No more, No Les.

I would like to take this opportunity to officially ask Les Horton to put down his crayon, once and for all. His 'column' in the GDN is bland, pointless, rambling and seemingly written by someone in the 8-10 age group. His opinion(s) are flaccid and his arguments are unsubstantiated. His prose is shockingly colourless and infantile. I, and many others like me, have had enough of his patronizing tone. We, the people of Bahrain, do not deserve to be treated like retards. The Gulf Daily News, for all it's many, many shortcomings, remains one of Bahrain's only forums for discussion and opinion. Surely the literate masses deserve better than 'As I See It', the ramblings of an unspectacular mind scrawled onto paper by a lacklustre hand and published in all their monotony in the monochrome pages of mediocrity that has the audacity to label itself the 'Voice of Bahrain'. 

It is clear that the GDN struggles to find content. It is obvious that original thought is included as a mere afterthought; as padding between advertorials, press releases and cinema listings. So it is nothing less than tragic to think that something as rare as opinion be relegated to the desk of a second-tier hack with a genuine inability to explore an idea, an opinion or even a passing thought. Try as I might, I have never once been enlightened, excited, enthused or even merely interested in Mr. Horton's unstructured mumbling. If anything, I sympathise with his position, as unstructured rambling is something I do often, as can be evidenced right here on this blog. And that, Mr. Horton, is where your opinion should be confined. To some easily-accessible, inexpensive, tree-saving, entirely avoidable nether-region of the world wide web. Donate your printed words to someone interesting. To someone intelligent. To someone opinionated. To someone who will relish the opportunity to enlighten, argue or inform. Not Ali Al Saeed. Put down your crayon Mr. Horton. And then, use that point-and-click device the young 'uns love so much to 'surf' to www.blogger.com. It's free, easy and thankfully, obscure. 

Am I being harsh? I provide links to RANDOM columns for your perusal. Judge for yourselves. 

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=269522
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=269386
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=269313
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=269183

When confronted in the heavily-edited forum that is the letters section of the GDN, Mr. Horton had the decency to defend himself. In his own words (with comments in bold):

"I try to write about a broad mix of local or international issues, or personal experiences that I think others may relate to. (Try harder, or stop trying) "Some are intended to be light-hearted, since I don't believe people need lecturing to day after day and some are just thoughts about life which I believe will touch others. (i.e. shallow and/or lame) "Not everyone will like or relate to every column, but I like to think that each one touches someone. (They might, but only because the GDN is soft, strong and thoroughly absorbent) "I once wrote about being reunited with my brother after many years and received, as a result, a letter from one man who had been inspired by it to pick up the phone to his own brother for the first time in 20 years. (Way to save the world Les) "One lady in Saar wrote in response to my more personal columns that when she read them in the mornings, it felt like she was having coffee with a friend. (There it is... your audience. That one lady in Saar) "I hope you continue to read the column and find something to interest or entertain you, at least occasionally. (We live in hope, but the trees keep falling)

Enough Les. We've had enough. Please stop. The only people who will miss your scrawls as the stockholders of Crayola. We wish you well in all your future endeavours.