Dear Comrades;
Attached below is an very insulting article that desplays proof why we
actually need the Tribunal because if indeed the Press Ombudsman did its
work none of this language would have made it to the public domain.
Regards, ST
The ANC loses its mind
Jeremy Gordin
04 August 2010
Jeremy Gordin asks what it is with the ruling party and the media
Believe me, I have been trying to avoid it, but every now and then one has
to deal with a serious subject and I regret that now is one of those trying
times.
But, before we journey together on a mind-numbing foray, let me share two
small matters with you - to cheer you up before we start.
The first is that if my mother had lived past the year of 2002, she would
have been a hundred years old today (4 August). Yet she did all sorts of
life-shortening things such as smoking, reading books, trying to behave
rationally, being patient with her children, being married to my father,
bearing me, and so on.
Thus the following e-mail from my biological brother Joel in Israel: "If
Micky Gordin had lived, she would have been 100 years old today. When I told
this to Yossi, my green grocer, he retorted: ‘If my mother had balls, she
would have been my father'. It sounds funnier in Hebrew. Nevertheless, I
thought I would mention it."
Secondly, one of the things the ANC and various other bozos have been
complaining about in connection with the media is that it is sometimes
filled with sensationalist balderdash.
Not so, says the media. Nonetheless, I found this yesterday morning in *The
Times* (the daily one): "US pop star Lady Gaga ... said: ‘I have this weird
thing that if I sleep with someone they're going to take my creativity
through my vagina'."
Well, I don't know about that. I have, however, heard it said that many
women lose their brains when they give birth. But that sounded to me like
the usual male chauvinist manure put out by ... males - who are deeply
jealous because they can't give birth. (Sigmund Freud had it the wrong way
round.)
But, speaking of which - and here we have, alas, to move on to the weighty
issue of press freedom - it has come to my attention that there are some
people (mainly Seffrican males, interestingly) who have clearly lost their
brains recently - and, it would seem, their balls as well.
Now, although there exists a Yiddish saying (*Ven der putz shteht, ligt der
sechel in drerd*) which, freely and politely translated, goes like this -
"When the penis pops up, the brain retracts" - these people to whom I am
referring have *not* lost their brains (and balls) via their sexual
appendages or orifices *a la* Lady Gaga.
No. They have lost them, apparently, simply by being members of the ANC and
organizations related thereto.
But - be warned - you can also lose your brain and *cojones* simply as a
result of being stupid (as well as a little ugly on the side). For example,
I know a leading legal academic - no names, no litigation - who is
definitely not an ANC member yet wishes that the media had but one head so
that he could lop it off. He thinks that we (by which I mean the media,
though I no longer carry a press card) are a bunch of useless tossers who
can't get anything right.
But I digress. Let us return to the large body of men ("ugh gross," my
daughter would say) whose brains have apparently vacated their cerebella.
The reason we know this has happened to them - that they are bereft of their
senses, especially the common one - is that they support, one way or
another, (1) the Protection of Information Bill and (2) a statutory Media
Appeals Tribunal (MAT).
To cut a long story short, the proposed bill will, through chronic
over-classification, by claiming safeguards that are symbolic rather than
practical, by adopting a bulldozer approach to criminalizing unauthorised
disclosure, and by failing to "see" that unauthorised disclosure in the
public interest should be protected - the proposed bill would basically act
as protection for all those pursuing corruption of all sorts.
Stanley Uys (see
here<http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=190442&sn=Detail>)
has pretty much said all there is to be said on the subject. He quoted Dave
Steward, executive director of the FW de Klerk Foundation: "'Any government
information can be classified if disclosure would be harmful to the
‘national interest'. Classification embraces almost anything. One example,
says Steward, is that potentially ‘problematical' parastatals like Eskom
(electricity) and SAA (airline) ‘can be removed from public scrutiny'."
Then - and again I digress slightly - to get a handle on the much-vaunted
tribunal, I had to read an ANC discussion document written (for want of a
better word) for the ANC's National General Council, September 20 - 24 2010,
Durban.
Titled "Media Transformation, Ownership and Diversity", this thick end of a
very blunt instrument could kill you with boredom (see
here<http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71654?oid=189982&sn=Detail>
).
Jeez, talk about the *putz* losing its spring ... this document is a
dick-shrinker *extraordinaire*. I am a bloody hero, I tell you, to have read
it. The ANC must be paying danger pay to the okes who write this
mind-numbing balderdash, really.
Who actually wrote this *circa* 9 000-word piece of smelly neo-Marxist poo?
("... Journalists are [not] unique human beings with unique journalistic
genes and genealogy. They are impacted upon by the environment within which
they operate, by the circumstances that spawn them.") Steyn Speed? Vusi
Mona? Jeremy Cronin? David Bullard? Ronald S Roberts? Essop Pahad? Blade
Nzimande? Joel Netshitenzhe? Panjo the tiger? Chris Vick? Musa Xulu?
Plutarch? Thabo Mbeki?
