Stuff I Learned this Christmas One of the exciting things about living in Guatemala is that I constantly get to learn loads of new “facts”, created by the reporters and on air personalities of the only 4 Guatemalan free to air Television Stations, channels 3, 7, 11 & 13. The law states that national TV stations are to be owned by Guatemalan nationals, however these stations are owned by a Mexican national who lives in Mexico. All 4 stations are blatantly pro-government and provide it with millions of dollars of free advertising spots, that are prepared by the governments own propaganda department and run un-edited and unquestioned as “news items” during the main bulletins. The journalists are barely literate and few have much more than a 6th grade education. Accidents, rapes, murders, kidnappings and cocaine busts etc., are put to mood music and each news item is produced as if it were a bad version of a Bryan de Palma trailer for a horror movie. On the main news bulletin on the 24th of December, we were treated to a “news-break” by one of these intrepid reporters who informed the nation that at midnight the Son of God was due to be born. This was presented as a fact and there was no mention that this event was actually the 2,014th anniversary of a highly dubious historic event, but thats another story. This same reporter then presented us with the “fact”, that the very first creature to see the baby son of God was a rooster lurking in the manger, who was also sheltering his hens in the stable. Not content with just mentioning this amazing “fact”, he then went on for at least a couple of minutes (which seems like hours on tv) explaining how the Virgin was laying on the straw with her legs apart which provided the nosey rooster with a birds eye view (sorry about the pun) of all the goings on. The reporter finally finished his “factual” report, advising his audience that they should respect all animals as they were Gods creatures and that chickens in particular should be respected as they had the honoured position in the animal kingdom of having witnessed the birth of the baby Jesus. I didnt know anything about this of course, and I probably have to blame the fundamentalist Christian Brethren Cult in which I was raised, for not having either known about these “facts” or having deliberately covered them up, as their elders would have felt threatened by the almost divine nature of chickens, especially the roosters.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 06:07:38 +0000
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