“YeWondOch GudAy”

MSNBC’s Entertainment Writer Miki Turner and TMZ on TV are my favorite sources for latest entertainment news, celebrity gossip & Hollywood rum. The latter I got to watch on Arab Sat at my parents’ house every Sunday evening after “Everybody Hates Chris” (a show I simply ADORE).

It’s not the actual news of who is caught doing what I find interesting (although I felt fake prince Frederic von Asshole’s reference to Obama’s wife looking like “washer woman” very disturbing & insensitive on TMZ’s part; but there are also moments in which 18+ actresses like Hayden Panettiere are referred to as “the most annoying little girl”, instead of what the moment calls for, so I try take the good with the bad). What I love is the tone with which the pieces of news and the celebrities in them are treated, especially when it comes to beastly characters like Paris Hilton. I don’t know what the comic genre those two use in their reports is called, or if it is a genre at all! But the way they make fun of stupid people & situations with the kind of sharp and unexpected wit that makes you explode into your “Qechin” coffee, spilling most of it’s content on your lap, filling your low-self-esteemed blogger heart with a [“I wish I can write like that”] yearning, making breathing difficult for a sec.

What brought TMZ’s trade mark of reporting to mind is a post at habeshafriends on “Father’s Day”, which in turn reminded me of a program I caught on “Yechewata program” last Saturday. The program was a Father’s Day introduction to all those Ethiopians who have never came across the concept. The type that tries to make us aware of foreign holidays so we may adopt it at our convenience, with the kind of educating [“Silezih Lijochiye”] tone that makes you wanna tear a strand out of your hair (exactly the way you wanted do when they were having their “ErSwo behonu min yadergu neber” yeRadio Wuyiyit earlier and the interviews to various parties packed with the word “… mAlet…”). Still leLa amArAch yelemina, you suffer through it!

The funny part on this program, and the part which reminded me one of TMZ’s tv programs, was how the presenter seems to be grieved with how fathers haven’t been given enough attention in today’s gender politics sensitive world. He went on mentioning how women have rights groups, March 8s, and tv programs preaching their cause. Things fathers have been, unfairly, forced to do without (Mohammud Ahmed playing “Abaat des yilewal lij siweledelet” at the background).

Now, if this was America, and the TMZ people heard it, they’d have prepared a mock interview with the least “male” looking transsexual man/woman and ask what he/she felt about his/her minor role in Ethiopian media these days. That’s what they did to somebody’s comaplaints that the “White Male” wasn’t given enough place in USA’s presidential election. They stopped a Mexican/phillipino looking actor/singer?, infront of a hotel lobby and asked him, loudly referring to him as “WHITE MAN”, what he felt about not being given enough attention in the election. It was Hilarious!!.

Like I told whoever would be reading my comment at habeshafriends, the White Male of the American politics and the Ethiopian Father of domestic politics are “yannd santim hulet getsitawoch”. What one is known for, the other excels. And trying to bring attention to him as the “neglected part of society” & a victim would only make the bringer a source of mockery. Even for a Father’s Day special!