The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

THE Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes 3:8 says that ''there's a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.'' The overwhelming majority of Bahamian politicos are standing in solidarity with the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) as it continues to mourn the passing of its former chairman, Bradley Roberts. Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis and former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham along with other prominent Free National Movement (FNM) members have set aside their political swords and spears in order to express condolences to the PLP and the Roberts family. Roberts was a worthy opponent of the FNM. He was severely critical of the Ingraham and Minnis administrations. As a PLP, it was his job to keep the FNM's feet to the fire.

However, in light of his recent passing, and the fact that he has yet to be interred, it would be uncivil to drag Roberts' name through the mud in order to score political brownie points. But not everyone is willing to demonstrate political solidarity. Within 24 hours of Roberts' passing, former ZNS Radio personality Christina "Chrissy Love" Thompson posted a Facebook video of her giving a five minute profanity laced broadside against the fallen PLP chairman emeritus. Mincing no words, Chrissy Love gloated over Roberts' demise, despite admitting during the rant that she knew several of his children. Despite the hate she gleefully demonstrated, the Facebook video received well over 300 likes from Bahamians, who apparently endorsed its message.

It was a new low for a woman few would otherwise expect to show anything remotely resembling civility. The five minute tirade would've made the late irreverent American stand-up comedians George Carlin and Richard Pryor blush. Chrissy Love's political hatred of the PLP and Roberts was on full display. Considering the fact that The Bahamas is a social and religious conservative bastion, I always felt that Chrissy Love was not a good fit for Bahamian radio, despite her talent and erudition. Her unconventional message coupled with one of her oft repeated Marxist quotes about religion being the opium of the masses suggests that she would've been more at home with the now defunct Air America radio network in the USA where she currently resides. Chrissy Love is probably bitter about being unceremoniously removed from ZNS Radio by the Christie administration in 2012 and from Guardian Radio in 2016. Not judging Chrissy Love, but that is a long time to be holding resentment and bitterness.

The late Coretta Scott-King once said that ''hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.'' This was a woman whose husband, Dr Martin Luther king Jr, was assassinated in April of 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray. Nine years prior to King's passing, Mike Wallace and Louis Lomax produced the groundbreaking documentary film The Hate that Hate Produced in 1959, which was about Elijah Muhammad's controversial and racially divisive Nation of Islam. Throughout the 1960s, the Nation of Islam's ideology was juxtaposed to the ideology of King, at least in the minds of millions of Americans. And in the end, the love that King preached triumphed over the hate that Muhammad and Malcolm X preached. Had Muhammad's ideology of hate prevailed, the US would've been gripped by sectarian and racial violence today.

In closing, Chrissy Love and her supporters who endorsed her message would do well to emulate Sir Arthur Foulkes and the late Bahamian journalist, Lionel Dorsett – both of whom suffered political and economic victimisation by the Pindling administration. Yet when Sir Lynden died in August of 2000, neither Foulkes nor other prominent FNMs gloated over his demise. The entire country rallied around the PLP and the Pindling family. Despite what transpired between FNMs and PLPs between 1970 --1992, FNMs today still consider Sir Lynden to be the father of the nation.

When the FNM under Ingraham toppled the PLP in August 1992, Dorsett did not seek retaliation against those PLPs who caused him and his family unnecessary hardship. Love prevailed.

Whatever Chrissy Love believes that the PLP did to her and her once promising career in journalism in The Bahamas, it was simply classless of her to broadside the deceased. I believe she is better than that. She went way too far.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport,

Grand Bahama,

November 4, 2018.