In African politics the role of court poet who uses his ingenious to bark for his master is taken seriously and professional to uttermost disgust. Like the story in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Healers where one practically lay before the king and declared that the king spit into his mouth so that all he says be but merely the words of the King- and what supplicating conception of the kings words than his spittle?
Attending a Campus Agenda forum with young political minds discussing political aspirations in a sound and sober gathering that would soon be abandoned to wanton drunken campaigns I could not help but notice elements that posed and or displayed political and oratorical prowess to frustrate an aspirant and sell one of their choice. The vehemence, with which they barked their intellect showed obsequious desire for their owners to notice.
What dejectedly churned my innards was how these men of psychological impeccability could lower themselves to the service of other men to the point of losing their intellect all together and talking like ignorant, arrogant and sentimental holloipolio.
Newspapers are filled with intellect opinion pieces which subliminally tend to lean toward or in juxtaposition to political aspirants in Kenya as in the case of Miguna Miguna and his ilk. We witness sound intellectual mind sell themselves to kings and shaming scribes and orators.
Like Plato warned of the dialectics and their power over public opinion in democracies I echo his concerns of highly educated and well articulated orators and scribes of our time powerfully transmitted through the media.
Maybe its high time media policy in democracies should be evaluated to allow for these guns for hire to outrightly declare who their masters are so that the reader can decide between their two bigoted sides for and against an individual, idea or cause. Liberitarian theory is based on the mases determining what is good and what is not for them and not some sharp academia shaping their thoughts for some economic –political interest as a gun for hire!
