Lunacy on Loop: How Donald Trump, the short-fingered vulgarian, killed a bit of a Mysorean from a distance of 15,000 km
“This is the news in Special English”
It is difficult for anybody else to understand this, but there is no better way of saying it: Donald Trump has managed to kill a tiny bit of me from a safe distance of about 15,000 km.
(No, not by imposing 27% tariff on cheap Indian sethjis. Yawn.)
When POTUS signed an executive order on March 14 reducing the “statutory functions” of the United States Agency for Global Media, the strokes of his signature screeched across continents, and screamed “stupid, stupid, stupid” in my ears.
For, the U.S. Agency for Global Media was the body that ran Voice of America.
By cutting off funds to the agency, Trump was effectively shutting down VOA, the radio station that was a window to the world for millions across the globe, and one of the key reasons why yours truly became a journalist, not an engineer.
It is a deep, personal loss and, as George Clooney might say, I offer my fullest sympathies to those who cannot understand, or empathize.
***
In the lunacy on loop that is now America’s jingle, Trump’s order silenced the staffers and studios of VOA for the first time since 1942.
Its transmitters went blank on the 41 and 49-metre bands on short-wave radio. A static slide (above) greeted readers on its website voanews.com.
What despots and dictators, jammers and competitors, had not managed to do in 83 years—what the Soviet Union had failed to counter during the Cold War; what China had failed to crush during the Tiananmen Square uprising—a US President had succeeded with his own hand.
All it took for America to lose the Information War, it would seem, was the blazing ignorance of the circus buffoons at 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue.
Since it was first broadcast in German at the height of World War II to counter Nazi and Japanese propaganda, VOA had been America’s first touchpoint for those who were not its citizens.
(By law, VOA is not allowed to be aired inside the United States.)
By one recent count, it reached over 350 million (35 crore) unduplicated listeners, viewers, and digital and social media users, in 48 languages besides English.
America spent about $267 million per year (roughly one dollar per head) to enter so many eyes and ears.
It paid 0% tariff for it.
To think a reality TV host squandered such valuable real estate boggles the mind.
***
The way Trump and his provincial hillbillies put it, VOA was up to no good.
“Have you heard what’s coming out of the Voice of America? It’s disgusting, disgusting to our country,” the American president taunted in his trademark rant at the news media.
On March 12, when VOA’s White House correspondent of Indonesian origin asked Ireland’s visiting prime minister a question on Gaza, Trump butted in and asked, “Who are you with?” When she said Voice of America, Trump exclaimed, “No wonder!”
Two days later, came the executive order—execution order, actually—on Voice of America.
And, the next day, the Ides of March, an imbecilic statement titled ‘Voice of Radical America’ (above) which listed all the perceived faults of VOA.
Perceived by the airheads in the Trump Administration, that is.
VOA, they said, was:
# Infiltrated by anti-American, pro-Islamic state interests
# Biased towards Islamic state factions in Iran
# Cancelling broadcasts under pressure from the Chinese
# Employing a Russian anti-US propagandist
# Having questions on what constitutes white privilege
# Running a segment on transgender migrants seeking asylum
# Not calling Hamas and its members “terrorists”
The Russians, Chinese and Iranians, together, couldn’t have come up with a more farcical charter of allegations against the state-owned American broadcaster.
Certainly, this was not the Voice of America I knew for 43 years.
***
In the early 1980s, two uncles of mine soldered radio into my wet ears, and willy-nilly set me on the road to a career in journalism.
After a hard day at work in Bangalore’s great PSUs, Juppi and Ajilli (as they were called) would tuck into their spotless-white pajamas and spend the rest of the evening trying to tune into the radio stations of the world on the family’s diode radio.
There was a long, mesh antenna running across the length of the house; another contraption was on the roof.
It took a while for the radio to warm up.
Dialing the knob even a fraction of a degree less or more would mean not being able to listen clearly to Suzanne Dowling’s music program Soundabout on Radio Australia, or John Tidmarsh’s magazine show Outlook on BBC.
