Don’t judge Freddie on a 39-year-old incident

Oct 25, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
There have been several learned responses in all of the media on an unflattering allegation relating to your controversial daily columnist, Mr. Freddie Kissoon.
I do not think Mr. Kissoon should be judged or evaluated on youthful indiscretions he made as a teenager some 39 years ago. Every youngster made errors growing up. For God’s sake, who has not stolen genips, mangoes, byres (dungs), cherries, guava, etc., as a child?
And who was not involved in some kind of a prank? I remember as a little boy, dozens of youngsters used to go at the ‘back dam’ after a game of cricket swimming in the canals on the Port Mourant Sugar Estate and picking and sucking cane. Everyone was involved in some kind of wrong doing as youngsters.
That was fun growing up; of course, when caught, you get a sound trashing and Mr. Kissoon has paid a heavy price for his indiscretions. There should be no more punishment.
I worked at a library as an assistant at three universities – CCNY, NYU Grad School, CUNY Grad Center – when I was a student during the late 1970s and early 1980s. I caught several people stealing books. The police were not called in and they were not prosecuted.
Although they felt embarrassed no stigma was attached to their name. They apologised and were forgiven and they continued with normal borrowing privileges, although they were checked more thoroughly whenever they were leaving the library.
Freddie made an error in his response to Hemraj Muniram. He should have expressed remorse and simply stated it was a youthful mistake.
Although removing unchecked books from a library is a serious offence, I do not think the public should stigmatize Freddie. I think Freddie, inherently, is a good person and a patriotic Guyanese, but is misguided in his criticism of (attacks on) others. Nevertheless, people should not be in glee that Freddie has been ‘exposed’.
Freddie should be judged by his newspaper writings (columns and letters) some of which are quite good and some of which are written in haste (not easy to write a daily column) and lacking in scholarship and objectivity. At times, Freddie’s interpretation of concepts and the writings of theorists, thinkers, philosophers, prominent people, etc., are inaccurate. Freddie also, at times, incorrectly misinterprets what others are writing in letters and columns in the newspapers. He often misconstrues other peoples’ writings or distorts their meanings with the goal of lending support to his biased arguments. Academics consider this type of behaviour as worse than appropriating library books.
Emile Mervin, among others, penned an excellent response to the controversy. We should accept his recommendation and move on. As Mervin advised, we should not focus on personalities but on issues. Freddie has a chance to start afresh after so many correspondences on the allegation relating to him.
May I suggest that he returns to the kind of excellent, objective, fair analyses on important issues which made his reputation as a writer?
Vishnu Bisram

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Don’t judge Freddie on a 39-year-old incident

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