And it goes viral. Yes, the Kony 2012 video went viral making approximately 80 million hits in the few hours it was posted. As the whole world went on viewing this video, little did most people know that a single click and view was making Kony famous. And every corner of the world and even on the small Iowan campus of Wartburg College resounded the messages of the viral video. It took me a day or so to finally realize how much ignorant some people were, and of course to pay tribute to the power of the media. Name it, Facebook, twitter, you tube and all other media centers were reaping big from the stories about this ‘human rights defense’ video. I recall some friends in New Jersey and Minnesota calling me and asking me why my country was trending on yahoo and twitter. I simply replied, it is all about Kony. Carol, one of my friends asked a rather ignorant question, what about Kony? I expected her to have at least made use of the search engines, the likes of Google and Bing to find out who this ‘made famous’ man was. And again, Carol is just one of the many ‘couch potatoes’ we have in the world. One of the most annoying remarks came in the Trumpet, a weekly student led newspaper for Wartburg College, one student noted, ‘When I heard about the things Kony was doing, I knew I had to do something.’ Seriously, what was this student going to do about it, and even more disturbing is the fact that this video made it seem like the war is still raging on in Northern Uganda. No, there is no more war up there, people in the affected districts of Gulu and Lira are healing, and the least they needed was a 17 minute video going viral world wide with falsified information. And, this is where my problem with the media and the West comes in. First off, the media is too focused on selling, than informing. This has created a need to verify the phrase that says, ‘if it bleeds, it sells.’ Given the content of the video, it is obvious that it was bleeding news and thus, it was bound to sale, but at whose expense? Of course, at the expense of the Ugandans that suffered through the war for close to 20 years. And this is where I ask a question which if most definitely; I do not expect an honest or straight forward answer to. Where were the media and the West all those 20 so years when Kony was actually abusing and terrorizing those innocent children and women in Gulu. Every single time an American soldier is killed or wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan, we hear the entire buzz about it. It in fact makes national news, on huge news channel s like CNN. I do not understand why such fair media treatment is not accorded incidences like the Northern Uganda war, 20 years ago when it was actually taking place. These are not rhetorical questions; in fact they are food for thought to all of us with political ambitions to act as a soul searching avenue to check our hearts, minds and souls and ask our selves, why all the bias and greed to want to become famous at the expense of others’ agony like Jason Russell and his mates.
Jason Russell and his co-founders of Invisible children may of course have some humane explanation for the making of the video, but to me, a Ugandan, I did not funny this video tasteful but rather a mockery and ingenuity of their greedy selves. Sometimes, it is just ok to hit the nail right on the head and call a spoon a spoon and not a shade. I do not at any one point condemn the video. It was short, yes but not exclusive of the subject matter. The content of the video begs questions that need to be addressed, and if I were the government of the Republic of Uganda, I would have asked for the taking down of video immediately. But of course, this is where the West and all its ‘freedom of expression and media’ nonsense come in. I would have thought that this video would have included more testimonies from several people portraying their lives during the war and after the war. In fact, the video leaves out an important part, the rehabilitation of the former child soldiers. So, maybe next time Mr. Russell and friends decide to pull off one of those videos again, they should remember to include and give credit to several organizations and of course the government of Uganda for the timeless efforts to end the war, and the tremendous rehabilitation being given to the former child soldiers and those countless raped girls. What these people need now is not another reminder of the treacherous and horrific moments they lived through for 20 years, but rather peace, calm and rehabilitation and not cameras hovering around them for selfish media and Western world interest. It is time the world woke up and embraced the reality that a 17 minute video with not so accurate information is not going to do anything constructive for the people of Northern Uganda and it is not going to capture Kony. Sadly, it made him famous and I have all reasons to think that the percentage of the profits named for Northern Uganda will never make it there.
And as if we have heard it all comes the infamous wikileaks....http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1383276/-/aw5a0jz/-/index.html
Apparently, Mr. Russell's fifteen minutes of fame have morphed over into infamy. After his arrest for public indecency -- or concomittant with it -- he has suffered a nervous breakdown. His coworkers at Invisible Children have been rather opaque on the question of when his hospitalization will come to an end. Meanwhile, Part II of Kony, 2012 is slated for release very soon if indeed it hasn't been already. Somewhere in all of this tragedy is a true moral . . .
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I do no think the second part of the video is going to have so much of an influence as the first one especially in the American community. And this can be attributed perhaps to Mr.Russell's outrageous public indecency and what I prefer to call the biggest joke and wall of shame material of the year.
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