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Laundry Day

65
Laundry Day

Seven-hour talk about domestic underwear and 500 dollars? Are you serious?

- Do you remember Friday's Big Talk?”, my colleague wonders.

I don't remember. Big Talk? What is it? I remember "High Hopes", "Big Win", " Great Race", "Big Chow-Down". I even remember Laundry Day. But do not remember Big Talk.

The colleague wonders why I don't remember. It was an almost eight-hour press conference of Lukashenka held two years ago. And some of this kind is planned on Friday. Perhaps, it will last even longer. It's cool, isn't it?

Yeah, now I remember. Two years ago, February, I was on a business trip to Moscow. The editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta calls: "While you're walking around theatres, Lukashenka had a seven-hour press conference in Minsk. Write about it, now. Readers don't care that you're in Moscow, they have the right to know what's going on".

I had to stare at the videotape and verbatim records. And the blacker the night was, the more terrifying an unbearable futility of those seven hours was. Hours of video records, kilometers of verbatim records, tons of empty words. Such a "Big Talk" should have raised questions, but the only question was only one: how did they all, who were present in the hall, do without diapers, if they were not allowed to go to the toilet? There were no other questions. There was nothing to write about.

Should I have written about Aliaksandr Lukashenka's underwear discussed in detail, about the Belarusian children, who, according to him, "catch limo by the age of seventeen," about the most honest, from his point of view, officials, or about the salary of five hundred dollars, promised for a hundred and twenty fifth time? The talk about underwear and 500 dollars lasted more than seven hours. It was a fatal, undisguised void. It's a complete lack of even a rough idea of what people were interested in, a maniacal desire to waste his breath. Let them discuss panties rather than pensions. Let them quote and guess the true nature of words. They just should not think critically.

All right, this is the format of "Laundry Day" - not the French comedy of the sixties (La grande lessive), but a vulgar show on Russian television at the beginning of this century. It's a spam program - the TV host who goes all sorts of rogue and the crowd in the studio. Everything coincides. Only the show took only one hour of airtime - a full cycle of the washing machine. It was supposed that a viewer loaded the washing machine and went to watch TV. The show was over, you could go hang out the washing.

But what kind of a washing machine would work seven and a half hours? It's a working day of a big washing house. Oh, I'm sorry, but my subconscious immediately recalls a famous joke: "Is it a washing house? - ...d**n house, it's the Ministry of Culture! My subconscious, oh, come on!

Today one can arrest, judge and kill with impunity - viewers and journalists will be watching the show like they once watched Escrava Isaura. It may last seven hours or even ten hours. Are you also going to ruin the day of your life for watching? Do you think there will be anything new? May he promise not $500 as he has done for twenty years in a row, but, for example, $600? Or will he tell about his socks instead of underwear? Or won't he call Belarusian children idiots?

However, the history of two years ago had an unexpected and wonderful continuation. Seven-hour laundry without diapers stuffed up all the drains on February 3, 2017. Two weeks later, on February 17, the first March of Angry Belarusians took place in Minsk followed by other marches in other cities and towns. And Belarusians broke the parasite decree. If now the scenario repeats itself - let him talk at least for 24 hours. The main thing is not to waste the day of your life on this pointless show. Unlike Lukashenka's words, it will fall into oblivion.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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