The eclectic listening of the uncles would go on well into the night, a bit of this and a bit of that, sometimes furtively so that no one else in the household would hear and holler.
It’s impossible to imagine today, but listening to international radio required patience, practice—and passion. And a weltanschaaung that went beyond the echo chambers of the day: Akashvani, Vividh Bharati, and Radio Ceylon.
***
It was the insouciance of those evenings and nights that had me hooked to radio long after the holidays ended and I returned home.
Naturally, BBC and Radio Australia were on top of the list, but there was a whole range of stations to search for and relish if you had a good radio.
# The cheery tone of the Armed Forces Radio and TV Network on Saturdays
# The gruff voices of Radio Moscow that matched the dour faces of its leaders
# The lilting Scandinavian accent of Radio Netherlands
# And then there was Voice of America. It wasn't quite BBC, could never be, but it offered a different view from across the pond.
Sitting glued to the live commentary of the launch of the first space shuttle ‘Columbia’ and writing it down by hand into a scrapbook; listening to correspondent Wayne Corey signing off from Beijing at nearly the same time every evening; hearing the deep baritone of Willis Conover hosting the Jazz Hour, these and other experiences were baked into my memory by VOA.
Each weekday at 6 pm IST, there was ‘The News in Special English’, where the script was read ever so slowly so that those new to English could catch the drift. There was even a free Special English Dictionary on offer.
When you are barely into your teens, propaganda is the last thing on your mind, but to hear Trump and his cronies say an America's state broadcaster was belching out “radical anti-American” stuff takes the breath away, given that VOA at that time was a wing of the United States Information Service. Its staffers were essentially foreign service officers.
If anything, it could have been accused of just the opposite, of serving as a mouthpiece of so-called American values and the American way of life, and condititioning young minds like mine around the world (albeit in vain).
When Ronald Reagan stood at Brandenburg Gate and said, “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” I was there, if not in flesh and blood, at least by my 12-band Sony.
***
My uncles were regularly in touch with many of these foreign radio stations, writing to the hosts, placing song requests, etc, and I happily followed suit.
Result: VOA stickers, VOA posters, VOA pens, VOA t-shirts, VOA schedules, and the VOA monthly magazine were strewn all over my room, jostling for space with similar (free) merchandise from other global radio stations.
(An early VOA sticker was stuck on the dust jacket of a Chambers Dictionary.)
Back in those days, collecting QSL cards was a minor hobby for boys of my age and inclination.
These were postcards sent by the radio station in receipt of reports from listeners acknowledging that a program broadcast by the station had been heard on this day of the week, at this hour and minute, and on this frequency.
I had a few of those cards from VOA, and a couple from its sister outfits Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
There was a bit of buzz for a few days when it was announced that VOA would use the transmitters of Roopavahini in Sri Lanka to broadcast into India.
It meant better reception and it was something to exult about if you were a radio buff whose idea of a program is not Mann ki Blot.
***
To see that kind of relationship being torn down, that kind of legacy being thrown away by a "short-fingered vulgarian" who cannot ache his thumb beyond tonight’s ratings, is no surprise.
Madder things are in store.
Like others of his ilk (wink, wink) Trump and his cronies would like the Voice of America to be the Voice of Donald Trump. But to cede space to the information ambitions of Russia and China, Iran and Qatar, tells you that the loss is entirely America’s.
On the American TV show ’60 Minutes’, VOA’s chief national corespondent Steve Herman was asked how the world would see the impending closure of the radio station. (It has got a minor reprieve from the courts.)
“They will ask, what the hell is going on in the United States of America?” said Herman.
What the hell, indeed?
Maybe the MAGA movement needs a MATA moment: Make America Transmit Again.
As I said earlier, it is a deep, personal loss, and George Clooney offers his fullest sympathies to those who cannot understand, or empathize, on my behalf.
Also read: Who gave the name Akashvani to what became All India Radio?
Heartfelt condolences. Can feel your pain. What is one supposed to do when loony autocrats land up at the helm of affairs, on account of loonier people who brought them to power.