Khalwale could only be upbeat about his chances

 

By PHILIP OCHIENGPosted Friday, February 25 2011 at 19:25

Even if Boni Khalwale says he will recapture Ikolomani, we, in the newspapers, should not feel constrained to announce in screaming headlines that he is “upbeat”. 

For, while news is our stock-in-trade, such an announcement has no news value whatever. Whenever a newspaper tells you in a headline something you already know, it is cheating you. 

It is wrenching money out of your pocket by what our police prosecutors call “false pretences”. Like some of you, I never cease to marvel because, despite my global peregrinations and much reading, I have never come across any “true pretence” or “right pretence” or “correct pretence” or “honest pretence”.

These are fine intellectual commodities which only Their Forensic Excellencies in the School of Law, the Bar, the Bench and the police headquarters can handle with respectable mental dexterity.

This luminous fog is reminiscent of what an Austrian media critic called Karl Kraus once dismissed as “the pseudo-facts of newspaper headlines.”

For the question is: When – after a court nullified his tenure and he proceeded to announce that he would take part in the by-lection, did Mr Khalwale leave any of you in any doubt that he was “upbeat” about winning?

Who squanders his time, money, energy and other meagre resources in such a contest unless he means to carry the victory?

Who in his right mind enters the fray if he is sure to lose? That is the reason that Mr Khalwale could not have been “downbeat” about the coming Ikolomani contest.

(Eric Shimoli, who hails from from there, informs me that “Ikolomani” was a Luhya corruption of the English words “gold mine” when, in early colonialism, that area of Ingo was thought to put Witwatersrand in the shade).

Though downbeat is not as common as upbeat, it is its antonym. To be “upbeat” (adjective) is to be optimistic, positive in attitude, enthusiastic about a project or a proposal.

If Mr Khalwale is “upbeat” about the coming political kidumbedumbwe, it is because he is sure to win it. He feels that his political future is as secure as the Ancient of Days.

On the other hand, to be “downbeat” (adjective) is to be dull and depressed. It is to lose hope in something or everything.

Who, knowing the twain, would not have been downbeat about the “consultation” meetings between President Kibaki and Premier Odinga?

Since the prepositions “up” and “down” (as prefixes to the word “beat”) are already well known to every reader, the only question is: In this context, what does the verb “beat” itself mean? The Anglo-Saxon beatan has yielded a plethora of meanings.

But I think the nuance concerning rhythm in poetry and beat in music is the answer here. The speedier the beat is, the more apt it is to “beat up” your spirit, raise it, make you upbeat.

The slower, the more likely it is to “beat down” the spirit, to dampen it, to make you downbeat.