Den­zil Mo­hammed

The video show­ing a lec­ture by HE Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis at an In­ter­na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Diplo­ma­cy (ICD) sym­po­sium in Gene­va two months ago re­ceived more than 2,000 com­ments on YouTube, was viewed near­ly 122,000 times and got 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple in an up­roar. The peo­ple called for blood and her ex­cel­len­cy will soon be with­out the pre­fix. Yet the lec­ture was de­liv­ered to an au­di­ence of around 17 peo­ple, in­clud­ing the cam­era­man. So which is more em­bar­rass­ing: The lec­ture or our re­ac­tion to it?

This was per­haps the first time we'd seen a T&T am­bas­sador in ac­tion. And it showed. Where­as the oth­er sym­po­sium videos av­er­aged 76 views each, the video of our am­bas­sador hit 121,000-plus by Thurs­day. This one video ac­counts for more than a third of the to­tal ICD video views out of its 703 clips.

The lit­tle speech was aug­ment­ed to un­nec­es­sar­i­ly epic pro­por­tions. But if Mrs Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis' video em­bar­rass­es T&T, it is far more like­ly that in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences will see our thou­sands of YouTube com­ments and Face­book post­ings about it first: "Bitch just shut up!!! smh y u had­da do we (T&T) so" "wdmc of wrong wid this woman...! she an she drunk moth­er c---..stew­pzs...she is nuh a c--- na...she is some­thing else spe­cial..!"

"if you put a don­key through uni­ver­si­ty all you get is a j------ with a de­gree" "i stop at 3 mins in­to this s---. not me and this f---ery this hour" (From YouTube.) Now I am no diplo­mat but I've worked for Swiss diplo­mats. I've re­searched, writ­ten and heard many speech­es. I had to cor­rect a for­mer Swiss Pres­i­dent's gram­mar for a Har­vard speech and cringed when a Fed­er­al Coun­cil­lor in­sist­ed on us­ing Bruce Spring­steen lyrics.

So let's get some per­spec­tive here. Speech­es by diplo­mats aren't al­ways ex­em­plary in elo­cu­tion or con­tent. Every coun­try has dozens of diplo­mats, some hun­dreds. They are of every ilk and tem­pera­ment. I've seen diplo­mats carouse crazi­ly, talk in­ti­mate­ly and be­have bitchi­ly.

Not every event at which a diplo­mat speaks is life-al­ter­ing with far-reach­ing im­pli­ca­tions for in­dus­try or coun­try. Some are just ca­su­al lec­tures out dozens of oth­ers in front of a mea­gre au­di­ence of tired par­tic­i­pants at a mun­dane con­fer­ence. Sound fa­mil­iar? We al­ways knew Mrs Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis was ut­ter­ly un­qual­i­fied for pub­lic of­fice by ex­pe­ri­ence and dis­po­si­tion. In an ear­ly po­lit­i­cal ap­pear­ance she told row­dy au­di­ence mem­bers, "Okay, we heard you so shut up now." But let's be clear.

In her lec­ture, Mrs Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis made her points and il­lus­trat­ed them how­ev­er gross­ly her in­ex­pe­ri­ence showed in her lack of dis­cre­tion. Her por­ten­tous­ness was trumped on­ly by her naivet&ea­cute;. Yet the YouTube com­ment from an ac­tu­al con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pant showed no one but the 1.3 mil­lion of us found it ut­ter­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate or mis­placed.

Mrs Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis did not em­bar­rass T&T by re­veal­ing "cor­rup­tion" in her po­lit­i­cal ap­point­ment. If any­thing, she showed con­ceit giv­en that this part of her speech was the length­i­est. And in a speech about cul­ture, was it em­bar­rass­ing to men­tion win­ing? If she said she was an ex­pert in bal­let, would our re­ac­tion have been dif­fer­ent?

Mrs Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis spoke like a Tri­ni. She spoke the way she was taught to speak. Lis­ten to our singers, our lead­ers, Jack Warn­er-was she any worse? Speak too "prop­er­ly" in T&T and you're ei­ther "fak­ing" an ac­cent or plain "gay." Does any­one re­al­ly in­sist that we speak bet­ter? Is it be­cause she's a woman?

Mrs Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis bun­gled words I've heard even news­pa­per ed­i­tors mis­pro­nounce: Eu-row-pean, Black-beary and bih-kih-knee. Tri­nis al­so have the in­cred­i­ble abil­i­ty to hy­per-gram­mati­cise and over­do: had was, am­bas­sadress, "Dr" Shaquille O'Neal... In oth­er words, we're crit­i­cis­ing the very things we've fos­tered. What was em­bar­rass­ing was not on­ly what Mrs Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said or how she said it. What was al­so em­bar­rass­ing was T&T it­self. In her 30 min­utes of shame, we saw our­selves: our cor­rupt po­lit­i­cal ecosys­tem, our small­ness on the glob­al stage and our own feel­ings of in­fe­ri­or­i­ty about our lan­guage and cul­ture.

One news­pa­per ed­i­to­r­i­al point­ed out that "diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion is a se­ri­ous mat­ter for the peo­ple" of T&T and that Mrs Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis clear­ly "de­val­ues" our in­ter­na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion. What we seem to have missed was that no one in the world was talk­ing about this two-month-old speech ex­cept us.

If bet­ter in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure is what we so des­per­ate­ly need, we can start with the things that do make in­ter­na­tion­al head­lines. Days be­fore the furore over Mrs Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis, the world read in hor­ror about hun­dreds of en­dan­gered leatherback tur­tle hatch­lings crushed by bull­doz­ers on a Trinidad beach to save a "na­ture re­sort." If on­ly a frac­tion of our po­lit­i­cal and civic en­er­gy could be spent try­ing to rem­e­dy the re­al, head­line-grab­bing prob­lems, then per­haps we won't care as much about a mi­nor speech by a hap­less am­bas­sador.