It’s well worth the while for those of us who know better to take some time off to make the point to Roger Luncheon that a time will come when scholars of media history will decide to sit down with the mountains of recordings of all of the strange pronouncements that he has unleashed upon this nation and decide that when it comes to propaganda the Doctor might be incomparable……….and even if we concede that such a thing may not happen for several years down the road you have to wonder whether Roger is not concerned about how history will judge him.
The Doctor’s major job for just under a decade has been to sit in Cabinet, listen to what is said there and come up with what he considers to be the best form of words to let the nation know what the country’s rulers are thinking. It’s an exciting job for people who can say one thing and mean another, people who can accumulate groups of words which, when juxtaposed are designed to elicit sound bites rather that provide clarity; people who enjoy exercises in semantics and people who are unmindful of the enormity of the transgression that reposes in bamboozling an entire nation over and over again into thinking that all is well when things are falling apart.
That’s the Doctor’s job and there was a time when he impressed……….when he demonstrated a greater nimbleness of wit, when clever turns of phrase were easier to muster and when, frankly, the media corps was more bedazzled, more taken in by his style. That which they did not understand they read and printed anyway.
Time, however, has diminished the Doctor’s powers as a propaganda artist………not only time but the sheer repetitiveness of his performances and the realization by the journalists who faithfully attend his briefings that all too frequently the man is simply doing what he does, not really troubling himself to contemplate the impact of his performances on the nation. What we have discovered is that Luncheon has become a jaded performer, that his tricks no longer elicit applause, that the media, and, more importantly, the public, no longer bother themselves to try to make sense of what he says and that his pronouncements are, these days, tailor-made for NCN’s news bulletins………with all of their mispronunciations and green verbs thrown in for good measure. That is what makes the state media such an interesting proposition………..it can take the nation by the scruff of its neck and seek to lead it in whatever direction it chooses.
Quite recently the Doctor was holding forth on what he declared was the PPP/C’s commitment to granting licences to applicants who wanted to create private radio stations and that ex-President Jagdeo was always in favour of granting such licences. Really, Dr. Luncheon; just when is enough, enough? In which of your dreams did the Jagdeo administration reveal itself to you as an advocate of private radio stations or of any other facet of free media for that matter?
Let’s get a few things straight Doc! The PPP/C has not been supporting the practice of media freedom; it has been accommodating it. Private media houses are part of the ‘contract’ to which we signed on when the free and fair elections deal was being cut before the 1992 elections and the PPP/C knows only too well that it might suffer a severe spanking from Washington if it goes around tampering with that ‘contract………’ not that it has not tried. Jagdeo has withdrawn ads; banished journalists from his presence; dismissed media operatives as vultures and carrion crows and fingered just about every private media house in the course of his various frenzied attacks on media freedom. Note, however, that he backed off from the ban on CNS. That was no act of magnanimity. It was an act of good sense. Jagdeo knew only too well that even he couldn’t get away with that. It would have overturned the whole free and fair elections apple cart.
How then, Good Doctor, do you arrive at the conclusion that your-ex-boss was an advocate of privately-run radio stations? Is there no end to these absurdities? Do you never tire of heaping these insults upon our intelligence?
Now you have a new boss and, hopefully, a new agenda. What will it be Doc? Will it be more of the same or will you be making a serious effort to do away with that familiar Animal Farm approach to propaganda pursuits?
