politics – Page 3 – don't confuse the narrator

poetry, prose and politics

In a piece on the BBC website Magazine section, the historian David Cannadine talks about ties. The article starts:

The former governor of the state of New York, Mario Cuomo, once observed that in a modern democracy “you campaign in poetry but you govern in prose”.

which certainly caught my attention.

But Cannadine then makes a strange leap to connect this to the subject of ties:

Translated from speech to dress, […] suggests that you campaign wearing an open neck shirt, but govern wearing a tie.

To press the flesh and get yourself elected, it seems essential to dress down and appear casual, like ordinary voters, rather than be buttoned up or formal.

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censorship, censure and nonsense

An email with the subject line ‘escultura censurada’ caught my attention a couple of days ago and had me wondering whether the sculpture in question had been censured or censored.

Reading on, I think both verbs were appropriate.
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insults and anger

Under the headline “The demon head,” today’s digital edition of the (UK) Metro is running a story about a primary school headteacher banned “after a torrent of racist outbursts.”

The disciplinary panel chairman is reported as saying that the headmaster demonstrated ‘racial and religious prejudice’ and made ‘offensive and derogatory’ comments, and the Metro claims that:

the catalogue of foul-mouthed comments […] included calling a prospective teacher a ‘P*ki’

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Now that, all over Spain, we’ve dutifully reflected without concentrating, and done our civic duty and voted for whoever we’ve voted for, abstained in protest, or blotted our ballots, the results are out. The Guardian website headline reads:

Which is all very well, but although popular can be correctly translated as ‘of the people’, the PP, the Partido Popular, is not what I would call a People’s party.
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day of reflection

Today is a day of reflection prior to the Spanish elections tomorrow, and the Junta Electoral has reminded us that on such days la ley prohibe todo acto de propaganda – the law bans the staging of any act of propaganda or electoral campaigning.

That has been ruled to include the recent protest gatherings – las manifestaciones y concentraciones – across the country, so I suppose I must keep quiet and reflect. (But without concentrating.)