BC Pires

The lines sep­a­rat­ing T&T Guardian columns have been get­ting a bit like pal­ings in back­yards re­cent­ly. My pard­ner Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar has been slic­ing-and-dic­ing our own erst­while Guardian col­league, the for­mer jour­nal­ist and cur­rent Min­is­ter of (Ex­treme­ly Lim­it­ed and Even More Grudg­ing­ly Re­leased) In­for­ma­tion, Max­ie Cuffie; in­deed, the old Dou­ble-R had the old Max­ie C in his crosshairs even be­fore he took up his cur­rent port­fo­lio: like a WWI sniper, our lit­tle Ray of Light has, for a cou­ple o' years, swept the po­lit­i­cal trench­es across No Man's Land and, if Max­ie/Fritz on­ly lift­ed his head above the sand­bags, he got it be­tween the eyes.

But, even if these par­tic­u­lar pro­tag­o­nists knew one an­oth­er per­son­al­ly pre­vi­ous­ly–an amal­gam of al­lit­er­a­tion Kei­th Smith would have adored–a news­pa­per colum­nist tak­ing any­thing from pot­shots to painstak­ing aim at a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter is at least un­der­stand­able and, of­ten, the ac­tu­al job de­scrip­tion; the feud­ing be­tween oth­er Guardian colum­nists has been a lit­tle hard­er to jus­ti­fy.

For months, Kevin Baldeosingh, an­oth­er pard­ner (at least of mine) has been in­volved in the news­pa­per equiv­a­lent of pelt­ing stone, as if she were a heav­i­ly-bear­ing Julie tree, at the Guardian's "moth­er­ing work­er," Pro­fes­sor Gabrielle Ho­sein. Per­haps it is part of what the old Kev may see as his du­ty in what he con­sid­ers the on­go­ing good fight against what he seems to think is the threat to the world or­der of fem­i­nism but, last year, on my own off­hand rec­ol­lec­tion, he wrote at least two columns aimed di­rect­ly at the good pro­fes­sor.

Un­less I mis­re­mem­ber–and, ad­mit­ted­ly, my mem­o­ry is less trust­wor­thy than a three-day-old chick­en roti left on the car dash­board–Kevin al­so at­tacked at least one oth­er fe­male Guardian con­trib­u­tor over what he saw as a fem­i­nist mis­state­ment.

I know the good Gab is ca­pa­ble of swift re­sponse, since she made one to me, when I chal­lenged a state­ment she made on Face­book, but I don't think she re­spond­ed to Kevin in her col­umn; which cuts her from this par­tic­u­lar pack; which I re­al­ly hope won't turn out to be all knaves or jok­ers, since I've now dealt a cou­ple o' cards face-down to my­self.

It is good if news­pa­per colum­nists dis­agree: it may help stoke in­tel­li­gent pub­lic dis­course; when colum­nists brawl, though, the great­est so­cial val­ue is that of en­ter­tain­ment. (I speak from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence, as the most light­weight, and most re­luc­tant, of sev­er­al con­tenders who went up–or found them­selves brought up–against the late Wayne Brown for the ti­tle of Heavy­weight Colum­nist. The old Kev, Wayne's first prot�g� and the most lit­er­al pugilist of all Wayne's chal­lengers, was the on­ly one to re­ceive more than a fig­u­ra­tive knock­out.)

Last Sun­day, Guardian colum­nist and UWI an­thro­pol­o­gist, Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an, whom I know on­ly from his news­pa­per writ­ing, got in­to the ring. In his fort­night­ly col­umn, young Dy­lan flew out of his cor­ner, fists swing­ing like the teenaged Mike Tyson, lay­ing down such a bar­rage of blows that the on­ly con­ceiv­able re­sponse for Kevin would be to hit the mat; and stay there. (The on­ly con­so­la­tion, for read­ers, of the Guardian's re­cent, in­ex­plic­a­ble fir­ing of the now-ex-fort­night­ly colum­nist, Col­in Robin­son, might be Dy­lan's col­umn go­ing week­ly.)

"Maybe I'm a prude, but is it okay for a na­tion­al news­pa­per to pub­lish a col­umn whose lan­guage, im­agery and con­tent is den­i­grat­ing to­wards women?" were Dy­lan's first words; the next 900 con­tin­ued in sim­i­lar vein, but at­tacked the ar­gu­ment, not the ar­guer.

If I know Kevin, his col­umn yes­ter­day (which ap­peared af­ter I wrote this), would have re­tal­i­at­ed, if on­ly be­cause, on the face of their col­umn pix, Dy­lan ap­pears to have more nat­u­ral­ly curly hair.

And it is a cer­tain­ty, not a like­li­hood, that the gap be­tween Max­ie and Ray­mond will widen, and, though it must be ei­ther ben­e­fi­cial or bur­den­some to the coun­try, that nei­ther will be able to per­suade the oth­er that he may be mis­tak­en (as­sum­ing, per­haps er­ro­neous­ly, that ei­ther may even lis­ten to the oth­er).

But what in­trigues me, as some­one in the game him­self (even if there may be no dif­fer­ence, in this par­tic­u­lar match, be­tween sit­ting on the bench and on the fence), is that all the play­ers, in their at­tacks on one an­oth­er, have re­vealed what seems to me to be their own Achilles' Heel.

Old peo­ple say that, when you point your fin­ger at some­one, three point back at you. Ray­mond, the colum­nist I am my­self most un­hap­py to miss read­ing, when he at­tacks Max­ie, of­ten re­veals a "per­son­al" tell that, not just gives, but throws his hand away; even if he holds a roy­al flush. Max­ie, who may hon­est­ly be­lieve the busi­ness of the gov­ern­ment is para­mount, in dis­miss­ing valid ques­tions, shows the thin end of the to­tal­i­tar­i­an PNM wedge any­one with a lit­tle sense or any mem­o­ry at all wor­ries about; Kevin, in his de­ter­mi­na­tion to save our species from fem­i­nism (or, if a male, not a fe­male, is in­volved, the de­mon so­cial­ism, which he ap­pears to think is some kind of fra­ter­nal evil twin of fem­i­nism) dis­plays an at­ti­tude to women that Hugh Hefn­er might find anachro­nis­tic; and even the cav­al­ry of Dy­lan rides in on­ly to shoot him­self in the foot with his own open­ing sal­vo: be­cause some­one � or even every­one � finds some­thing some­one else says of­fen­sive is not suf­fi­cient rea­son to si­lence them.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly when sim­ple good taste trumps po­ten­tial bad law, and it is as easy to dis­miss such ar­gu­ments as Kevin rais­es by ob­serv­ing that he treats as a fem­i­nist any woman with an IQ he would pre­fer to see in a G-string.

BC Pires was dipped in the Riv­er Styx but was clear­ly held him by his head. Email your be­rat­ing of Dr David Bratt to him at bc@bcpires.com