The internet as a real WMD

The internet has become a weapon of mass communication in the world of politics, best exemplified by Barack Obama, during his march to victory in the US presidential campaign. It can also be a WMD as bloggers and Face Book addicts, and multiple message aficionado’s retail scandal, jokes, truth and lies to a receptive viewing audience. It can even reach beyond politics and retail bad news to those who may have missed it in the traditional media.

Take for example the cartoon headed Ratatouille II that quickly made the rounds in Panama, following the Health Department’s discovery of dead rodents in a well known Chinese restaurant. Destructive indeed. I have not visited the restaurant since.

Now the cyber space explorers are winging their darts and comments about the latest flip flops of mayoral candidate Bosco Vallarino, who turns out to be a naturalized US citizen, making him ineligible to run for office according to most constitutional experts.

As he floundered like a beached whale changing his answers by the hour, he was getting some harsh treatment from the internet sidelines, like “Does the party of change really mean Gringos can rule again?” and: “How can we trust him when he’s ready to throw his US oath of allegiance in the garbage can”.

The uproar appears to be harming his party and the Martinelli alliance. will he stand down? Unlikely. Politicians have thick skins and tend to put personal ambition ahead of the public need or morality. Look back over the year and names jump out at you. Getting a resignation seems to be an almost impossible task whether it be over deaths from poisoned medicine, more deaths in a burning bus, a sports team returning home because the administrator “forgot” to pay the insurance bills, or unresolved murder charges.

In Japan, the buck really stops at the guilty one’s desk, and a public apology is sometime followed by an “honorable” exit from this life.

BORING NEWS. A reader has written complaining out the constant boring news in the media. Readers don’t want to know about ongoing mud slinging politicians, financial scandals, fraud and corruption he says. So should we become part of the problem and not report corruption?

He suggests that we should concentrate more on sex scandals as “sex sells”. Sex is only an internet click away.

Meanwhile we do receive and welcome “constructive” criticism.

CELL PHONE BLUES. Seen this week: A young female driver, turning in heavy traffic from Via España to Calle 42, a cell phone in one hand, a CD on its way to the player in the other. The steering wheel? Between her knees.

In a Japanese restaurant, much loved by the ye ye crowd, a woman a little beyond the 20’s with what looked like a first date. When they sat at the table she whipped out a cell phone, chatted away, with laughs and gestures. Her companion sat glumly looking at the menu, and then at the table for seven minutes, before she decided to bring him into her orbit. Why didn’t he leave and say “I’ll call you”? Cheaper, and he might get more talking time.

At every movie I have seen in the last year, cell phone users who don’t know where the off button sits, and think the phone more important than the movie or the comfort of others in the audience.

Time for cops to clamp down on cell phone users behind the wheel, and for restaurants and movie theater to hang up a sign near the entrance. “Leave your cell phones here.”