LAST Sunday evening while I was at a popular fast food outlet, I overheard a conversation among five youths, particularly from one who said that his favourite cartoon was Andy Capp. When asked by one of his fellow pals as to the reason for choice, he responded that like Andy Capp, he likes playing football and intends to become a professional player. He further explained that since he wants to be a class player, that he will have to be training full-time, and will need a girlfriend to supply his needs. Another of the youngsters acknowledged that he likes Capp’s “style” because that is the way ‘man mus manners woman’ and ‘woman mus humble up to man.’ On enquiry, their ages ranged from ten to fourteen years-old; and such was their understanding of the Andy Capp cartoon! Of course, there are senior adults who subscribe to this degrading interpretation of man-woman relationship.
Now, given the epidemic levels of daily domestic violence and other forms of abuse in this society, where the stature of our women is daily, brutally denigrated, should such a cartoon continue to be illustrated in the Stabroek News, a print that often editorialises on such serious social issues? My answer to such can only be an undoubted NO! Surely, this media’s editorial board must have been receiving complaints about this very obnoxious illustration, in similar vein to those about the “dutty” music on which it would have moralised. This media house ought to consider withdrawing permanently from its pages, a cartoon whose principal character is a disgrace and insult to decent manhood, and a dark influence on men, reducing the person of women to silent sufferers, appendages of men, and marriage to a one horse carriage. Is this the message, via cartoon, in our dailies that should be inculcated by our impressionable young?
Stabroek News must practice what it trumpets ever so often. I sincerely hope that this very serious contradiction, and insult, especially to women, is expurgated from its column, soonest.