ANYONE recall Chris Rock having a go at John McCain during the stand-up comedian’s Kill the Messenger tour last year?
“I don’t need a president with a bucket list!” Rock fired.
A bucket list, by the way, is a term inspired by the film The Bucket List whose main plot follows two terminally ill men on their road trip with a wish list of things to do before they “kick the bucket”.
So Old John, according to Rock, was too old to become America’s next president because, presumably, he would kick the bucket before implementing his policies!
“When you die at 72, no matter what you die of, it’s natural causes,” Rock continued.
“Even if you get hit by a truck, it’s natural causes. ‘Cause if you was younger, you’d have got out the way!”
Scrutator wonders what Rock would have said if he knew about Lesotho politicians.
Anthony Manyeli, leader of the NIP, is over 90.
ABC leader Tom Thabane is 70, while Metsing Lekhanya of the BNP is 71.
I suspect Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili, 64, has been watching too much of the American comedian.
A fortnight ago Mosisili could have found inspiration from Rock when he launched a broadside at his opponents who want him to step down as the country’s premier.
“The funny thing about these opposition leaders is that they are way too old (ba fetile lilemo tsa bona tsa pallo . . . ke bo ntate-moholo),” he told his party’s leadership conference.
“However, the LCD leader they complain about is still young, a spring chicken, compared to them.”
He obviously missed the import of the argument by a very wide margin.
The issue is not about age of flesh but age in power.
Yet Scrutator thinks we could do with younger leaders.
We are cursed to have such a large battalion of so old opposition leaders.
It’s shocking that even at those advanced ages they still fancy themselves as potential leaders.
Bo ntate, your days are over.
Those bones and lungs you keep straining by hurling insults at opponents at rallies will one day just give in.
When you are at that advanced age it’s important to conserve the morsels of life left in you.
Phew, do I hear the professional bootlickers screaming and baying for my blood?
Well, it’s a normal reaction.
The truth hurts.
The geriatrics you keep worshipping and pushing forward even if it’s apparent they are tired have neither the ideas nor the energy to lead this country out of gripping poverty.
Soon they will even be too old to think for themselves.
And to those blind loyalists — and they are many — better smell the coffee before you waste your votes by casting your ballots for men with a bucket list!
See what beer can do to people?
If they don’t talk about cows and crocodiles they talk about the beer they will be drinking.
Something like how flat it is or how a certain lager causes hangover headaches.
And such bar talk — the very few times it leaves watering holes — can find its way to “status updates” on Facebook and other social networking sites.
No I am wrong.
I discovered last week that such bar talk can make it into newspapers when it’s carried to the newsroom by concerned scribes.
Of course such stories don’t have wings to fly from that dingy bar next to the filling station to that newsroom across town.
Imagine my horror then when I opened one national weekly last week and discovered that a bar-talk of a story had made it to Page 2!
“Furore over Botswana-brewed Maluti beer,” screamed the headline.
Determined to get to the bottom of the matter, the scribe accosted a busy manager to seek an explanation why his favourite beer had caused a “furore” at a watering hole.
Perhaps this week we must have a follow-up on the “mother of all hangovers” that the Botswana-bottled Maluti causes.
If not, then that bar must put on the door a “we are not allowed by law to sell beer to journalists on deadline” notice.
Now that will cause a real furore for many of our scribes who would kill for the merry waters.
Before the “beer in dumpies furore” story got me drunk, I had managed to flip to the next page where I came face to face with the real “furore” that beer can cause in a newsroom.
The scribes at that paper still have not come to an agreement as to how many students died during the strike at our only university (I will explain later why I say it is the only one).
“Two NUL students died on the same day after being shot . . .” revealed the paper.
But a story right under this had a different figure.
“Calm and semblance of normalcy returned to the National University of Lesotho . . . after last week’s mayhem, which saw a student lose her life,” the other story said.
Adding to the “furore” was a Mickey-Mouse story penned by the solicitor on the same page.
And if you thought that all this does not constitute a real “furore” then check when the solicitor left NUL.
He left our only university 21 years ago but his prose is still pathetic — the secondary-school kind.
Twenty-one years means a child was born, went to school and possibly became pregnant.
Yet the solicitor is still a greenhorn struggling to get basic news aspects right.
By the way you still want to know why I said NUL is the only university in Lesotho.
Well, the other one still has not proven to me that it’s not a glorified high school.
Whenever the “university’s” students open their mouths, I hear . . .
No, we will probably talk about this issue some day.
In the meantime I want to know who has become so generous to supply crates of Maluti to that newsroom.
And which Maluti are they drinking — from Botswana or Lesotho?
But wherever it is from, let the staggering continue.
