Scotland
in the
heat
The Cafe 2
John Cameron ventures into very dangerous territory (21 December) when down-playing the existence and severity of the Armenian genocide. The problem is clearly a confusion over the co-existence of war with its attendant collateral on the one side and the intentional massacre of innocent civilians on the other.
The presence of war or civil war has been used as a smokescreen for genocide denial before, most recently in Rwanda which can serve as a modern day illustration of how people get sidetracked into political mazes when the planned extermination of the whole or part of a race is ongoing.
In Rwanda the presence of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Force and the conflict that accompanied the genocide has been used by genocide deniers to promote a ‘double genocide’ or ‘civil strife’ scenario, when the evidence for genocide is undeniable. To describe Armenian victims of genocide as caught up in first world war ‘turmoil’ is grossly insulting to the Armenian people. Hitler himself in August 1939 used the Armenian genocide as an example to promote the holocaust.
As chair of the Rwanda Scotland Alliance I am aware of the many unwarranted uses of ‘genocide’ to describe outbreaks of ethnic violence and oppression throughout the world. Genocide involves the deliberate intent to exterminate the whole or part of an ethnic group. This most certainly happened to the Armenians through organised planning, mass killings of civilians, deportations accompanied by the denial of food and water and mass rape. France’s historical record, even in recent decades, is indeed far from lily-white but two wrongs don’t make a right.
The ‘respected US historian Bernard Lewis’ was found guilty by the courts of concealing evidence contrary to his genocide denial and has been widely charged with historical revisionism. Far better to follow the Rwandan lead by commemorating those lost in genocide, openly acknowledging the horrors of what was done and thus paving the way for extraordinarily successful reconciliation and integration of previous sworn enemies.
Humankind is served very poorly by governments and commentators that hide the worst acts of human history behind the excuse of political and international turmoil. The world has yet to successfully learn its lesson from any genocide and, until Rwanda’s ‘Never Again’ response is accepted by Turkey and those who follow its lead, we have no real foundation of hope that today’s nations take the dangers and horrors of genocide seriously.
Dr Callum Henderson
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The jury is still out on
whether we have a
firewall fit for purpose
R D Kernohan
If you have to report or comment constantly and hurriedly, as journalists and broadcasters do, you’re bound to take short-cuts and follow trodden paths. Sometimes the best you can do is to find a better class of cliché. Even I, with more time now to think, dress up criticisms of media practice as good resolutions for 2012, though I never kept either a personal or professional New Year resolution myself.
I therefore urge good stylistic resolutions on the media with one general and one special dispensation, for I am a liberal pontiff on these matters as well as grandfather of an editor, even an editor-in-chief. Student newspapers these days aspire to grand titles as well as broad coverage.
The general dispensation is that much done in a hurry can be forgiven if it doesn’t become a habit. But the media, even when not as short-staffed as today, have always readily become creatures of habit. The special one is that if politicians adopt the weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable styles identified by Robin Downie in SR (14 December) it’s inevitable that they – and company chairpeople, high priests, union leaders, and council or NHS officials who have similarly ossified argots – must be quoted. They’d be quoted more effectively if they freshened up their language, and remembered that to ‘freshen up’ is often an occasion to get rid of waste matter.
But there are some matters on which I have prepared encyclicals and ukases, or (if you want papal and tsarist metaphors updated for the European Union), directives.
Resolution 1. Recognise that some words and usages, even if not dead, have lost all quality of life. ‘Military precision’ should have been stood down long ago, baby-boomers soothed to sleep, leafy suburbs swept up, and bad hair days neatly cropped. ‘World-class’ is reaching the end of its natural life, along with ‘marathon talks’. There is too much walking free on joyriding charges if the accused is ‘declared innocent’. And the Herald should know better than to watch ‘with bated breath’ for the mating of Edinburgh’s exhaustively-punned pandas. I add ‘sex-worker’, ‘adultism’ (from the Guardian on children’s rights) and ‘criminal justice partners’ (attributed to a Scottish Government report from Lord Carloway) to suggest that some quite young expressions deserve a very short life.
Have the courage of your convictions, whatever they are, about obscenities and – a concession this to trends of the time – ‘inappropriate language’. Either cut it out or spell it out.
Resolution 2. Remember that not all short words are good words. Some are used in ways which distort their meaning or, through exaggeration, distort the report. Some have little meaning at all. Examples are fury, rage, ban, veto, spree, sexy, hot, cool, tribute, and ‘product’, as used by financial advisers and their ilk. Add ‘ilk’. I would also gladly add ‘gay’ but the linguistic diversion there has gone so far that the problem now is to find fresh words for its original meaning.
Resolution 3. Have the courage of your convictions, whatever they are, about obscenities and – a concession this to trends of the time – ‘inappropriate language’. Either cut it out or spell it out.
Resolution 4. This is both the most important and most difficult one. Realise how quickly even good words and figures of speech go out of date in the brave new world – Shakespearean phrases, like biblical ones, emerge unscathed – of 24-hour channels and constantly updated websites. This has been most obvious with some of the robust metaphors linked to the Euro’s troubles and threats of ‘double-dip recession’. Instead of giving too long a list I mix some of them in a sentence that might even slip by on Radio 4: ‘The jury is still out on whether we have sufficient firepower and a firewall fit for purpose. But if we find a silver bullet for the big bazooka we could avoid too harsh a haircut and have a level playing field’.
But I add a short list with paywall, footfall, showcase (especially as a verb), critical acclaim, defining moments, bottom lines, and breaking the mould.
These were never quite as effective as the Bible’s second mile and salt of the earth or Shakespeare’s caviare to the general but they were once fresh and vivid, enlivening newspaper prose and good broadcasting.
I was once so taken with ‘incandescent’ in a Guardian obituary that I gave it permanence in the new Dictionary of National Biography’s entry for the theologian J S Stewart, for it applied perfectly to a diffident scholar who came alight in the pulpit. Now every Tom, Dick, and Jenny uses it for almost any excitement, and it must be added to the list. Modern metaphor, one might suggest, has a short shelf-life.
I even add ‘role-model’ too, though I used it in SR a few months ago. It allows me to end with a resounding insistence that ‘we are all guilty’.
R D Kernohan is a writer and broadcaster
The January poem
New Year
Gerard Rochford
I know I’ve come too soon into the garden
looking for snowdrops. I go to the apple tree,
the Worcester Permain of my youth,
where snowdrops gather every year like penguins,
shoving each other for warmth as they face the sun.
Today there are none to be seen
in this Scottish north-east winter.
Just dead leaves and a universe of insects,
the disturbances of forever-hungry birds
scratching a living, waiting for me to leave.
I’m already shivering, but I’m glad I came –
the spirit of foolish hope telling me:
perhaps you are not foolish. Beneath the ground
the bulbs are nudging each other.
Gerard lives in Aberdeen. He is the Scottish Review’s makar and
contributes a poem each month. His publications include ‘Failing Light’
and ‘Of Love and Water’
