Call me by my name, says McAdams

(Representational image)

Journalistic gaffes are not new, but rarely has one gone so viral as the one where a well-known television anchor vents a lot of righteous anger on the wholly wrong man. While discussing Ukraine recently, he kept calling Bohdan Nahaylo, chief editor of Kyiv Post, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute; both wrongly tagged in the news programme.

After a rant that ran without a single punctuation while addressing the man who was not McAdams as McAdams, the newsman refused to pause for breath till the real McAdams finally managed to get a word in edgeways and said he was the one and the only McAdams at the moment.

And despite the journo’s expression that suggested McAdams might be wrong about not being McAdams, McAdams held his ground that he was Mr McAdams and none other. He never was and he never would be anyone except a McAdams; however much someone insisted to the contrary.

The meme world exploded. Social media had nothing else to say whole day. All brains fused into one on this nationally televised boo-boo. It has often been pondered upon as to what can a post-pandemic planet plot for future entertainment. Technology, constantly multiplying amusement avenues, audience ADHD, all have to be taken into account. And now it is crystal-clear where new art lies and what shape it will take. It is in universal moments shared by large populations in the kind of comic relief only genuinely oops moments can provide on the world stage when the headline is war or pestilence.

This is reality TV, this is rap. A haiku, street theatre, the shortest one-act play in recent history with dialogues to die for. It is fiction and non-fiction rolled into one. It is sit-down comedy with one-liners delivered hotly and with clear enunciation by actors who are pure gold at improv:

‘Dear host, I have not said a word yet. I don't know why you are yelling at me.’

‘I am not yelling at you. I am talking about Mr McAdams.’

‘I am Mr McAdams!’

In one of those quicksilver climax scenes where the anti-hero wins hands down, McAdams became telly lore there and then. An on-air typo you can live off forever, an audio-visual treat in rewinds. Nothing like star scribes saying the right words to the wrong person. The undelivered monologues boomerang, back into the same mouth that so vociferously sent them out into the world just a moment ago. Verbiage returned to sender.

McAdams is seen spluttering at this blatant misuse of his name – a name perhaps called out with pride at school award functions and great respect at office meetings, and now so easily given away to another man right under his very nose. In a lambasting that lasted under two minutes, McAdams had been asked to take a chill pill. Do watch the ending, when that prescription changes hands.