The Ecomeny Slips into National Comedy

I slip a lot – slips of tongue, that is! Carpenters slip. Comedians slip. Labourers slip. Lawyers slip. Medical Doctors slip. Painters slip. Pastors slip. Plumbers slip. Politicians slip. Presidents slip. Professors slip. Secretaries slip. Tailors/Seamstresses slip. Teachers slip too. So, we all slip. Big deal! But when a Professor who is also a President slips on an issue that is biting the world where it matters the most, then it raises matters onto the level of high-octane slippage.

I’m a lover of a good-old ding-dong humour because life is short and we should not take ourselves too seriously. So when a comical audio clip of professorial presidential character which also doubles up as remix for mobile phone ring-tones came along recently, I couldn’t resist hugging it. I’ve saved it on my phone and periodically, when I’m low, I play-back to listen to my Daddy the President as he fumbled and slipped over the not-so-complex word, economy. In his juicy presidential mouth, the word degenerated into ecomeny, repeatedly. Why, I don’t know.

I confess that I do listen to the clip with warm laughter-tears dripping from my eyes, throat-suckling, cackling and chuckling, with laughter seeping out my very pores. Result? Every time I listen to the tape, I end up with rib-cake slum-dunk laughter. President Mills is jamming funny.

Yet, I’ve no malice whatsoever toward my President. But admittedly, the recording of his slip of tongue and his unstoppable comedy of errors when delivering his 1st State of the Nation Address are so hilarious that it should constitute a crime if we are criticized for laughing at the raw jokes. My children and grandchildren laugh at me endlessly over my numerous slips and fumbles. So why can’t I laugh at my President?

Yet, a pious school of thought that is making the rounds maintains that laughing at the ‘ecomeny’ slip of President Mills is disrespectful. The reason given is that our African culture demands that we revere our leaders. Revere, as in worship? Why? That school of thought implies that the President is King. But the leader of a democracy is not and should not be perceived as King of the land. He is only a leader because the people said so through the combined-force of beautiful, crooked and ugly ink-stained thumbs. No big deal!

Such a school of thought also implies that we should be robbed of our right to laughter. When humour and one’s right to laugh freely is taken away, freedom is lost forever. We might be damned broke, struggling to make ends meet, wondering how to work the magic of living on meagre means. But we should never lose our right to laugh – even at our President. Laughter is decisively therapeutic in a period of global economic crunch that is decisively on our doorstep.

The most ridiculous school of thought is that those who consider the President’s ecomeny slip as hilarious are definitely anti-government and anti-NDC. In our highly polemic Third World African politics, by extrapolation, this also translates to being anti-country and anti-Ghana. Disturbingly, nowadays, one is either considered NPP or NDC, with no room whatsoever for a middle-ground. Even laughter appears to have political colouring. This is sickening, beyond measure.

Such an attitude leaves people (including me), who genuinely cannot find any compelling reason(s) to align to either the NPP or NDC, hanging precariously in the balance. Undoubtedly, such people are in love with Ghana, which is the most important entity in this quagmire.

In such a time, the President deserves appreciation for providing perfect and rich bloopers for laughter. He is in clear competition with KSM as far as stand-up comedy goes. So long as we can laugh about something, we would be unlikely to cry over it. The global economic downturn is a serious crying matter but flipping it into President Mills’ funny ecomeny bloopers soften the harsh hit.

And oh, he has had other not-so-proud and not-so-glorious fumbling moments in his four month presidency. Take the case of his swearing in into office at the Independence Square on January 7. I held my breath, on the wings of serious prayers, when he nearly tripped over his ceremonial Kente. On the sheer strength of my positive goodwill, he did not fall. Just imagine ….. if he had tripped …… and fallen …flat on his face ….. on that day……. Eh!! Tofiakwa!

Then came the actual swearing in, when he made so many errors in repeating the oath of office! That should have qualified him for a national award. But over time, we have shelved that matter away. But the ecomeny slippage must stay for the fun of it. It appears that our President has verbal bloopers down to the level of an art form. Like me!

Here are a few reasons to laugh at President Mills’ fumbles over the ‘ecomeny’ being resilient. His slips take part of the painful crunch out of the global credit crunch. His bloopers are raw comic relief to lighten the burden of the tension of the global economic downturn. His slips put such painful matters into the safe realm of humour.

But most especially, his slips humanize him. Here is a man who is touted to be ‘a whole professor’, most learned, most knowledgeable; all-knowing, all-that, and more. In our part of the world, title holders are held up highly to the clouds and are the equivalence of our super-humans. In our neo-colonialist country where the elite, our new colonial masters, wield so much power and clamour to be decorated with titles even when they don’t deserve it and by that, raise their shoulders so high expecting the lowly to worship them.

In our society, Pastors, the so-called men-of-God also wield combine-titles of Doctor-Doctor Apostle-Bishop Prophet-Messiah Arch-Bishop – and pretend that with such, they become better qualified to ferry sinners across to heaven, right into the cushy bosom of God.

The most humorous exploitation of our country’s unquestioning love for titles and for senseless adoration is occurring everyday at the grass-roots. For very good effect, all sorts of political and quasi-political characters in the nooks and cronies of the land wield titles of Honourable. With near stupid adoration, individuals who have ever paraded the offices of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies throughout this land are forever referred to by the titles Honourable. Sheepishly, they encourage the use of the title long long after their terms of office have expired. Some die with the titles, taking them far into the grave. This is abusive.

Here is free advice to the Anyidoho-Ayariga Disparate Communications Company Inc. (AADCC). Once a year, organize a light-hearted event that is not a press conference, but a fun time at which the President simply chats and jokes about issues. Specifically, he should select his own bloopers and slippages committed during the year under review and make light of them.

He should even pick on errors committed by Anyidoho/Ayariga and his ministers and ridicule them openly. Of course, they should invite the media. On the invitation list, there should be no victimization by visibly eliminating names of ‘enemy’ journalists. Ghana is for all of us. We are all pro-Ghana even if some are decisively knuckle-headed crack-head rock-bottom anti-NDC and anti-NPP folks. But that’s OK too. That’s the beauty of democracy.

dorisdartey@yahoo.com; dorisdartey.blogspot.com