All in a Headline: The ‘Pearls’ of the Local Press
OPED
If we carve some additional leisure time into our tight schedule to delve into the local press, I guarantee that we for that moment we will forget any other form of entertainment. The political literary ‘pearls’ scattered across the sizzling hot pages of Georgian newspapers will take our breath away, especially the headlines and highlighted phrases that hit the interested eye with their overwhelming power of satire and humor. The dominant tool for making a reader laugh is the mind-twisting ambiguities profusely used by the authors to impress us to the marrow of our bones with the ‘truth,’ which cannot sound like anything but egregiously biased and deliberately exaggerated evaluations of past, current and presumable present content of our political life.
Below are a few examples of those pearls – as untouched and fresh as I found them at the pleasurable moment of reading the lovely masterpieces of our ladies and gentlemen of absolutely outlandish and peculiar Georgian press, over-spiced with journalistic salt and pepper:
• Makes no difference at all who comes to power – we shall remain sex workers in any case – You see how difficult it is to make a difference?
• Ivanishvili believes that he is infallible – Maybe he is and we the people have no clue!
• Raid of Delirium in Georgia – As chronic as is it seems to be in this land...
• A revolution awaits Georgia – What a natural condition for our electorate and its boisterous nature!
• Govt wants to instigate provocations – Some conclusions sound utterly mindboggling, don’t they?
• Brexit, visa liberalization and Georgian rugby – What a perfect insalata!
• War of the exit polls – Who needs those polls on the doorstep of the polling station?
• Govt expects riots – Don’t they always?
• Elections and sacks of dough – Everybody speaks of them but nobody knows where they are
• No chance for coalition escapers to overcome the 5% electoral barrier – Isn’t the entire electoral hullabaloo one big myth?
• Certain political forces and nongovernmental bodies have evil intentions and seem to be possessed by the devil – Why ‘certain’ in the first place and what does Satan have to do with the elections?
• The country is ruled by the mafia – How do they know this? What a leakage of information!
• Civil servants have to fulfill their obligations with integrity and ethics this year because political activity is on the rise – How about the times when political activity is making a nose dive?
• Freedom, fast development, wellbeing – Finally!
• Who has played a dirty trick on whom? – You will never guess it in Georgia.
• Myths about Bidzina blown to smithereens – So what?
• My Georgia is here and the Georgia of Rustavi TV is in Odessa – I love those fun metaphors.
• We will win and give life back to the Georgian highlands – OMG, this is too loud, hurting even my waning ears.
• People no longer owe anything to Ivanishvili, just vice versa – some calculations sound so weird! Will anybody ever know who owes what to whom in this country?
• Politicians are dropping their masks and showing their true faces: some look like penguins and some are wolves ... a genuine animal farm! – nothing more fun for kids than politics ‘à la Georgian.’
• How should a parliamentarian behave in bed to maintain dignity? – This is the subject for a very educated guess.
• May you rest in peace, dear Paata, in your political aftermath – Yes, some of us are like meteors in politics, appearing as a streak of light and disappearing just as quickly, but trying is also a human right.
• The way the Ministry of Education has bluffed students and teachers – Haven’t they been doing this all along? So why are the press eyebrows raised so high?
• Bad things will happen, bad things – This is not exactly news.
And this is the result of only a ten-minute reading. Imagine more!
Nugzar B. Ruhadze