[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat a barefaced bunch of hypocrites we are! I say so, not so much because there may be one among us not already familiar with the indisputable fact but more as an inconvenient reminder — akin to forcing a grossly underdressed girlfriend to look in the mirror. It’s all around us; our constant companion. We go to bed with Hypocrisy. We fornicate with Hypocrisy. Wake up with Hypocrisy — then proceed to survey everyone else through the eyes of plastic saints. Hypocrisy resides in our churches, in our parliament, in our schools. Hypocrisy warehouses in our hearts.
We are not alone afflicted: on Tuesday, even as parts of America and the rest of the world mourned the shooting deaths of fourteen students and three of their teachers at a Florida high school, Republicans in Congress refused to discuss gun control in preference to pornography. But let the endorsers of pussy-grabbers deal with their own peculiar proclivities; I am more concerned with the local fallout from choosing to say and do only what on a particular day will help us make it through the night.
Not that I think there is even the slightest chance we will any day soon learn for our own sake to call a spade a spade. Not when we remain self-convinced there’s profit in pretending it’s something else. If indeed there ever was reason to believe God made us in his own image, clearly that likeness has long been retooled to the point that it reminds of little that might be considered godly. We lie, we cheat, we steal, we abuse one another in countless animalistic ways — women and children in particular — and then, with the connivance of God’s agents, we cover it all up under sheep’s clothing cheaply perfumed. We remade ourselves a long time ago into a steaming scatological metaphor; by any measure, amoral.
One of my favorite authors warned back in the 70s that a nation that forms important decisions based on premises altogether askew from any reality is a nation inevitably on its way to the cuckoo’s nest. This week, even as more motes threatened to blind us to every truth, we invented yet another reason to jump on our favorite scapegoat: our presumed leaders of tomorrow who, better than the cleanest mirror ever could, reflect what we’ve finally become.
Only last Thursday it came to light that two children, one three years old, the other five, had been living for the last eight months with their unemployed and homeless father in a canoe anchored not far from the government’s Castries waterfront offices. (There’s much more to this particular tale of woe than has been revealed, so careful why you reach for your Kleenex . . . ) Those among us who looked forward to some kind of official apology for the plight of the two kids the day after the TV story broke received instead the usual self-serving guff from the egregiously misnamed Human Services Department. I, for one, continued to hope for good news this week. Instead, the nation heard from the government’s equally ill-named Ministry of Justice — but on nothing related to the boat kids, IMPACS or the horrors of Bordelais. What the ostensibly God-fearing people of this Christian nation heard, and immediately hooked into, was a statement from the Home Affairs Minister, Senator Hermangild Francis.
I realize Mr. Francis — who still has not learned when to say ‘no comment’ to a reporter’s video camera — may simply have responded to a question from a 9-5, barely recovered from the weekend, Monday morning reporter with nothing else on his mind but a headline however blah. Chances are the reporter had not caught last Thursday’s DBS News or, if indeed he caught it, the reported sad story of the two kids in a canoe had made no lasting impact on him. Abject poverty and concomitant deprivation of the worst kind have for some time been normal life for the majority in simply beautiful Saint Lucia. Stale news — not current. As commonplace and undeserving of special comment as, say, a flooded William Peter Boulevard after a ten-minute downpour. As déjà vu as daylight rape at the entrance to the Castries cathedral.
Senator Francis’ comment related to a video (yes, still another), strangely entitled Tsunami Lawn Party. It featured several young students, this time allegedly from Sir Arthur Lewis Community College. Before someone sent me the officially declared “lewd” recording, the usual holier-than-thou stone throwers had left the impression via Newsspin that more of our leaders of tomorrow had descended still further down the depths of debauchery. Invisible holy fingers were pointed at unknown parents, at the police and at other ostensibly derelict guardians of the nation’s soul. At least this time the complaints did not center on “Looshan Girls Gone Wild!”
It emerged that the videotape that had discombobulated so many perennial virgins — and moved SALCC personnel to deny all knowledge of its production and purpose — was actually an advertisement for an outdoor party on April 6, obviously shot at an earlier open-air event that had made no waves whatsoever. Indeed there was nothing in the clip I saw not in keeping with our best “Wukkin’ Up Is We Kolcha” traditions. The participants were obviously quite young; some appeared under fifteen. But there was also a sprinkling of adult males and females, all in casual clothes, some showing off their twerking skills, all of them performing extremely tame versions of what has for years been acceptable public behavior, especially during carnival — described by the media and our Ministry of Tourism as our most important cultural showcase, in which government after government annually invests millions of dollars that might’ve supplied breakfasts for homeless kids island-wide.
As I’ve noted elsewhere before, our folk songs and dances have always been sex-oriented. The better known, still practiced ones, at any rate. There hardly is a “cultural performance” that does not include painful to watch on-stage collisions of male-female genitalia. Conceivably, their costumes include well-padded crotches!
But seriously, is it possible the kids in the latest “lewd” video were merely imitating their elders, our so-called cultural icons, with nothing more in mind than clean fun? Is it just possible the soi-disant judges of kid behavior are actually the dirty-minded ones? Do we truly believe the 12-year-olds in the latest video were “simulating sex?” And if so, where did they first see the real thing? I suspect most of the dirt some of us see in what young people do resides in our own heads. We know we are the guilty one, not the kids who depend on us to make them the better leaders we pretend to want, even as we condone the behavior of leaders who consider themselves above the law and accountable only to their bankers.
I do not pretend to be what I’m not when I ask how many of our alleged exemplars in parliament live by the Christian doctrines they publicly espouse. How many are married with children? How many with children by mothers never married? It’s a small town we’re living in. How often do female students giggle like Japanese girls while sharing our leaders’ secrets?
It wasn’t so long ago when young people, questioned about the people they most admired, would mention, say, the late justice Suzie d’Auvergne, former senator now Judge Lorraine Williams, and one or two male citizens. Today you are more likely to hear them say how much they want to be like Rihanna, “Kimmy,” Sean Paul, Vybz Kartel, Paris Hilton and other female stars as famous for their songs as for their “leaked” sex tapes. Many haven’t a clue who was Bob Marley. Or Roddy Walcott. When I held up pictorial blow-ups of our MPs at a particular school two or three years ago the students could not identify 90 percent of them. Imagine misidentifying the still to be honored Grand Anse Beach martyr Kenneth John as Philip J. Pierre! (You, too, are probably trying hard to recall the uncrowned hero, dear reader, but don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ve got lots of company!)
Then there are our veneer-stripping hit songs, with accompanying videos: I Never Knock It Uhn, But I Sock It Arready . . . I For King (a play on the MP’s name) . . . Six-Thirty . . . Bend Down . . . Split In De Middle. Following, a few lines from the last cited local blockbuster: Split in de middle (heh)/Make de twanche jiggle (hey)/Climb pon a table (heh)/My girl I know you able (heh) . . .
Lest I be purposefully misconstrued, I hasten to point out that wolves pontificating in sheep clothes on the radio has obviously proved otiose, maybe because the mindset that created our more pressing problems has little chance of solving them. But encouraging young people by example to respect themselves and others — and by appropriately rewarding their efforts — we just might steer a few in the right direction. I certainly am not advocating any restrictions on free speech, neither on our young people’s creativity. Nor am I about to advocate that we leave to God the mess we created and daily contribute to.
There is nothing to gain from laying on our young folk standards of morality that even in their relatively primitive time were extreme. Recommending an attitude to sex that was always hypocritical can only result in more disaster. And lord knows we’re already up to our necks in it. We might make a useful fresh start by agreeing to agree on the things that make us different from dogs and their bitches! And I refer not to regular canines!
