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High noon at the Doodoos corral
BARBARA GLOUDON
Friday, February 18, 2011
B Gloudon
IT IS NOW 1 PM (Wednesday). The Manatt/Dudus Commission of Enquiry has adjourned to fight another day. Things are slowly returning to the usual routine. The Great Show is in hiatus till tomorrow morning. "Bun fire" is not over.
Manatt and Dudus (Phelps and Phillips don't seem to have made the cut) continue to be the talk of the town. People who at the beginning laughed at the mere mention of the word Enquiry, now give it their full attention. What they miss in the daytime, they catch up on at night when the re-run goes all the way past midnight to very early morning.
It used to be that it was only sports, especially in the days of good old West Indies cricket, which could make us forgo nocturnal activities to focus attention on a television set, but it is hard to resist Manatt and Dudus or Doodoo, as Mr KD Knight mis-called it. Or did he? Was he playing fool fi ketch wise? With Mr Knight, you never know...One thing for sure, however, is that between him and Mr Frank Phipps, we are witnessing the clash of the Legal Dobermen. DOBERMAN is one, so two must be DOBERMEN, even more so when it is showdown at the Doodoos corral.
On Wednesday, the big guns came out (metaphorically speaking, of course), as story began to come up to bump over who said what, who did or didn't do dat. After the mystery of the Great Extradition, will there be a book, a movie, a video? Who will play who? We can work that out later but for now, there is more to come, more sleep to lose, until the $40-million enquiry comes to a halt.
By then, (we hope) the chairman might even have mastered the art of finding the relevant documents ("What page? What page?" Rustle-rustle-rustle.) By then, legal Doberpersons (females are beginning to have their moment in the pit too) will have taken the battle to another level.
Like a good cricket match or a record-breaking Olympic moment, all traffic will stop when Attorney General Ms Dorothy Lightbourne regains her voice and finally makes her appearance. It will rise to even higher heights (we hope) when PM Golding comes in as a tail-ender, to close the innings. Whatta preckeh! Returns from ticket sales could go a long way to help Audley level the deficit vibes...even if he believes that the Enquiry is a distraction organised by Opponents!
Indicative of the hold which the Enquiry has on us, was the focus of last weekend's Sunday Observer. Writers gave maximum attention to the legal luminaries who dominated the run of play. Mark Wignall reviewed KD's performance like a blend of a horror flick and National Geographic on safari. He wrote "Knight is, one moment, a panther in the tall grass waiting to pounce...in another moment, Christopher Lee in a horror flick, deathly, but irresistibly drawn to making love before he consumes the lifeblood of the damsel in the darkness of her chamber." People - are you ready?
Claude Robinson went for a cricket metaphor. He wrote "Considering the wicket prepared by Leys, both Mr Golding and Miss Lightbourne may find it difficult to play shots freely, faced with swing and variation in pace from KD Knight..." HOWZZAT!
Jimmy Moss-Solomon...he went back to pickney days. Using the circus as an allegory, he invoked Barnum and Bailey, the biggest names in American circus business. Jimmy brought the Ringmaster and the clowns under the Big Top. He called on fairy Tinkerbell. He went into space for Star Wars. He eased-on-down the Yellow Brick Road seeking the Wizard of Oz "with Dorothy hoping that two clicks of her magical shoes will take her back to Kansas". He placed Rapunzel in the Enquiry Room and couldn't resist asking when we will see Darth Vader and the Pumpkin Eater. (What was Jimmy sipping?)
Tamara Scott-Williams avoided the fantasy metaphors and went right to the nitty-gritty. "I fear that the public's interest and the talents of these lawyers in these proceedings are being wasted, for, as Émil George said about the media's response to the Commission, "They can express the views they wish. It doesn't really matter". She believes however, that "the decoding of the Prime Minister's confession is a painful wasteful and expensive exercise... but "it makes for great television".
