Currently Playing: Old Automatic Garbage aka O@G-NowWhy2.
What would you have me talk about?
I have options.
About the 60% price hikes in toll fares effective next month, and the debatable notion that the Government is sharing the burden via subsidising an additional 50 cents for each vehicle? About Malaysian drivers and their lack of driving etiquettes? About the appointment of South Korean Ban Ki Moon as the new Secretary General of the UN and the changes he wants to bring to the body? About the dearth of options available to the Bush administration on the Iraq war that there’s even been casual talk of playing the rule of natural selection? About the idiotic Hamas-Fatah power tussle in Palestine that cannot come at a worser time? About the Ipswich "Ripper" murders?
And if I chose to discuss about one or more, what real good would it do? The media plays storyteller, and we the audience sit nice safe and snug in our secure zones, transfixed with the events unfolding around us, awed at the stories spread out on papers which may or may not be true. The media knows how susceptible we are to believing what our fellow flawed human beings have to offer in newspapers simply because of the general assumption that news reported in print comes with the guarantee that what comes out is the real deal.
The biggest scruple I have about writing about these things that matter in the news today is because of the detachment I have with what has been presented to me–the hopelessness that ensues after reading in earnest. Take the Lebanon conflict back in July for example. We were made out to be emotionless specatators watching from the sidelines with mild interest or bemused disinterest. We might as well have been a bored crowd at a low-key tennis match, watching the ball bounce across the court to and fro, left to right, forward and back again as Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fires. The Qana massacre was even worse: the scenes changed and the papers banked in on the horror and tragedies and loss of lives, and we shifted towards disbelief, shock, outrage, empathy.
Do you see how well our emotions are controlled by how things are made known to us? Where was the world before Qana? Why did our hearts go out to the victims only after the focus shifted onto this tiny village where scores of children were killed on that fateful morning of July 30th? And again, as we scrambled about to know all that there is to know about the Middle East situation, this was exactly the reaction the media expected to bank on: for us to display a show of humanity. This was exactly the script they had written out for us to recite and to play out on stage. While I certainly am not against such tactics if it’s for the better good, the overall exessive dramatisation of the conflict made me sick. These are real people with real lives, and to provoke public interest by playing up sob stories laid out to the world for morbid fascination is downright sadistic. Some people feel better about themselves after reading about the misfortunes that befall others because the first thing that comes to mind is "glad it’s not me". Everything lies in the style or approach of writing. Do you really think that the Western medias who published the blasphemous insulting Danish caricatures of what they deem is the Holy Prophet SAW are that stupid so as not to foresee the violent backlashes they would receive from the Muslim world in the following months? That was already calculated and planned, the trap was set, and we Muslims fell right into it. Freedom of media, my arse.
Sometimes, I lapse into periods where I can’t care less about anything at all.
Maybe I should talk about the steady revival of Liverpool in the Premier League and take on the I-told-you-so stance to all who made snide comments about the Reds at the beginning of this season. Or maybe I can talk about how much I’m looking forward to the Liverpool-Barcelona "match of the giants" in February. I could do some assessments of both teams, analyse the threats Ronaldinho would pose (especially after that Werder Bremen match) and maybe suggest a possible defence line-up to Rafa.
But then, I’d just be trying to fool myself into ignorance. The English poet Thomas Gray once said: "Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise."
My response to Mr. Gray is that as much as a little ignorance helps shelve off the general depressing feeling one gets from world news today, it never pays not to know. To be the "katak di bawah tempurung" for own emotional comfort is a selfish excuse. Live in the now, be in the know.
And care about what you know.
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Ya Allah. I have no idea what I’m talking about or what I’m getting at.
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Insya Allah, tonight with the girls should help lift some spirits.
Enough said here.