Here's an example of the dockie's intellectual level and prose style: "But
there is another school of thought that this self-regulation mechanism [the
media's self-control, the ombudsman, etc] ... only serves the interest of
the media as opposed to serving the interest [sic] of the broader South
African society."
The ANC has suddenly discovered the interests of the "broader" society.
Or this: "Our objectives therefore are to vigorously communicate the ANC's
outlook and values (developmental state, collective rights, values of caring
and sharing community, solidarity, ubuntu, non-sexism, working together)
versus the current mainstream media's ideological outlook (neo-liberalism, a
weak and passive state, and over-emphasis on individual rights, market
fundamentalism, etc)."
Well, blow me down with a feather! It turns out that the perfidious media
have been playing by the rules of capitalism - the very capitalism that has
helped all the big wigs in the ANC become filthy rich and corrupt. Just who
do the media think they are? Why are they also running after the "market"
and people's "individual rights"?
This stuff is the most unbelievable cant. Even I am close to speechless.
Or try this: "Cursory scan on [sic] the print media reveals an astonishing
degree of dishonesty, lack of professional integrity and lack of
independence. Editorials distancing the paper from these acts and apologies
which are never given due prominence and mostly which has [sic] to be forced
through the press ombudsman are not sufficient in dealing with this ill
[sic]."
What? One of the only people I know of who has actually been "dishonest" is
that ANC bozo from the Cape who is about to be made ambassador to the US
(and, ja, the guys who took the money - obviously).
What's a lack of "professional integrity"? Is it the general-secretary of
the SA Communist Party, which has a fine and proud record, driving around in
some obscenely expensive luxury vehicle and staying at the Mt Nelson hotel
while many in his bailiwick do not even have food to eat?
Then the aforementioned Blade Nzimande, who has pushed off to Russia with
the president for the moment, also had a go recently (see
here<http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71654?oid=190477&sn=Detail>)
and for some reason went on a rave about the Independent group.
He wrote: "Communists didn't make these sacrifices so that a handful of
capitalist press barons could decide what is ‘news' and what isn't.
Communist journalists didn't sacrifice their lives so that a foreign media
company under an Irishman could dominate the so-called Independent Newspaper
Group which, in turn, dominates the English-language print media in our
country."
Couple of things here. The foreign media company, owned by the Irishman,
does not "dominate" the Independent group; it owns it. Second, according to
the ANC's own tiresome document (see above), the Independent does not
dominate the English-language print media; some other group does - I think
it's Caxton.
Third, it was the beloved Madiba who sealed the deal with Sir Anthony
O'Reilly, earning himself - Madiba did - a little holiday in the Bahamas
into the bargain. Fourth, watch the xenophobia there, Blade; we don't
approve of it here.
Of course Nzimande does get *some of it* correct. He continues: "This Irish
controlling company, by the way, is in financial trouble, but its South
African newspapers are making money. So what are they doing? They are
sucking millions of rands out of our local newspapers to prop up their
overseas interests. And the result? Experienced journalists are being
retrenched. Poorly paid junior journalists are expected to write on issues
they do not understand. All journalists are being threatened with
retrenchment if they don't report the ‘right' kind of news."
That's partially correct. And of course, Blade, they should never have
retrenched an experienced old fart such as I; we all know that.
But you know what, Blade? That's how capitalism - which is the system we
live in and which pays for grants for the poor and Fifa soccer tournaments
and your fancy car and which we all have to deal with - that's how it works.
If the bozos in charge want to retrench people, that's what they'll do. In
some sense, they'll pay for it later - or the company will - in terms of the
poor quality newspapers they put out. Look at *The Sunday Independent* these
days. But hey, they were told to cut costs. It's called business. No
piss-willy tribunal is going to change that.
And by the way, the sentence "All journalists are being threatened with
retrenchment if they don't report the ‘right' kind of news" is outright
rubbish. The guys in charge of most of the media companies (the business
people, I mean, the bean counters, not the editors) wouldn't know a news
story if it bit them on their collective fat arse.
Enough now. I'm growing as long-winded as the ANC. The irony of all this is
that most of the newspapers and groups in this country are the poodles - as
Arik Sharon would have said - of the present regime. They think the ANC pees
*eau de cologne*.
Sure, Mondli Makhanya at the *Sunday Times* went after Jacob Zuma before he
was president - but Makhanya was soon told to turn down the volume and then
to go off and write the most expensive weekly column in the country.
There are also a few other brave exceptions who do not behave like poodles:
the *Mail&Guardian* still runs some brave investigations,
*Politicsweb*carries some fine stuff,
*Business Day* has some acute commentary.
But for the most part ...
So why have the ANC and all who sail in her tossed away their brains and
balls? I'm not entirely certain yet.
But I think every one's shit-scared of being discovered doing things that
people truly committed to the "developmental state, collective rights,
values of caring and sharing community, solidarity, ubuntu, non-sexism, and
working together" should *not* be doing.
Besides, there are far more serious issues requiring attention just now than
the media - so one engenders a little hysteria about the media and no one
focuses on what they ought to be focusing. And we all go to hell, as Ted
Hughes's Crow once remarked.
*Click
**here*<http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71674>
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