MANY WOULD AGREE about "wasteful and expensive", but since last week, the mood on the street has changed. The chairman might yet discover it's not so hard to find the page after all, and public views really do matter. People are beginning to pay closer attention. Who can resist Reality TV! From Big Man to Lickle Man, people are asking their own questions. They've moved past questioning if we're getting value for the multiple-dollar investment in an enquiry, the outcome of which nobody seems quite sure. Cynicism is gradually being replaced by genuine curiosity. Despite the paper-shuffling, people know that we're looking at some serious history being made.
A wishy-washy conclusion wil not be taken lightly, after people have given up much sleep to pick sense out of nonsense. What had been hidden from the wise and foolish. Things will never be the same again. It may well be that the only winners in this game will be the lawyers who are having the time of their lives playing TV stars. Now, if only they'd let out Doodoos to play the star bwoy role.
DEMON DRIVERS: Colleague Jean Lowrie Chin has survived a traffic crash and is recuperating from injuries, thank Heavens. Things are not as bad as they could have been. Jean is also lucky to have had the co-operation of the driver of the other vehicle who accepted responsibility. She is blessed.
I was not so lucky. After being nearly wiped out in a painful encounter with another vehicle on the hill from Royal Flat up to Mandeville in 2005, the driver, from whose recklessness I still have scars, promptly disappeared. I've yet to find him. My experience, I'm told, is not unusual.
I GOT MAIL this week from "Michael Duberson" who is in despair about the worsening situation on our roads. He believes that "the carnage will continue until the police are given direct order to go get the lunatics". He identifies the demon drivers as those "high-beam idiots" who impair the vision of other motorists all night long on the highway. Michael also believes that "we can reduce accidents, fatalities and insurance premiums by 70 per cent. Just take the slow driver and the high-beam driver off the road," he says, "The slow driver brings out the danger in the fast driver."
I would add, "The greatest menace to life on the roads are the overtakers, the idiots who still believe that "ah nuh nutten" as they race to beat a long line of traffic, right into the face of injury and death. Oonu stop it!
gloudonb@yahoo.com
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1EPZZzS6l
BARBARA GLOUDON
Friday, February 18, 2011
B Gloudon
IT IS NOW 1 PM (Wednesday). The Manatt/Dudus Commission of Enquiry has adjourned to fight another day. Things are slowly returning to the usual routine. The Great Show is in hiatus till tomorrow morning. "Bun fire" is not over.
Manatt and Dudus (Phelps and Phillips don't seem to have made the cut) continue to be the talk of the town. People who at the beginning laughed at the mere mention of the word Enquiry, now give it their full attention. What they miss in the daytime, they catch up on at night when the re-run goes all the way past midnight to very early morning.
It used to be that it was only sports, especially in the days of good old West Indies cricket, which could make us forgo nocturnal activities to focus attention on a television set, but it is hard to resist Manatt and Dudus or Doodoo, as Mr KD Knight mis-called it. Or did he? Was he playing fool fi ketch wise? With Mr Knight, you never know...One thing for sure, however, is that between him and Mr Frank Phipps, we are witnessing the clash of the Legal Dobermen. DOBERMAN is one, so two must be DOBERMEN, even more so when it is showdown at the Doodoos corral.
On Wednesday, the big guns came out (metaphorically speaking, of course), as story began to come up to bump over who said what, who did or didn't do dat. After the mystery of the Great Extradition, will there be a book, a movie, a video? Who will play who? We can work that out later but for now, there is more to come, more sleep to lose, until the $40-million enquiry comes to a halt.
By then, (we hope) the chairman might even have mastered the art of finding the relevant documents ("What page? What page?" Rustle-rustle-rustle.) By then, legal Doberpersons (females are beginning to have their moment in the pit too) will have taken the battle to another level.
Like a good cricket match or a record-breaking Olympic moment, all traffic will stop when Attorney General Ms Dorothy Lightbourne regains her voice and finally makes her appearance. It will rise to even higher heights (we hope) when PM Golding comes in as a tail-ender, to close the innings. Whatta preckeh! Returns from ticket sales could go a long way to help Audley level the deficit vibes...even if he believes that the Enquiry is a distraction organised by Opponents!
