Radio has traditionally been the medium from which most of us poorer Jamaicans received our information.
As a kid growing up in rural Saint Catherine during the 70’s our institutions were sacrosanct.
We did not have much in the way of choice, so those institutions we had we believed in.
Radio was RJR and JBC, the others came later. JBC was television and at 12 midnight it was a flickering silver screen after the national anthem. Those who still wanted to be entertained had a choice of RJR or JBC radio.
Toothpaste was Colgate and Colgate was toothpaste.
The Gleaner was newspaper and news papers were the Daily Gleaner.
Office meant post office, where I grew up no one had a personal office so the only office we knew was the little single room postal agency run by Mrs. Ford.
I say these things to highlight just how much we looked to those simple institutions and how much we were shaped by them.
Today’s young people are not constrained by a shortage of choice. Cable television and the internet has opened up the entire world to them making things we never dreamed of par for the course for them.
Nevertheless, despite the technological advancements some of the simple staples of yesteryear are still relevant as they were in days gone by and accessed for information much the same way they were decades ago.
TALK RADIO
Radio still continue to be an integral medium through which people source information.
To some degree, radio has continued to be relevant even as print media continue to fade in the wake of mobile phones and other hand held devices.
Through the interactive nature of talk radio and the advancements in the way radio programming is sourced through the internet and via satellite, radio continues to be a viable and relevant medium through which information is both disseminated and assimilated.
Because of the continued relevance of radio today those who have access to radio platforms should endeavor to ensure that the information they put out into the public airwaves is truthful and in the best interest of the country.
During the Obama Presidency, talk radio developed a cult following of right wing conspiracy theorists who wanted to believe the worse about the nations first African-American President.
As a consequence, there was no shortage of people with bad intentions willing to feed that hunger.
Obama became a communist, a Manchurian president, an illegitimate Kenyan interloper and every other derogatory pejorative their perverted minds could conjure up.
The result is that they ended up voting into office a person in whom all of those pejoratives are encapsulated.
So we went from a fine Presidency which worked assiduously on civil and human rights saved the economy and maintained peace across the globe as best it could to one which recklessly positions the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.
For years talk radio has been a staple for Jamaica. Jamaicans used talk radio to bring attention to myriad issues affecting their lives.
As a kid, I used Ronald Thwaites then radio show to bring attention to the bad roads in North East St Catherine. I named and shamed every political representative I could until for the first time in their history the roads leading into Bonnet from Benbow was paved.
This meant that a trip from Benbow to Bonnett square which previously took half an hour became an 8‑minute drive.
So talk radio has its value but talk radio also took on a sinister dark character as the years progressed.
It became a place which attracted the most caustic and demeaning characters on both sides of the microphone. All united in vitriolic condemnation of the Police.
From Thwaites to Gloudon, from Perkins to Roper, and everyone in between and all the way down to Cliff Hughes, radio is now the sacred altar of anti-police vitriol.
Like the right wing in America, the anti police and the anti-Jamaican charlatans have used radio to poison the mind of the youth while washing their hands and looking at others to fix the bloodshed they inspire.
The end result is at least two generations which have absolutely no respect for the rule of law and a police department which has been reduced largely to people who cannot afford to leave.
Even so, those remaining are demotivated, timid and afraid, resulting in a nation now in which people are afraid to stay in their homes and equally afraid to leave.
This has benefitted many,Thwaites is now a politician, Gloudon and others have had lucrative careers on the blood and tears of police officers and their families.
Elections are won and lost as a result and a litany of supposed human rights agencies have sprung up all purporting to be defending the country from the poor scapegoated police.
This serves the interest of the political class as well as the criminal class, a distinction which is often times indistinct.
As murders and other serious crimes continue to increase the interest of the politicians and the criminal class are well served.
Unfortunately for decent law abiding Jamaicans like my family, no one looks out for their interest.
Today and every day, people like Cliff Hughes of nationwide radio continue in that vein even as police officers are been gunned down in the streets in broad daylight.
These parasites have attached themselves in a vice like grip to the anti-police bandwagon in their rapacious quest for relevance.
As a result, these frauds and imposters who pretend to care about our country have revealed themselves to be shameless, pathetic little anti-police trolls.