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06.06.2019 Feature Article

A Sign of Stupid Times

A Sign of Stupid Times
06.06.2019 LISTEN

It is a of “Stupid Times,” when with all the humongous problems facing our nation, Ghanaian journalists seem to prefer to obsess, copycat-style, about the decidedly very private question of which local celebrity is sleeping with whom, or who recently had a one-night stand with whom and how much they got paid for it or who dumped whom. Don’t get me wrong, Dear Reader, this veritable sign of stupid times or moral decadence is not the least bit unique to Ghana. We also have such salacious journalism – pretty much more so – here in the United States, even as the Trump-Daniels Affair made the global news headlines not long ago (See “Former Deputy Minister Allegedly Confesses to Sleeping with Elikem Kumordzie” MyNewsGh.com / Ghanaweb.com 6/3/19).

I mean, we are talking about consenting adults here; and about the only way and manner that I can see anybody getting hurt here, is in a case where one of the alleged protagonists happens to be matrimonially engaged and/or has palpable familial interests, image and reputation to jealously protect. Or even both paramours are officially and matrimonially engaged. Now, I am not located on the proverbial Ground Zero to know any more details than have been provided this scandal sheet by Ghanaian media websites, but it clearly seems to me that neither of these two consenting adult lovers and/or former lovers, whatever the real case may be, has been excessively or any significantly hurt in the process, even assuming that what has been “snitched” about them publicly was true. At the worst, it is only an evanescent question of embarrassment, particularly if the alleged rendezvous between the two was meant to be eternally kept under wraps, as it were.

This patently appears to have been the case, at least when critically examined at face value. For this writer, though, the alleged “snitch” and her target of slight and/or vitriol seem to be in quite a protean sense – for I do not seem to clearly and definitively be able to place my fingers on what is really the purpose of such salacious exposure here. In other words, if this is meant or intended to either discredit or humiliate the target of vitriol or scandal, I am not quite certain that such obviously vengeful salvo has succeeded in its objective. For, at the end of the day, all humans, just like all animals, in fact, that we veritably and inescapably all of us are, are coital or sex-oriented and generative beings; at least as I have come to discover the same and I am fond of telling my students from time to time, especially when the prudish ones among them attempt to play coy with the rest of us hoodlum pack of rascals and plain mischief-makers. At least, to the best of my knowledge, and ignorance as well, that was how we all got here on this planet, or however else one wants to describe this prized portion of the Solar System.

You see, both women protagonists in this clearly frivolous bit of gossip, that is, the tattle-tale and the tattled about, are quite admirable and even uniquely spunky and sheroic in their own individual ways. In the case of the alleged snitch or traitor, whatever the case may be, I admire her deeply for her near-ethereal ability to make an enviable art of marital infidelity, by also shamelessly snatching the name of a globally distinguished Hollywood star, former politician and business mogul. Indeed, I suspect our “snitch” long ago discovered the great American art of cultivated notoriety, which can and does often play up even more profitably than sheer traditional fame and fortune. Notoriety has also been known to have far greater staying power than raw fame. The “Honorable” target of scandal mongering, on the other hand, long ago came to my attention as an equally cantankerous sociopolitical climber who did not quite belong in the straitjacket of theatrical or deftly and deliberately staged nobility.

Fortunately, out of the infamous political spat that she had with her then boss from whose estranged husband of some two-plus decades, we recently learned may have criminally squirreled at least a half-million USD out of the country to purchase a very spacious mansion somewhere in Mandelaville, landed her, belly-up, on a sun-blasted beach or shore somewhere; she seems to have, finally, landed where she always ought to have been from the get-go. For, now she produces first-rate cultural stuff in the coveted entertainment world in which she also delectably runs quite eloquent teaser commentaries on episodic royal-court tribunals. So, really, the purely private and, some would even own, inescapably delicious subject of recreational sex, is all too natural to make the world of a publicly self-proclaimed slut count for much, or anything at all.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
June 3, 2019
E-mail: [email protected]

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