Watching the recently concluded debates between president George W Bush and senator John F Kerry I could not help thinking about Mervyn Morris's remarkable poem To A West Indian Definer. I watched with bemusement as each candidate tried to reduce the other to a succinct descriptor. I was particularly amused at the president's attempt to portray Kerry as someone who is inconsistent in his views but who is steadfast in his voting. How the president managed to reconcile these logically incompatible assumptions should be the subject of much discussion. How John Kerry, deemed a good debater, allowed such inconsistencies to pass is simply puzzling. An effective riposte would have been to ask the incumbent; "Am I the flip-flopper you contend or am I the steadfast liberal you purport? I cannot be both. Mr President, will you please make up your mind?"

Of course, Kerry tries to present the president as one who sticks to his guns whatever the circumstance. This is a depiction which the president did not contest simply because to do so would have undermined his image of being resolute.
But is it really an accurate depiction? The fact is that there are many examples of the president changing his mind. The establishment of the Office of Homeland Security and the decision to use some members of the Baathist in the Iraqi reconstruction show that the president does change his mind on matters of policy. Kerry could have demonstrated that he and the president are in the same league as they both change their minds. He could have shown that changing one's mind is a normal human thing.

What the presidential debate demonstrates is the difficulty inherent in accurately defining a living breathing human being. That is the challenge facing the West Indian Definer and anyone who tries to compress the character of an individual into sound-bites. There is evil in the best of us and good in the worst of us.

There was another aspect of the debates which I found interesting and that was the prominence of the gay issue. If Jamaicans thought they had a lock on the gay rights controversy we would have realised after watching the presidential debates that this is not the case. Our beleaguered deejays must now feel that they are not alone.

I don't know if it's just my imagination running away with me, but I strongly suspect that the assault on our deejays from the homosexual community was timed to coincide with the US election cycle. I believe the gays are of the opinion that they would face less resistance to their positions in an election year. Hence the spate of gay weddings. Will the gays end their campaign against our artistes as soon as the American elections are over? I don't know; that perhaps depends on who wins. What is clear is that even Republicans have been delicate in their treatment of gays. Where does all this leave our artistes? Between a rock and a hard place.

Progressives who embrace gay causes are definitely not sympathetic to our artistes.

The conservatives who should have found favour with the anti-gay, pro-life positions of the deejay don't like dancehall music,

No doubt our artistes are in a similar quandary as is Senator Kerry. Do the artistes stick to their messages and try to energise their bases or do they dilute their position with the hope of snaring those on the fence? Many believe that John Dean would have done better than Kerry energising the base, yet Kerry was chosen by his party as he was seen to have crossover appeal. Only time will tell if the Democratic Party made the right decision.

I have been informed that a number of artistes have dropped gay references in their performances and only time will tell how the core audience will react this development.

Interestingly, the mainstream usually takes its cue from the core gay. One cannot deny that the campaign has certainly hurt our artistes in the short run though perhaps not as much as some contend. Yet any solution to this impasse will have to contain an opportunity for both sides of this impasse to move away from this issue without losing face.

Of course, this is dependent on the motives of the protagonists in this epic duel and whether the issue is informed with a spirit of compromise.

That said, Bounty Killer's interview on the programme On Stage was a classic demonstration of plain speaking.

If only some of those engaged in political activity both locally and internationally would take a leaf out of Bounty's book, perhaps people would not be as apathetic about the business of governance. 'The Killer' skillfully showed that the media sometimes pander to our baser instincts making journalists no better than the deejays they criticise. Killer was also concerned that there was not a greater effort on the part of the media to support the artistes in this battle. By renouncing violence, Bounty showed a willingness to concede ground on this issue without compromising his principles.

'The Killer' should be applauded for what was definitely a command performance.

It would be good if more of our journalists and commentators would follow the lead of a few journalists and examine the body of lies which is a part of the Outrage! propaganda campaign. This would be quite helpful in shaping the current debate.

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