Olsi, just like Edi, is a man...

Alfred Lela

For years, television debates have become iconoclasts of the concept of the media as a means for the public to understand events and protect themselves from abuses of power. Moderators cannot be blamed for this, at least not entirely, because they are prey to the zeitgeist for sensationalism, click bites, large audiences, and the ad money that comes with that.

This must be said, especially with an increasingly vulgar, unread, disinterested public searching for entertainment, not knowledge. It has always been this way; in fact, what has changed is the proliferation of communication platforms and technology, which have enabled everyone to take a place in the arena of public participation.

Having said this, both Blendi Fevziu and his colleagues and panelists such as Baton Haxhiu and his colleagues must be understood. Last night, when the suspicion of participation in drug trafficking Olsi Rama was being discussed, which rightfully turned into an agenda setter, almost in all TV debates, the attempt to undo the agenda that the news had set, but also the news itself, was not avoided.

The best way to do this is to dramatize the debate, so to talk about the issue from its margins, making the most trivial things central. Yesterday's panel, put in front of the chairman of the parliamentary group of the Democratic Party, was, I can't say, by chance or selection, to undo the essence and shift the agenda. Baton Haxhiu and Iris Luarasi put themselves at the head of this effort.

As far as I know, the media and the debate lost the battle with Bardhi, but it doesn't matter who won or lost. What matters in this case is why the debate is trivialized. The more banal the minds are, and they mostly are, the more they will deal with the trivial, with the side, with the frivolous instead of the serious, with trifles instead of substance.

An episode of this effort belongs to Baton Haxhi, an indeed wise man, with the trick that I have my intelligence for myself but also to throw it to those less intelligent than me. For Baton, Olsi Rama is a hedonist, i.e., someone who indulges in the pleasures of life. According to Batoni, Olsi likes two things in life: football and the other things we all want. In an environment of men with masculine connotations, i.e., p…. (however, even here, we don't have to be confident because more and more p...is being disqualified as the main totem).

Fevziu, an Albanian man and the moderator of the show, asked for one more drool from his audience on the imaginary steps of the arena and asked him what men enjoy.

Baton's finding to turn off the light of the essence of the debate was promising, but the effects were short-lived. Even the most vulgar minds knew that last night the debate should be “Is the brother of the most powerful man in the country responsible; is he part of the drug trade? The accusation was based on reasonable suspicion, on logically connected points, with files procured by the state and came from a high exponent of the largest opposition party.

So the debate was: Is Olsi involved, not as the citizen Rama but as the prime minister's brother? Were the documents sewn up so that he escaped responsibility? Did prosecutors cover up his involvement? Have they been promoted to high positions for this 'service' to the prime minister?

Covering these questions with the character's hedonism, his desires for football and p…. are banalities, for the very simple fact that almost all men, here or in other countries, do this: They watch a lot of football and are sad why they have so little p...

However, this attempt to portray Olsi as a hedonist, i.e., an old town jolly, is a used scenario that Baton's predecessors in creating the myth of Edi Rama have put into circulation since the early 90s. This myth also saved Rama from the trap of nude photos on the beaches of France, which were published to harm him and, in the end, helped him to be re-elected as the head of the municipality.

Batoni and others, let them try to raise a similar myth about Olsi, but this does not avoid the question: do you have any statesmen to offer or only p... men?  

* iconoclasts - people who try to undo or attack established and popular beliefs or concepts.