On Warmington’s Comments/​why Are People Getting Their Panties In A Bunch Over Nothing?

St Catherine South West Member of Parliament Everald Warmington was nev­er one to cow­er in fear or cov­er his mouth when he decid­ed to speak out. ‘Warmie’ seems even to rel­ish the con­tro­ver­sy his com­ments evoke.
In the house of Representatives, Warmington often takes on the role of enforcer, engag­ing in ver­bal spats with mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion party.

In 2016 Warmington called Lisa Hanna, the then min­is­ter of Youth and Culture, ‘Jezebel.’
Queen Jezebel was the daugh­ter of Ethbaal, king of Sidon, and the wife of Ahab, king of Israel. Jezebel pro­mot­ed the wor­ship of false gods in Israel, harassed and killed God’s prophets, and arranged for an inno­cent man to be false­ly charged and exe­cut­ed.
Hanna shot back, label­ing Warmington obnox­ious and misog­y­nis­tic’. Many Jamaicans chomped at the bit at the time, crit­i­ciz­ing Warmington as out­ra­geous and crass. It is hard to tell why Warmie likened Lisa Hanna to Jezebel, so I will leave the mind read­ing to those who are smarter than I am.
I would imag­ine that Warmington’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Lisa Hanna had noth­ing to do with phys­i­cal appear­ances and may actu­al­ly be clos­er to the char­ac­ter of both fig­ures, but I do see some resemblance.
Okay, I am going to hell for that.

Over his career, the Jamaica Labor Party fire­brand has ruf­fled many feath­ers and has caused many con­tro­ver­sies, result­ing in much wag­ging of tongues. And, of course, even though we Jamaicans have no prob­lem with our coun­try being the mur­der cap­i­tal of the world, we get in a huff when any­one dares say any­thing dis­re­spect­ful about our polit­i­cal idols, par­tic­u­lar­ly if she is a for­mer beau­ty queen who is still a hottie.
Warmington may be a coarse loud­mouth, but Jamaicans should take a chill pill and look at how some par­lia­men­tar­i­ans do busi­ness in oth­er nations. In some cas­es, fights break out. Although I am not advo­cat­ing vio­lence as a con­flict res­o­lu­tion tool, I would much rather that politi­cians run their mouths than have our coun­try go back to the past when vio­lence char­ac­ter­ized our polit­i­cal discourse.

The recent brouha­ha in which Warmington again finds him­self is a tem­pest in a teacup that is unwor­thy of the oxy­gen it consumes.
Speaking at a St Catherine North Eastern con­stituen­cy con­fer­ence recent­ly, Warmington told a gath­er­ing that Opposition Leader Mark Golding would nev­er become prime min­is­ter of Jamaica because of his skin color.

Warmington [correctly]asserted that the People’s National Party (PNP) used racial pol­i­tics against for­mer Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader Edward Seaga; Warmington indi­cat­ed that it was fair game to take a sim­i­lar dig against Golding.
Okay, we can dis­cuss whether we should ren­der evil for evil. Maybe, just maybe, one may even say Warmington should be the big­ger per­son and not resort to the racist gut­ter pol­i­tics that the PNP engaged in against Edward Seaga for decades.

In fact, I vivid­ly recall Neville Martin record­ing a song that became a nation­al anthem for the PNP as it assault­ed Seaga sole­ly based on his skin color.

The most laugh­able thing about this tem­pest in a teacup non­sense is the clutch­ing of pearls by the sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrites like the ones in the Private sec­tor Organization of Jamaica who issued a state­ment declar­ing with faux shock, “we are dis­ap­point­ed with these racial­ly divi­sive comments,“These com­ments have no place in the Jamaican con­text now or in the past as it is total­ly incon­sis­tent with our mot­to ‘out of many one people.”
The polit­i­cal ombuds­man is also chim­ing in, not to men­tion the bozos in the peanut gallery.
Negroes pleeeeeeze!!!
Get your panties out of the bunch they are in. In fact, pull the wedges out of your col­lec­tive ass­es. Where was your unright­eous indig­na­tion for the decades that the People’s National Party func­tionar­ies engaged in a cam­paign of racial hatred and deri­sion against mis­ter Seaga for the entire­ty of his life?
Where were your anger and shock then?
Jamaica is a melt­ing pot of all peo­ple who are proud to be Jamaicans. We are a won­der­ful demo­c­ra­t­ic nation that, although imper­fect, is a lot bet­ter than many larg­er, more pow­er­ful nations on the issue of race. The PNP had no issue using race against Seaga, but now that some­one dare to equiv­o­cate, they are cry­ing foul. What total and adul­ter­at­ed bullshit.
We are not where we should be, but we have much to be proud of.
Our nation of just under three mil­lion peo­ple is approx­i­mate­ly 90% Black; despite such over­whelm­ing strength of num­bers, Jamaica is one of the best melt­ing pots on the plan­et racially.
Everald Warmington’s com­ments are absolute­ly noth­ing com­pared to what Mister Seaga expe­ri­enced through­out his entire polit­i­cal career.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.