Dear Njoki,
Let me at once anticipate comments — yours and those of everyone who’ll disagree with me — by stating that I don’t hate you and that I have nothing to gain whatsoever, save the knowledge that I never impotently stood by while you tore down the little civilization we have built, from this quick note. Neither am I against your views in toto nor your right to express them.
I don’t mean to be damning, but it isn’t within my power to guarantee I won’t be. I am only afraid that, by writing this, I am going too low for my dignity and stand a square chance of losing my standing among my peers. But, be that as it may, this has to be done.
I have read a number of your articles. By this I don’t mean to imply I am an avid follower, but that the views contained herein are occasioned and informed, not just by the good sense of those whose similar opinions have reached me, but also by a passable knowledge of and credible appreciation for your knack for rising by climbing atop the bones of those you destroy every week.
You see, Njoki, getting people to know you isn’t synonymous with progress. Readership hardly ever passed for influence and virtue. By the principle of charity, which has borne the brunt of blatant abuse in every article you write, I have done my best to excuse you.
Because sometimes, let’s face it, you somehow manage to rake some sense into the nondescript words you write. This is exactly the problem; that even when you make sense, the way in which you do it is so repulsive, you end up casting the truth in the wrong light.
I cannot bring myself to endorse you to any reader, however high their opinion of you may by now be, and however much sense you may make. This is because, as I have already implied, your views are ensconced within the vile wrapping of language so insolent, it borders on the foul (and sometimes actually IS foul).
You package yourself as a feminist. I don’t buy that. What you are is a finger-wagging, panty-waving, vitriol-spewing, raving lunatic, the products of whose idle mind regularly insult the sensibilities of a hapless public. That’s not an insult. If you were another person observing yourself from this side of the newsprint, they would be your sentiments. In fact, come to think of it, your articles have already opined exactly the same of people like you. Read through them again.
We have had enough of your nonsensical inanities and don’t wish to suffer any more of them. You have shown yourself incapable of the least regard for the people who read you. Given, your vileness may have been meant to attract attention in the beginning. But by now you should know that you have the attention you seek and try to be more useful than serve up childish rants every time you put pen to paper. To be honest, your weekly bile fails to impress in any way save for the carelessness with which it is fabricated and the utter flippancy with which it treats of people and their good name.
You don’t have to be nasty to correct people, and you have to understand that people are different. I thought you would know this, belonging as you do to the generation that you do. In no way am I asking you to kowtow to senseless political correctness, the real enemy we all face; I am asking that, in your campaign to bring sense to the world, you don’t lose that sense yourself.
You have adversaries galore (I am glad to report I am not one of them). Many times, getting people offended is a good sign. In your case though, I wouldn’t be so sure. At this rate, your articles will hardly be a proud memory in your adulthood, when you do reach it. They belong in the dustbin of literature, lest they detract from the patrimony of so noble an art.
That’s it Njoki. That’s it, but not all. Let me again anticipate comment by stating that this isn’t meant to condemn you. I just mean to wake you up to the reality of the desolation you are causing around you. At this rate, you face the danger of one day waking up and finding yourself encrusted in the ashes of your destruction, the proud but lonely winner of a Pyrrhic victory.
A thousand criticisms there have been more benign, but bluntness, I believe, is warranted where the damage is already of such an extent that delicacy is downright useless. Say what you may of this. But I know that, for the name of common sense, the reputation of the writing profession and the defenceless whose raw hides you impudently wallop every week, I have done my duty.
Yours,
A fellow writer, who hasn’t claimed to be better and is sad that he has had to come this low.
Feature image: Source unknown.
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