You bloggers are pushing it

Jan 27, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

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The world of communication has changed so drastically that just about anything can be said to another person thousands of miles away in the twinkling of an eye. Hardly anyone writes letters these days. Gone are the days when people sent their children to buy two sheets of writing paper and an envelope, then sit to write letters and by way of the post office, send them to people either in the same country or overseas.
These days I can scarcely imagine a man in Georgetown writing a letter to his cousin in Buxton and people do not write letters to relatives and friends overseas unless they are certain that someone traveling overseas would deliver the missive. Everything is done electronically these days. Guyana is well and truly in the age of the computer.
There are e-mail and chat sites and so many other means of communication. I sit and I write a message to someone, wherever that person is, and in a flash the person receives my message and replies. Things have even reached the stage where one is not tied to an office for this to happen. The mobile phone is now more than a phone.
I am slow in the world of communication and it is only the other day that I succeeded in acquiring e-mail on the go. This is indeed remarkable because once there is a cell site in the vicinity I can talk to whom I want in any part of the world.
But these things allow for offshoots such as blog sites and Facebook and Hi5 and WAYN and the list goes on. It is the blog that has caught my eye. A few weeks ago someone pointed me to what must be the most popular blog site because of the focus and the smart comments on things comical.
I did remember someone talking about this blog that was critical of reporters and their foibles but it was not until someone told me that I had made the blog that I started really checking. A blog is what it is, a notebook for someone’s thoughts. The difference is that the notebook is shared with thousands as soon as an entry is made.
The first time I made the blog must have been when there was all this talk about me going to work at the Chronicle. According to the blog, I was supposed to turn on at the Chronicle on January 2, last year. Time flies so it could have very well been January 2 this year, although I doubt it.
Then I made the blog by way of a statement that I was receiving a hefty paycheck from the state for written contributions favourable of the government. Again, I had no problem. I am not like my colleague Freddie Kissoon who took a British journalist to task for his blog comparing Guyana with some other Caribbean country. I suppose I am more like the reporter on MSNBC who asked a reporter whether she had facts to support something that she was tempted to peddle and the woman said that she got it on the blog. The man replied, “Get an authentic source.”
However, I have noted that while the blog should be harmless chatter it has caused some harm with the vitriol it spews. There were two instances when I said to myself, if only those nameless and faceless people on the blog sites could put themselves in other people’s shoes.
In one case there was a scathing remark about the sexual proclivities of a certain female reporter who has now left these shores. Her paramour has not left her but I am certain that he believed some of what he read.
The gossip is humorous and sometimes I find it enjoyable. Things were going fine until the people in the state media came up with their own blog. I made that one too.  Someone decided that I like young girls and this should not be good for a man of 60. The only plus here is that the person who posted that is complimenting me on my virility which is something that he cannot do for some in his midst, and perhaps even for himself.
There were people who called me to fuss and I smirked. After all I am Adam, the sex king at 60, which is not unusual for a man of my age. I intend to last until I am about 80 or 90.
But there was one blog posting that did a number on a married woman. The filth sickened me and I realized that people who pose as reporters are not really what they think they are. There is no checking and of course it is a blog, so why check. The problem is that there are people who are affected.
Talk about me. I don’t care. Leave people in stable relationships alone. I would hate to start a blog and talk about all I know about some people, including the Media man whose wife beat him because he was fooling around with a girl at his office and he is now forced to take his wife along wherever he goes.
There is stigma and discrimination against people who are HIV positive so I will not talk about an afflicted person though if I decide to start a blog it would make for some interesting reading.
I say, let us have fun. Let us slaughter Kwame and anyone in public life. Hammer Robert Persaud, Robert Corbin and all the Roberts, even Robert the parrot. Hammer Bharrat; lambaste Donald and Vincent and Aubrey Norton.
Criticise Glenn Lall and Anand Persaud and C.N. Sharma and Tony Vieira. Leave women alone if the gab is about their sex life. It just is not nice and certainly not civilised.

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