Indicative of the hold which the Enquiry has on us, was the focus of last weekend's Sunday Observer. Writers gave maximum attention to the legal luminaries who dominated the run of play. Mark Wignall reviewed KD's performance like a blend of a horror flick and National Geographic on safari. He wrote "Knight is, one moment, a panther in the tall grass waiting to pounce...in another moment, Christopher Lee in a horror flick, deathly, but irresistibly drawn to making love before he consumes the lifeblood of the damsel in the darkness of her chamber." People - are you ready?
Claude Robinson went for a cricket metaphor. He wrote "Considering the wicket prepared by Leys, both Mr Golding and Miss Lightbourne may find it difficult to play shots freely, faced with swing and variation in pace from KD Knight..." HOWZZAT!
Jimmy Moss-Solomon...he went back to pickney days. Using the circus as an allegory, he invoked Barnum and Bailey, the biggest names in American circus business. Jimmy brought the Ringmaster and the clowns under the Big Top. He called on fairy Tinkerbell. He went into space for Star Wars. He eased-on-down the Yellow Brick Road seeking the Wizard of Oz "with Dorothy hoping that two clicks of her magical shoes will take her back to Kansas". He placed Rapunzel in the Enquiry Room and couldn't resist asking when we will see Darth Vader and the Pumpkin Eater. (What was Jimmy sipping?)
Tamara Scott-Williams avoided the fantasy metaphors and went right to the nitty-gritty. "I fear that the public's interest and the talents of these lawyers in these proceedings are being wasted, for, as Émil George said about the media's response to the Commission, "They can express the views they wish. It doesn't really matter". She believes however, that "the decoding of the Prime Minister's confession is a painful wasteful and expensive exercise... but "it makes for great television".
MANY WOULD AGREE about "wasteful and expensive", but since last week, the mood on the street has changed. The chairman might yet discover it's not so hard to find the page after all, and public views really do matter. People are beginning to pay closer attention. Who can resist Reality TV! From Big Man to Lickle Man, people are asking their own questions. They've moved past questioning if we're getting value for the multiple-dollar investment in an enquiry, the outcome of which nobody seems quite sure. Cynicism is gradually being replaced by genuine curiosity. Despite the paper-shuffling, people know that we're looking at some serious history being made.
A wishy-washy conclusion wil not be taken lightly, after people have given up much sleep to pick sense out of nonsense. What had been hidden from the wise and foolish. Things will never be the same again. It may well be that the only winners in this game will be the lawyers who are having the time of their lives playing TV stars. Now, if only they'd let out Doodoos to play the star bwoy role.
DEMON DRIVERS: Colleague Jean Lowrie Chin has survived a traffic crash and is recuperating from injuries, thank Heavens. Things are not as bad as they could have been. Jean is also lucky to have had the co-operation of the driver of the other vehicle who accepted responsibility. She is blessed.
I was not so lucky. After being nearly wiped out in a painful encounter with another vehicle on the hill from Royal Flat up to Mandeville in 2005, the driver, from whose recklessness I still have scars, promptly disappeared. I've yet to find him. My experience, I'm told, is not unusual.
I GOT MAIL this week from "Michael Duberson" who is in despair about the worsening situation on our roads. He believes that "the carnage will continue until the police are given direct order to go get the lunatics". He identifies the demon drivers as those "high-beam idiots" who impair the vision of other motorists all night long on the highway. Michael also believes that "we can reduce accidents, fatalities and insurance premiums by 70 per cent. Just take the slow driver and the high-beam driver off the road," he says, "The slow driver brings out the danger in the fast driver."
I would add, "The greatest menace to life on the roads are the overtakers, the idiots who still believe that "ah nuh nutten" as they race to beat a long line of traffic, right into the face of injury and death. Oonu stop it!
gloudonb@yahoo.com
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1EPZZzS6l
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