Thinking about Miguel

I have been thinking a lot about my friend Miguel Gil, who was killed in an ambush in Sierra Leone more than ten years ago. Miguel was a very special person, a man with a mission, a missionary with a camera. A face like a Goya painting, with brilliant blue eyes and hands that moved like doves. As a very religious man, his work was more than a calling. It was akin to a prayer. A prayer to the human condition,  individual courage and justice. He was one of those members of the tribe who lived and breathed journalism, who are not afraid to put his or her life in danger to tell the story. I guess that I have been thinking of Miguel because, as I look at the landscape of today's journalism, I see very few Miguel's. Very few that are willing to go that extra mile. No matter what has been said about Lara Logan, she took that step, and for that she should be admired. It is still good, solid reporting that is and will ever be king. No matter how much the new technology facilitates our work. Those that are willing to go into what Perez Reverte called "territorio comanche" are the ones that have earned the right to call themselves journalists. Maybe I am old school, but that is the way I see it.

So now we are on to Libya

Gaddafi. What a character. He is something straight out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel a la Autumn of the Patriarch. There is a great story written in The Independent by Robert Fisk. It seems that just weeks ago, our dear "coronel" was asking for a good doctor to give him a face lift. I guess he felt that he didn't look his best. Now he can look forward to exile and a good tan. I wonder if they have the correct hair dye where he is going. I loved his "I am still in Triploi" statement complete with umbrella and Lady Gaga sunglasses. That America supported this guy for so long is really an embarrassment for us all.  Here a taste of Fisk's wonderful writing:

So even the old, paranoid, crazed fox of Libya – the pallid, infantile, droop-cheeked dictator from Sirte, owner of his own female praetorian guard, author of the preposterous Green Book, who once announced he would ride to a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Belgrade on his white charger – is going to ground. Or gone. Last night, the man I first saw more than three decades ago, solemnly saluting a phalanx of black-uniformed frogmen as they flappered their way across the sulphur-hot tarmac of Green Square on a torrid night in Tripoli during a seven-hour military parade, appeared to be on the run at last, pursued – like the dictators of Tunis and Cairo – by his own furious people.

The YouTube and Facebook pictures told the story with a grainy, fuzzed reality, fantasy turned to fire and burning police stations in Benghazi and Tripoli, to corpses and angry, armed men, of a woman with a pistol leaning from a car door, of a crowd of students – were they readers of his literature? – breaking down a concrete replica of his ghastly book. Gunfire and flames and cellphone screams; quite an epitaph for a regime we all, from time to time, supported.

And here, just to lock our minds on to the brain of truly eccentric desire, is a true story. Only a few days ago, as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi faced the wrath of his own people, he met with an old Arab acquaintance and spent 20 minutes out of four hours asking him if he knew of a good surgeon to lift his face. This is – need I say it about this man? – a true story. The old boy looked bad, sagging face, bloated, simply "magnoon" (mad), a comedy actor who had turned to serious tragedy in his last days, desperate for the last make-up lady, the final knock on the theatre door.

Let's just hope that Saif goes away along with Daddy. And that we do not have to pay at the pumps.

Simplicity

Simple is what I call my Yoko Ono period. White on white. I have been finding that at this stage of the championship, I need less, want less. I no longer crave the titles and the long hours. I would rather be recognized for my fabulous flower arrangements than my spreadsheets. I loathe the word "execute." I know so many women that will end up with fifty cats, old power suits in a dank apartment with frayed 90's furniture. I Thank God for my redundancy's and my search for re-invention. I still want to be a pirate and write the great novel. I imagine that it took all this time and all the bullshite that one must go through to arrive at the conclusion that cardboard boxes are better than Ikea.   


"The best things in life are the nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. Robert Louis Stevenson.


PD: And if that shit fails, a nice blend of Xanax and Bacardi will do nicely. Fuck Yoga. 

The Dirty Little Secret

If you have not read The Daily Beast's article "Egypt's Women Rally Behind Lara Logan" or ABC News correspondent Ashleigh Bamfield's in the New York Post, please do. Amongst all the discussions of should Logan have gone back, the reasons she was there, etc. etc.,  blah, blah, the important story is that this "dirty little secret" is not a secret any more. Sadly, it took Logan's case to sparked a much needed debate. I wonder how many times this has happened to other female journalists and women - and not a sound was heard. Maybe now, if the news cycle does not move on to whatever egg or vessel Lady Gaga is transporting herself in whilst clad in a condom outfit - there will be an effective discussion about a very ugly subject. Here's hoping.

Another day, another dollar

As they say, another day, another peso. I get up very early in the morning, sit at my desk, and trawl the internet to see what is going on. Today, I happened upon Anderson Cooper's interview with Nir Rosen about his tweets on Lara Logan. Now - this is a clear example of why one should not tweet late at night after a couple of Jack Daniels. Mr. Rosen has had to eat massive amounts of humble pie and basically shat on eight years of work. It would seem to me that common sense should have prevailed, Nir. Don't tweet shite before you know the details. He claims he didn't know she had been sexually attacked, but linked the CBS report, which clearly states it was the case. Mate, you look like a bitter hack. Not a good look. Lesson learned: Think before you tweet. Que pendejo el tipo.

What I became

So - I have started working from home for the first time in my professional career. After taking the plunge and quitting what many would term "a very good job" (although they never had to sit and listen to my boss speak in moronics), I encountered my Titanic moment. No, not the one where the ship rams into the iceberg; the one in which Kate Winslet opens out her arms and just says "fuck it." I became a consultant. Whatever that means. Some people find yoga, other people deep clean. I became a consultant.

The Unrepentant Journalist

This is the first posting in a blog that has been a long time coming. I have been a journalist for more years than I want to count, although I truly believe you are born one, like a disease. I just recently resigned from a top media posting and am now looking to see what the next step is. This blog is born of this move towards reinvention. Its my what the fuck moment.