(Picture: Mail and Guardian Online) By Sarita Pillay
Recent online media reports covering Julius Malema’s nomination for a Feather award, in the drama queen category, were written with the expected media-on-Malema approach. The media probably knew that all that was needed to make the story was Julius’s reply. The Feather Awards were started this year by the gay community to raise dialogue around sexuality. The organisers of the awards picked well, dialogue is Malema’s forte and if nobody knew the awards existed before, now they do.
I found the that The Times composed the story quite effectively, a picture of a smiling Julius cutting a birthday cake with a scantily dressed local celeb at his side (completely unrelated to the story) along with the headline, "Julie’s such a drama queen, doll" would make even the most discerning of readers stop and read. Julius, the media’s jest, had returned and the ‘Julius the clueless’ theme, popular among many in the South African media, was the main angle of The Times. Julius’s apparent lack of understanding of the term ‘drama queen’ is used to great patronising effect through a quote.
The Sunday World, a tabloid, also opted for a humorous headline once Malema had rejected the nomination, "Hail Queen Ju-Ju baby! - But Malema spurns the royal title". The tabloid adds a twist to the story, quoting a mysterious ‘source’ as sighting the nomination as an orchestrated attempt by Malema’s political opponents to ridicule him. It is Malema after all, and journalists can't resist throwing the usual counter-revolutionary spanner into the works.
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