Tired of the boring fare everyone else seems to dish up? Satire of the highest quality from Biznews.com‘s inimitable Peter Wilhelm who drifts this week from Berlusconi’s “tanned” Obama gaffe through to the puking George Bush’s invention of a new Japanese phrase. Read it and weep some happy tears. Brilliant. – Alec Hogg
By Peter Wilhelm
Some military blobhead once misspoke himself and ordered the Austrian army to attack itself. It managed to kill 10,000 of its own men in 1788, assuring victory for the Ottomans, before the shagged-out dunce was recalled and made head of the Air Force – which the Austrians did not have then.
But we all make weird decisions. We in the media can look back to 1980 when our proudest liberal organ gave its entire front page to a praise-poem for Robert Mugabe, whom it appeared to regard as the second coming of Jesus.
Years later this frothy glorification of our northerly mass murderer was recanted. The lesson: always shrug when you’re sorry and move on. After the Italian crotch-snatcher Silvio Berlusconi remarked on how “suntanned” Barack Obama was, he blithely added that so was Michelle. The Obamas just smiled.
Accidentally turning to the dark side in public can set off virulent reactions. Here in my cardboard key-point warren, my noxious neighbour Gatvol van der Pomp was enraged by the new leader of the DA. He amplified his unenlightenment by calling on Radovan Krejcir to lead the Unfreedom Front despite being a “foreigner” stealing jobs from local gangsters.
But Verwoerd was also a foreigner. He was born in Mordor, where the shadows lie.
Politicians and the commentariat should always beware that their cultural lens may have been wrenched askew. A wise Chinese journalist, writing of the Stalin era, once observed: “There are certain things you are supposed to say and certain ways you are supposed to say them. ‘Tell the truth!’ is a command that you recite your lies correctly.”
We have long since entered the realm of Newspeak about true history, social acceptance, and gender. Thus poor old Kader Asmal – who can longer pour me a Scotch at 9:30 a.m. before discussing James Joyce – said this at the opening of the first democratic Parliament:
“Madam Speaker, today is unique. All of us in this House are going to be undergoing a sex change. We shall all be making maiden speeches.”
Today someone would take this feeble joke as a slur not only upon sexually- active female MPs but the entire LGBTI community making Cape Town their Shangri-La.
We really should strap duct tape over our mouths when speaking in public. A pickup line at a party is not: “Sorry, sorry – I thought you were knocked up. I didn’t know you were fat.” Was his face red!
The poor girl has ever since been living in an anorexia-bulimia rehab, gobbling down gobbets of fried pork in accordance with some variation of the Banting foodie crucifixion.
Then, when you do that, you must be very careful not to puke upon the lap of your diplomat dining companion, as George Bush Snr once did – giving rise to the Japanese expression bushu-suru or “to do a Bush”.
I guess Bush was having a slow day. He hadn’t got around to invading Iraq yet. His involuntary heave was misconstrued – but at least didn’t require translation. Perhaps that – translation from one mode of expression to another – is at fault in almost every storm in an eggcup. In Poland once, Jimmy Carter (he who had committed adultery in his heart) expressed his ambitions to understand the Poles’ “desires for the future”. His interpreter rendered this as: “I desire the Poles carnally.”
Now that machines do almost everything for us (including half-poached thinking) our computers have what are risibly called translation apps. I encountered on Facebook a message praising Etienne van Heerden (a superb writer) in Afrikaans, a language I blush to read and speak. So I clicked the English translation button, and this is what I got:
“Toorberg was a deep book, engaged and my absolute favorite-o. A because ek which the omgewing hallmarks and ek my could caught up and proposal. And me dixon, ek the gewonder as jy with you far-kyk op in that class sit: Where are jy still eendag turn with all you talente. Could jy nie but (with deernis) n bietjie vroeèr along andrè p brink also so beautiful gesit the nie?”
How many political blunders result from this type of artificial unintelligence? I suspect that many I’ve cited were locked into an airless chamber of preconceptions. They heard what they needed to hear – and the aftermath can be vicious. Opponents pelting each other with rotten mangos or worse.
Even in that golden bastion of democracy, North Korea, the defence chief irritated the dwarfish loony who leads the nation, Kim Jong Un, by falling asleep. He was accordingly executed by anti-aircraft guns.
So should you articulate a word – such as “smart” – in our current slough of talking past each other, you must remember to qualify this as “fascist ideologue”. Then go and have a quiet Red Bull and vodka and chill.
