After having a chuckle at Daniel Chokolingo's full-page ad in last Friday's Guardian ("Ramcharitar's Hoax"), I thought about it, and a few good reasons to write some more about the issue occurred. (Before we go any further, my usual disclaimer when dealing with the Mirror: I read the ad once, and am going on memory and winging a response. I will be as careful about the facts as Daniel Chokolingo was. It's only fair). Some of the reasons to write more include:
First: This is the publisher of (or somebody responsible for) the Mirror complaining that he and his dear departed dad are being maligned by a journalistic hoax.Apart from the obvious question–does he know what a "hoax" is?–think of the karmic implications, even if you're not a Hindu.
The Mirror's founder's progeny is being disturbed by a newspaper article based on facts he thinks flimsy and inadequate, and he can't do anything about it. Now he knows how two generations of Bomb and Mirror readers felt and feel.
Second: Read No 1 again and think of the many people the Mirror and Bomb have done this to who have/had no chance to respond, and have/had reputations irretrievably destroyed. Given that, it would be journalistically irresponsible, even morally negligent, to not poke holes in young Choko's rant.
Third: Young Choko is so enraged as to pay thousands (to purchase an ad) to rant about minutiae.But the stridency indicates that other issues are at play than a concern with "facts." Young Choko seems to be more concerned with legacy and unresolved Freudian issues–for a man with 16-plus children, a cigar was clearly not just a cigar, and he couldn't resist his cigar.
But what facts? The insistence that reading the judgment somehow modifies the verdict and vindicates Choko. It doesn't.And incidentally, where Choko lost, APT Ambard won at the Privy Council decades before, in 1936. That judgment is worth reading, along with many other things I could list for young Choko, which I'm sure he'll ignore. So...
But the legacy issue: that Choko and his newspapers had an impact on Trini journalism and society is undeniable. That they did some good by pushing boundaries is also undeniable. But that said impact was not, in sum, a good thing, and poisoned the public sphere, is equally true. And here is the reason for young Choko's barking: he feels Choko pere was a press pioneer, not a poisoner, and deserves unqualified respect.
Actually he wasn't, and at best he's the kind of man you only respect long after he's dead (and it's not been long enough yet).But young Choko, evidently, is obsessed with that respectability, or more to the point, inheriting it.
Also implicated here is the corollary to Choko's legacy, which applies to the country and profession: that it's OK to be semi-literate, ignorant, and hostile when people with a little book learnin' say anything you disagree with or which upsets you.Scepticism per se isn't objectionable if it promotes the attitude that educated people often know much less than they think, and should be reminded of mistakes when they make them.
But like everything else here, that potentially healthy attitude has metastasised to a degree where education, beyond a certificate you can wave to get a job you can't do, is an object of contempt once it upsets your delusions.
One of the consequences of that now-pervasive attitude is the notion of "authenticity"; that the only true, real history of Choko, or anything else, is available from the "grassroots"; those who knew him, or worked with him, and more to the point from no one else but his son, Daniel.
This seems to be what led to the hostile reaction to the column of a few weeks ago: that Daniel wasn't consulted and if he were, it would have led to a conclusion other than that Choko was at best an antihero. To add a little more truth is that: Choko was not as large as his son remembers.He was brought back to life as Bhadase's agitator after he left/was pushed from the media in disgrace.
Were it not for Bhadase's premature death in 1971, that's what Choko would have remained.A relative of mine remembered Choko's palpable anxiety when Bhadase summoned him. He called Bhadase "Chief" (like everyone else), and all but knelt down, because Bhadase was the original gangsta, the Don Dada. Rare was the man who crossed him and walked away without a limp, if they walked at all.
Daniel probably doesn't (want to) know this and if told would probably would insist on sworn statements from all witnesses, and still disbelieve. But it's a fact, and I've got more from relatives who worked at the Bomb.
An example: one night in 1981 (a Tuesday), the late Irwin Sandy called my parents to ask if they knew where my uncle was–Sandy worked at the Bomb, and Choko and his gang had just decamped after sabotaging the press. My uncle was the chief press operator and circulation manager.This might all seem petty but if you're trying to get to Choko's history, the high road is blocked off by his offspring.
And how often is it that we get the opportunity to do to the trashy tabloid what every rational person dreams of doing–making them read something rational, factual and grammatical, to the end, as Mr Daniel Chokolingo is now undoubtedly, laboriously, doing.