It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myth surrounding it.” This gospel by the legendary Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger came back to me last Wednesday as I listened to a local pundit at work on the radio.
“When Rick was Rick,” I heard him say, “he wrote about matters that affected the country. Now he is the foremost promoter of Allen Chastanet and the United Workers Party.” A non sequitur, to be sure. Besides, I suspect the preacher’s tongue was on the recalled occasion buried deep in his cheek!
Nevertheless, a word or two on John Pilger: As far back as when I lived in the UK I had been attracted to his columns in the Daily Mirror. When I relocated to the States I acquired a few of his books, including one about the unreported horrors of the Vietnam war. More than anything I’d previously read, it convinced me that what I wanted to devote my life to was the author’s brand of literary journalism. (For media practitioners who may perchance require a definition: Literary journalism is a form of nonfiction that combines factual reporting with some of the narrative techniques and stylistic strategies traditionally associated with fiction. Which may explain why some works that read like quality fiction are nothing but the truth!) In 1973 Tom Wolfe published The New Journalism and took the craft to another level.
The book contains samples of work by Wolfe, Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, Truman Capote and Norman Mailer, among others. The New Journalism became my New Testament. Once I’d laid hands on it, the “who, what, where, when” reverse triangle style of reporting that leaves no room for nuance and atmosphere and mood was never enough for me. The best examples of the form are to be found in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, as well as the UK’s more respected journals. I strongly recommend The New Journalism to local media practitioners. However, be warned that literary journalism by whatever name demands more than the 15-word features so popular among Facebook’s literati!
So now, back to Claudius Francis (who else?) and his not necessarily idiosyncratic—but on the recalled occasion most decidedly calculated—name-calling. The obvious truth is I am today as I’ve always been. That is to say, consistent, predictable jaundiced reactions be damned. Rick has never been other than Rick and knows not how to be otherwise. His over-ambitious detractors, on the other hand, have always been imitative of food-chasing chameleons. As this species of lizard changes its color in the name of survival, so do my detractors, depending on their filtered perception of how my truth could affect their position at the favor trough!
As far back as the mid-70s, when I started working here as a journalist in the Voice editor’s chair, the frontliners of the main political parties had sought to attach labels to me. I was either the best journalist since Murray Kempton or the worst since, well . . . better not name names, lest I drive over-sensitive stridulating crickets into paroxysms of paranoia.
The truth in what I’ve written since returning to this Rock of Sages has seldom been determined on the basis of presented verifiable facts. More often than not my words are read through filters red and yellow. So, on any given day I am at once the nation’s favorite son or, in the telling of one local sage, “the enemy within.”
Among my earliest powerhouse detractors—and that was even before I’d published a word in the Voice—was George Odlum who imagined his own publication, the Crusader, the model to be emulated. He resented the smallest suggestion of a contrary opinion. From his ostensibly apolitical platforms he accused the Voice publisher of importing “a muscleman to protect and defend him” against the Crusader’s literary arsenal.
By the way he spat out the word “muscleman” George left no doubt that he considered bodybuilding a perversion practiced only by the depraved and intellectually deprived. It didn’t help that the imported white American lady I was about to replace had for some time been a bosom buddy. Some at the Voice went so far as to declare her an Odlum mole—sufficiently astute to know better than to fire back in defense of the source that sustained her, not to mention the politics of the paper of which she was the editor. Ironically, not long after I took over from her, George started referring to my published contributions as “American sensationalism.”
Ever the drama whore, he chose one evening to elaborate from his platform outside then Columbus Square. “You know what it means to titillate?” he asked his audience, at the time ever ready to eat anything out his hand. “It means to “shatweeyah!” (Kwéyòl for “to tickle.”)
There is an inescapable irony attached to Claudius’ remembrance of “when Rick was Rick,” which coincided with that period when I was generally considered the major weapon in the Labour Party’s elections arsenal; when some went so far as to rename me “the scourge of Compton.” The references may be found in the letter columns of the day’s Voice and in the Crusader. The Herald, too. And Dennis D’Abreo’s One Caribbean. As for Claudius’ salted to taste recollection that when “Rick was Rick he wrote about matters affecting the country,” I can only speculate on what he may have alluded to.
Rochamel? Frenwell? The Helenites Affair? The Pusher in the House? The scandalous transfer of ownership of multi-million-dollar government property by Earl Huntley to a New York friend? Grynberg? IMPACS? Somehow I doubt it, even though it is undeniable the cited features were all about “matters affecting the country.”
I cannot help wondering why some of the folks (and here I certainly do not include Claudius) insist on recommending to me the stories I should be covering in the nation’s best interests—especially when my unsolicited advisors take great pride in their local status as er, media practitioners, senior analysts without juniors. Surely they should be picking up wherever they perceive the slack.
I need not remind readers about my work that had earned me my “scourge of John Compton” award. Some of my articles of the period had actually resulted in ministerial resignations. Then there were my pieces about the nation’s elected lawmakers, all soi-disant free-speech warriors, that more than once landed me in court.
I wish also to remind my piconging longtime friend that way before him there was the United Workers Party’s Henry Giraudy, who served not only as his party’s chairman (as did Claudius) but also as President of the Saint Lucia Senate (as did Claudius). Before I left the Voice to become John Compton’s first personal assistant (surprise surprise!) Giraudy conveniently declared me the opposing party’s “PRO par excellence” (as did Claudius!) Evidently there really is nothing new under the sun. Nor, for that matter, under the stars!
