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

Tuesday with Daddy President

It’s not everyday that one gets the chance to be under the same roof with a President. But on Wednesday, March 17, 2009, yours truly, together with 22 other media leaders ‘invaded’ the Osu slave Castle to meet with President Mills.

I set out all pumped up in a well-engineered brazier, a well-pruned well-primed Afro-punk hairdo, a pair of wicked high-heeled shoes and hanging earrings to complete my bold look.With the frightening December General Elections experiences as a backdrop, we were on a mission to touch on issues of national importance in relation to the media landscape.

Personally, I was excited because it marked the first meeting with my new Daddy the President; TV doesn’t count because it’s only technological magic. (He is your Daddy too. Remember?) But the visit was a fiasco. You know what they say about first experiences!

It was also my first time in the residential quarters of the slave castle. I felt haunted. I saw dead people. I smelt dead people. I felt the presence of dead people. Castles are horrible places. They constitute the belly of the beast – the very beast of our nation’s history. They mark the trauma of where we’ve been as a people. With even a dull sixth sense, you should be able to feel evil hovering over such strange places.

Castles and Forts are sites of murder and unsolved (never-to-be-solved) mysteries. They are also places of numerous imperialist, immoralist, beastly misbehaviours of rape that resulted in numerous unwanted pregnancies. Blacks in the Diaspora appear to have a more alert sense of this weird history because they carry the essential DNA of their ancestors, our kith and kin, who were snatched from our shores and used, misused and abused to build other people’s civilization while our rot in a developmental funk. But, I digress!

So while we waited in the slave master’s (Governor’s) quarters, now the President’s crib, trying hard to manage my ‘deer-in-the-headlight’ look and posture, wondering about Ghana’s past, present and future, and about the Golden Jubilee Palace – whether it will ever be used by President Mills or will be left to be burgled and rot (and as the spectacle of choice for motorists), Madam Zita was ushered in. No greetings with media delegation; nothing! That was my first red flag. I hoisted it. I should have run for my life at that point. But, I sat still, my brain running wild with questions, thoughts and ideas. I just sat there.

Then, my President, JEA Mills walked in. Very civil. He took turns to shake hands with each of us. I dropped the flag. After a few formalities by the Chief of Staff (was that him?), Ransford T and Bright B, just when I expected our agenda to be placed before the President of the land, he cut in to speak. My flag was still down.

Then, I began to follow the flow. President Mills had his own agenda for the scheduled meeting with senior media leaders. The President granted us audience just so he can preside to use media leaders as a megaphone to deliver an indirect message to his political rivals. He wasn’t there to listen to us. We could even have been lemon trees in well-tailored business suits and my Afro punk hairdo! His utterances were nothing but opposition politics all the way. He therefore delivered a message for the political opposition and imaginary rival, not to journalists, the proverbial ‘watchdogs’ of society and agenda setters.

Despite the apparent weaknesses of the journalism profession in Ghana, one cannot deny the fact that we have made substantial contributions to the development of our democracy. That is the reason we have a seat at the table, albeit at times, just to gather the crumbs from the masters’ tables.

A few minutes into the President’s tirade, I re-hoisted my imaginary red flag. Danger! I felt like a fish out of water. I felt like a complete idiot. Maybe I am an idiot to have set out to meet my President. As a member of the wrong audience for his message, I couldn’t help but translate it to mean, "Yaa Doris, get out of my presence, you despicable little woman." As soon as he was done with his ‘kasantwi’ invective, he insisted on taking some really odd photos for the sake of political posterity albums and before I could say hello Daddy, he had de-coupled from us. Daddy was gone! Just like that! We had no chance to present our agenda. We could not even ask him any questions.His approach was snobbish. It was a top-down outburst. It was debris flying out through words, from the thick privileged cloud down into the maddening inconsequential crowd.

It was a hawkish shrill-wagging teeth-showing who-the-cup-fits-let-him/her-wear-it moment. While listening, if you felt like a piece of crap, so be it; deal with it!Yet, we were supposed to be some of the leading media leaders in the country. What are the far-reaching implications of this incident for the future relationship of the media with the Mills administration? I don’t know.

What I know for sure is that what happened on March 17 was a poor sell by the President; a below pass grade performance. That incident was a lost opportunity for him to reach out and warm out to the media, the proverbial "Fourth Estate of the Realm". Instead of engaging us, he used the opportunity as a bully pulpit to settle political scores.Clearly, my President was on heat. From what? More than one full week after the fiasco media visitation, the true target of his message is still being deconstructed by his side-mouths – Ayariga-Anyidoho and disparate Company. The jury is not yet out; still struggling to make sense of the outburst.

For a developing country that, for all intent and purposes, is damn ‘broke’ in the midst of a global economic crunch, should we spend days of energy and brain power to second-guess what the President meant and who his message was directed at? Why did I have to struggle out of my home in the warm waterless armpit of Accra, with a widely open-mind open-heart and genuine professional excitement, just to engage in guess-work to glean meaning from a message?

But more especially, what is the communication strategy of President Mills? Is he even on message? If yes, what message? Or, he’s just floating in a grumpy reactionary mode? His communication efforts appear clogged like Ghana’s choked gutters, and crowded like heaps of trash by the roadside. Why does he have all these communication operatives hanging on, sending mixed messages, contradicting and stepping over each other, chirping chirping chirping?

Lousy communication management was one of President Kufuor’s (sorry, former President Kufuor’s) undoing. Don’t ever forget that, President Mills. Everything communicates. Everything!

OK, so the President tells us that he is tough, not timid. Now, what? Dear reader, if you’ve ever wondered where my edginess comes from, now you now. President Mills is my Daddy! I can’t afford to be timid. Periodic edginess and ranting is in my blood. I just can’t help myself.

So Daddy Professor President, the next time you feel very edgy, let me know. I’ll hurt all your ‘enemies’ with my wicked high-heeled shoes and Afro-punk hair-do. I promise on my honour, to be faithful and loyal to my one and only President JEA Mills. So help me God!

dorisdartey@yahoo.com