narrow media viewpoints.

On the bright side, it will always give people like Jon Stewart something to amuse us about, and people like me something to write about on an idle evening.

*PS: By what standard exactly is Fox News not part of the mainstream media, with their record of consistent high ratings for many years. I never quite understood that part of their usual talking points.

On Vain Newspeaks

One of the few things that irk me the most about comments by American government officials from the Bush administration reflecting on their role in the post 9/11 America is the claim that they had kept America safe ever since. Watching an interview with Vice-President Dick Cheney with Chris Wallace on Fox today, I kept wondering whether the interviewers who endure this kind of response merely never think about it, are equally as blind, or just don’t care. The fact that such responses come when asked about the justification of heinous interrogation practices makes it even more disgusting. Let us see how the argument holds up.

Before 9/11, there was only one attack on American soil for fifty years, and that was the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Since 1945, there was no other attack on American soil until the World Trade Centre bombing in 1993. By that stupid logic of claiming to be a grand protector of the country just because the days of danger are far between one another, the Clinton Administration could have made a badge for itself for not having endured another attack between 1993 and 2001. But what sense would that have made? I have found it as laughable (if not naively tragic, and a stupid political gimmick) that the right wing commentators, particularly the administrative officials of the Bush administration, would claim this as their legacy: “After all, we have never had any other attack. We kept the country safe since then.” What kind of an excuse is that? Oh yes I let the house burn once, but look I have made sure that it hasn’t happened again since seven years ago. Don’t I deserve a cookie? Or like the man in Yoruba fables who had just returned from a witch doctor and then claiming that he is now invincible from all bullets simply because he is wearing a juju amulet. The witch doctor may take credit for this “safety” from now till eternity and get paid handsomely for it too, but he would do well to warn the man to stay away from a shooting range!

I feel very strongly about 9/11. I never lost anyone there (a family friend was in one of the building earlier in the morning and left before the planes hit) but the enormity of the attack, the scope of the damage and the terrible fall-out from that heinous act changed me totally and the way I look at the world. The sight of brave firefighters going up the stairs as wounded and panicking people came down to safety is one that I would never forget. I watched the movie 9/11 some time in 2002 and was heartbroken. The movie examines the bravery and sacrifice of the firefighters from one of the fire stations in Manhattan and the way they gave themselves to save the lives of others. I have never been able to digest the magnitude of their brave sacrifice and commitment. And to think that some politicians in Washington almost totally dismissed the even braver commitment of living first responders by refusing to give them adequate medical care, one wonders where humanity is sometimes headed.

In any case, politicians never kept America safe. Former Vice-President Cheney certainly never did with his enhanced interrogation techniques that has put the country’s soldiers in more harm than ever before. (And he did manage to get an arrest warrant for himself in Nigeria albeit for a different reason). Ten years after the fatal negligence that caused the death of over 5,000 people, we would do well to work for a safer world than celebrate the mediocrity of vain chest-thumping. Mark Twain has one appropriate quote about keeping quiet when speaking would have an adverse effect on the perception of one’s wisdom. I’ll also add “a sense of shame”, and “humanity”.

I’m pissed. Can you tell?

Welcome New Contributors

This month is the third September in the life span of this blog and thus the beginning of another season. As from this month therefore and in the coming days, you will be reading from new writers who are joining us from different parts of the world to share thoughts, ideas, opinions and creativity, as regular and irregular contributors.

There will be Emmanuel Iduma who co-edits a literary magazine Saraba, and Hilal Ergul a fellow FLTA from 2009 who now lives and travels around Turkey. Benson Eluma will also be joining us from the University of Ibadan, and a few more folks I’m still trying to convince that it always helps to complain and reflect publicly than grumble in private all day long. Where are those in Mexico, Kuwait, Uganda, Birmingham, Tahrir, Casablanca, Benghazi?

I look forward to more contributors and a series of new experiences and viewpoints from around the world. Give them some love.

A World Without Borders

Well, for a start, let us all agree that this fabled world doesn’t exist anywhere except perhaps on the internet. A Nigerian on a three-hour stopover at Heathrow will not be allowed into London for fear, perhaps, that he will suddenly ditch his American visa and decide to live in the fruitful fields of England forever, eating clover, beans and mangel-wurzels. A Turkish citizen hoping to visit any European capital will usually need a shengen visa or should just not make an effort. It all makes sense, doesn’t it? A few years ago, all anyone needed to visit Kenya from any part of Africa was a passport. Then after 1998 embassy bombings by a few radical thugs, everyone needed a visa, including neighbouring Ugandans.

The concept of national borders is fascinating, and mostly annoying. Take for example the problem of driving from Lagos to Dakar, a stretch that will be similar to one from Minneapolis to St. Louis just as soon as we can ignore the useless police checkpoints along the borders of the “countries” along the way. Once upon a time, West Africa was just west Africa, with contiguous autonomous kingdoms and no fake borders manned by corrupt men in khaki uniforms. Now, the Yorubas are not just Yorubas. They are Nigerians, Beninoise and Togolese, and this doesn’t prevent them from the harassment of faux obstacles placed on a road leading from one part of the continent to the other.

The last time we had the Ambassador of Kenya to the United States on campus, I asked him why it is taking African politicians so long to realize that artificial obstacles at national borders created more problem than it solved, he gave a platitude. And then I switched on the news and heard that even the United States is now considering building a wall – yes you heard right – a wall between itself and Mexico, this time to prevent the problem of illegal migration. Yet, all migrations are legal, as we all know, as the basis of human civilization, and change. Is there a point to my rant on this post? I doubt it, but I’ve spent some time pondering the idea of human migration for a while now. I think my most recent motivation is the discovery of an interesting fact that humans – no matter where they find themselves – would always prefer migration at some point in their life, than staying in the same spot. Yes, that applies to Americans too.

On Dangerous Revolutionaries

There is a curious pattern of dangerous behaviour now coming out of the Libyan revolt against the government of Moamar Gaddafi. In this frightening CNN report, rebel soldiers looking to exact revenge on the dying regime have found a perfect victim demographic: black sub-saharan African (in this case Nigerians) who are in the country en route to Spain or Italy for a better life.

There is enough to debate about the presence of Nigerian citizens residing legally or illegally in a war-torn country (and the Nigerian government has a duty to protect them as well, to the best of its ability), but a so-called revolution aimed at liberating a country from tyranny should not turn itself into one – at least not so soon – at the expense of foreigners. The fact that they are targeted for their skin colours – as the report states – makes it even more alarming, and worrisome.

In post-Apatheid South Africa a few years ago, a similar thing happened where foreigners (also mostly Nigerians) became a target of xenophobic behaviour by citizens looking for scapegoats in a poor economy. It didn’t matter that just years before then, most of those other African countries had provided asylum for the freedom fighters running away from the oppressive Apatheid government. A similarly disgusting thing happened right after the Egyptian revolution succeeded, when Gael Ghonim – the acclaimed IT mastermind of the whole movement tweeted this. (At least he didn’t have a gun to someone’s head.)

A pattern has emerged here that should be roundly condemned.

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