Pissin’ In Our Own Damn Eyes

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n his well known idiosyncratic take-no prisoners fashion, Rick Wayne has consistently—some might say, unnecessarily—reminded regular viewers of TALK that he is “an equal opportunity ass kicker.” He repeated himself on Thursday evening, while endorsing Timothy Poleon’s reaction to a conveniently angry Newsspin caller. Yes, angry, because Wayne had dared to criticize publicly not only the principal of St Mary’s College but also (gasp! gasp! pass me the smelling salts!) the sitting archbishop.

To be fair, what Wayne said about the two individuals must’ve shocked even the most seasoned viewers of his weekly show. Which is precisely what Wayne meant to do last Thursday evening, and has been doing for close two decades. His purpose, he has acknowledged countless times, is to shock people out of their comfortable but destructive complacency. However, for one particular caller to last Friday’s Newsspin Wayne had taken his “venomous” criticism of the revered college principal and the holy of holies Archbishop Rojas at least a mile too far—for the caller more tangible evidence that TALK’s host had finally lost it, “gone mad.” Which observation caused the knowing Timothy Poleon to chuckle wickedly. “Nah,” said Newsspin’s thrice-bitten host, “Rick is not mad; he’s just different!”

Of course, it should by now be no secret that the more controversy he can create around a particular topic, the happier will be. And so it should’ve been no surprise when he returned during this week’s TALK to the recent Saint Mary’s College burglary and the school’s principal. As regrettable as was the break-in, Wayne insisted, it should not have dominated the news when on the same evening of the burglary a young man had been fatally shot at a Pigeon Point beach party by person or persons unknown. In Dennery a woman had accepted the offer of a ride by a seeming Good Samaritan who quickly turned into the devil himself once she had boarded. Having raped her, he then proceeded to chop her up with a cutlass, threw her bleeding profusely out of his vehicle, then sped off. There were other incidents of the same kind, albeit unreported, the weekend St Mary’s was “desecrated.”

But presumably because of his status, or his was the loudest squeak, it was the school principal who got the lion’s share of the oil, by which I refer to news coverage. That, folks, is what really ticked off Rick Wayne. As he said on his show, “both the well-positioned principal and the archbishop concentrated on the feathers, not on the dying bird.” For Wayne, the real issue was the obvious breakdown of the society, the long, tacitly encouraged silence of the nation’s institutions that had contributed to it, the refusal of their leaders to call a spade a spade. It was that resounding silence, which to his mind, amounted to complicity. And that tacit endorsement is what had inspired his shocking tirade. I suspect he has only just begun. Let others choke on their silence, even as their sons are cutlasses or shot like cattle at an abattoir, even as their daughters are savagely ravaged without resolution. I think we can also count on at least one particular social commentator (!!) not to forever hold his peace. Thank goodness. Adios, until next time . . .