Entertainment pundit Whitney Boakye-Mensah opines that parents owe it as a responsibility to raise their children to rather glean inspiration from public figures instead of aspiring to be like them; failure to do so, she argues is an indictment on the guardian.
Whitney Boakye-Mensah, known to be an event management expert made this submission on the back of the scuffle that ensued between Shatta Wale and Aisha Modi.
Speaking on Peace FM’s Entertainment Review, Thursday, Whitney said: “It’s high time we stopped throwing in the role model argument when some personalities are fighting. Me, I see it as a failure on the part of a parent if your child’s first role model is Shatta Wale. I see it as a sign of failure on your part.”
Prompted by the host Kwasi Aboagye that she was not being fair to Shatta Wale, Whitney retorted, “Your child can like Shatta Wale’s songs, Stonebwoy’s songs, admire how Messi plays soccer and drive inspiration from it but to say I want to be like Shatta Wale, you can’t be like Shatta Wale. There is only one Shatta Wale. You can only imitate him but you can’t be him.”
She also chastised the general public for being hypocritical. According to Whitney, celebrities engage in altercations partly because the public shows interest in the feud. Ironically, the same people who invested resources to watch videos of the encounter turn around to chide the celebrities.
“Three million people were watching Aisha Modi and it was day time, office time... We always say the celebrities are disgracing themselves. If we don’t watch their videos, they’ll certainly desist from the act,” she observed.
“We buy data and watch them. You know when they come online, they don’t talk until they start hitting the numbers? We like the vulgar ones; that’s the kind of people we are. Don’t take him as a role model; it is not compulsory.”
Last week, Shatta Wale and Aisha Modi topped trends after they locked horns on social media. Aisha, a staunch fan of Stonebwoy had shared a photo of her icon traveling around the world, featuring international artistes and making money. That post did not come without a dig at other musicians who according to Aisha were sitting home idle.
“The fact that he decided to roam and take pictures in this corona era does not make him hardworking. Stop fooling,” a commenter said to be a Shatta Wale fan wrote.
This triggered a reaction from Aisha as she retorted: "Tell your king to stop sleeping with his cousin and work hard. You fools should bring yourselves and you’ll hear nonsense."
A livid Shatta Wale rebutted, asking Aisha to respect herself.
"You claim to live at East Legon; I also reside there so try and step foot in my house and see if you won’t receive slaps. I will slap you and it will be worse than what Stonebwoy did to Angletown," he cautioned.