Contributer: Ephrem Endale
We seem to be having a real winter this time around; a real winter where the chill makes you think of all the things you never thought would ever come to your mind. Some will tell you it’s like those we experienced in the old days. (Yes, even while we talk about the weather ‘the old days’ spring up.) The reason is that this time around the chill is giving us all the discomforts you could think of. It even doesn’t matter the amount of cloth and fur you’ve heaped upon yourself; it still is cold! Just for the sake of general knowledge does it have something to do with climate change?” The searing heat in those faraway lands, so friends tell us is, are all about global warming. “Oh, so you guys think you’re having it tough. Well, you’d have known what the heat is doing to us around here!” So friends from across the oceans complain. And they tell us you can beat back the chill with clothes; and we shoot back “But you people have all the protection you need! We aren’t as lucky!”
I’ll tell you one thing I’m really tired of… celebrities! We have so many celebrities around here we need to give them their own turf. Carve out some spot on the outskirts of the city and name it The Celebrity retreat or something like that. I can tell you we’d breathe a little better. I mean with everyone wanting to be treated like celebrities we the people in the streets aren’t having nice days. So they can buy three story villas and the million birr cars and communicate among themselves…and leave us alone!
There has never been a time in our long history where becoming a celebrity is the easiest thing to accomplish. The city is teeming with overnight celebrities of all kinds, Thanks (Or is it “No thanks!) to this YouTube thing you can become an instant celebrity. This time around the celebrities aren’t only those on the silver screens and the theater stage. The girl who wrote a seventy-page book of ‘poetry’ (at least that’s what she and her clan call it–poetry!) could act like a four time Oscar material. Don’t blame her! “It’s the name of the game and she’s playing it quite good. Her family is on Cloud Nine and there would be a hundred of us telling her dad, “I never knew your kid was so talented?” And good old daddy wouldn’t let us down; “She has been interested in poetry since she was about two and a half or three years old!” Isn’t that the kind of daddy every other kid should have?
We’re such a nice and tolerant society even politicians, even the blandest of them all could be treated as celebrities. “Didn’t you hear him tearing down those officials? Man, it is his kind we need in big numbers!” Those tearing down, throwing stones at every moving thing, and lashing out at anyone they think isn’t much crazy about them! So we are such a nice lot we elevate the politician who should be prevented from going one light year close to what we call politics to the celebrity status. A rather funny story comes to me. Once upon a time a guy writes a piece of commentary to the English daily and it’s published. I can tell you anywhere from two to three months he kept the issue on which it was published and was showing it to a perhaps half of the people he met. Had it been these days that single article would have made him a ‘celebrity,” and us social media buffs would have made sure if it. Hey, you shouldn’t have been born that early! .
Even opticians become celebrities. Go in front of the cameras and vent your well-rehearsed rage against any and everybody and you’re a celebrity! Time to pop the champagne bottles! But wait, not so fast. With things seeming that every seven of ten people are celebrities no one’s going to take notice of your pop-the-champagne drama! Of course, the comments come flooding in and all kind of obscure social media addresses shower you with all kinds of obscure praises. After all its teamwork, isn’t it? Enjoy it while you can because it is not going to last long, until, of course, you return for your second act in the never ending ‘me-celebrity’ drama.
There is something that is really bugging me. It’s a trend that is preventing us from holding wise knowledge-driven discussions. If you want to stand up be counted don’t be that Good Samaritan much of the world is after. By some bizarre turn of fate most of don’t seem to like hearing better things. No! You could go in front of the camera or on stage an act like the nicest man nature has blessed mankind with. So what! Yes, I said “So what!!” You want us to give you the standing ovation? Then do something ‘worth’ it! Give us some action, man! Get into the hairs of some heavyweight guy or cut this organization into a thousand and more threads and then, only then, you’ll certainly be the darling of quite many of us. We can even change our profile pictures by yours! Tell us who could be any nicer than this!
Surf the YouTube channels of us locals and you’d know what I’m trying to say. By looking at the number of subscribers and likes you could see that we’re in quite serious problem. Why are we so fixated with the negative and especially with disparaging individuals over the most bizarre storylines?
Let me tell you a story of yesteryears when the book publishing business was really booming. Yes, there were times when customers fought each other to buy books and sometimes even the police were forced to intervene. And now we’re at a stage where the price of publishing has shot up so cruelly it is becoming practically impossible to publish books and more so to sell them. There was this close to seven hundred-page book which came out some months back. The cover price was four hundred birr. Someone was recently telling me that they wanted to go in for reprint and you know how much one printing press demanded of them” Eight hundred birr a copy!
Anyways I wanted to tell you about something else and that just slipped in. In those days book reviews too were common. You get good reviews and you sell your books; that is the conventional wisdom. Well, not in those days. You come out with a book and someone practically chops you into a thousand pieces. “It is a pity that paper and ink has to be waste for such a shameful work.” That should have sent your books to the recycling bins and you to the nearest pharmacy in search of antacid solutions! No! It didn’t work that way. You get a bad review and you sell your books like hot cakes! Yes! The logic them was that the bad reviews weren’t genuine and the work of jealous people whose eyes are reddened at seeing you come out with a new book. So the public punishes the reviewers by buying your books! Now who is anybody to blame us of indifference! And then it was a question of for how many reprints you go.
This story wouldn’t be full without mentioning the rumors that came with such a once-in-a-blue-moon tradition. It was said some authors and publishers jump at the opportunity and actually pay people to write bad reviews about the new book! It’s business!
Anyways with many of us vying for the front row seat I don’t think there is enough space to accommodate all of us. Hmm…
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 24 JULY 2022