PERILS OF POLITICAL TALK SHOWS - VOTER BEWARE!

Political talk shows, embellished with voter education undertones, are all the rage now in Kenya's media landscape. No doubt they play an important role. But great care should be taken by those hosting the shows. Make any undue value judgement and the audience will start looking at you questionably.

In a popular show aired on 24/10/12, for example, the guest was at some point addressed in racial terms. And he was told to his face that some of the problems of landlessness at the coast, were partly because of, 'you people.' 

He painstakingly had to explain that he is first a Kenyan, that his racial extraction was secondary, and I volunteer to add, immaterial in the discussion.

I have no problem with a little aggression in the talk shows but this has to be sensibly tempered. The choice of word must also not be tainted by prejudicial, stereotypical or derogatory insinuations.

And if, for instance, a member of the panel looks at the guest with a lens of racial, tribal or ethnic affiliation, that is the same lens the audience will start looking at the panelist with.

RELIGION: THE NEXT FRONTIER OF TRIBALISM

A sacking in the Kenyan Cabinet has precipitated a fallout that has sucked in religion into the already dirty field that is politics. The trend has for a long time been to link top political appointments to ethnic or tribal extractions of the beneficiaries. So is religion the next frontier of tribalism?

My belief is that if one deliberately sets out to pin-point instances of tribalism, one is going to encounter so many cases of the same. Why? If you are looking at the world with tribal lenses, all you will see is tribalism everywhere.

And therein lies the danger of dragging religion into this dangerous way of playing politics. Beware. Be warned.