Superstitious about Language

Paul Reynolds, world affairs correspondent for the BBC, has written a useful think piece for the BBC News Web site on the role of foreign policy in the coming Presidential election, contrasting the current position statements being delivered by John McCain and Barack Obama. He structured the piece in terms of McCain speeches directed to attack Obama and Obama responses that, in turn, attack McCain. Unfortunately, one of the Obama quotes invoked a haunting memory from my high school history days:

The American people are going to look at the evidence. We don't get a sense that this has been a wise foreign policy or a smart foreign policy or a tough foreign policy.

The memory was of a Democratic candidate who lost a Presidential election. The candidate was Al Smith; and he gave a famous (at least still in my high school days) speech attacking the policy of Prohibition. He is best known for the first sentence of that speech (to the extent that more people remember the sentence than remember that the speech was about Prohibition):

Let's look at the record.

He then confronted the American people with evidence (choosing my words from Obama's text) to demonstrate that a Constitutional Amendment that had been motivated by what may be called a "War Against Sin" had actually led to a significant increase in violent crime, much of which was directly related to the trafficking of goods that had been declared constitutionally illegal.

My point is that, compelling as Smith's speech was, the American people didn't look at the evidence. They were more preoccupied with fear. Prohibition was escalated to Constitutional authority through the zealous efforts of Protestant evangelists, who knew precisely how to cultivate fears, not only of sin and hell-fire but also of those who did not embrace their particular breed of Christianity. Smith was victimized by those fears not only by opposing Prohibition but by being Catholic. (In 1884, long before Prohibition became a Constitutional Amendment, the Republicans had already classified the Democrats as the party of "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.")

One lesson from Reynolds' analysis is that things have not changed very much. The Republicans still know how to cultivate fear of rebellion and have reaped considerable political gain from transforming their predecessors' "War Against Sin" into a "War Against Terror." Romanism, on the other hand, has been replaced by Islam, particularly as embodied by the new linguistic barbarism of our culture, "Islamofacism." (Invoking The New Oxford American Dictionary, Wikipedia uses a less extreme characterization than I do, calling the word a "controversial neologism!") Thus, Reynolds offers a simple example of McCain's skill at fear-mongering:

The McCain campaign circulated this comment: "We need change in America, but not the kind of change that wins kind words from Hamas, surrenders in Iraq and will hold unconditional talks with Iranian President Ahmadinejad."

In one sentence, John McCain linked three American foreign policy fears - Hamas, Iraq and Iran - and tried to isolate Mr Obama as unreliable on all three.

However, if good slogans come in threes, then the Republicans have been very careful about manipulating the third element. I would suggest that the issue of rum has now evolved into the issue of race. This is particularly evident in a post written last week by Doug Feaver for his dot.comments blog for The Washington Post. The post is a reflection on a report that had recently appeared on the front page of the Post's print edition, summarized by Feaver in his first paragraph:

Kevin Merida wrote a front-page story earlier this week reporting that Sen. Barack Obama's "phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president."

The Web version of that story accumulated 3300 comments in the time between its appearance (last Monday) and the time of Feaver's post (last Thursday). Feaver used his post to reproduce what he felt was a representative sample, neither offering any critical observations nor trying to draw any conclusions.

Reading his selection reminded me of the sorts of calls placed to C-SPAN's Washington Journal (which I listen to on XM, rather than watch on television). While this program gets its share of "oddball calls," it has a high proportion of listeners who deserve attention; but, what I like most is that C-SPAN provides separate call-in numbers for Democrats, Republicans, and independents. This provides an approximation (which, of course may be disguised) of the background of any caller who chooses to make a comment about race, whether it involves Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, or racially divisive language in political advertising. The Washington Post made no effort to identify the backgrounds or persuasions of the authors of all those comments it received; but we have already been exposed to accusations (which may or may not be valid) of Republican involvement in cultivating fear of race.

My point is that the Republican rallying standard of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" may now very well have been transformed into "Race, Islamofacism, and Terrorism" (even if it is no longer alliterative); and this new standard draws just as much strength from cultivating fear as the old one did in 1884. If Obama really believes that this standard can be pulled down because "The American people are going to look at the evidence," then he may be lacking sufficient respect for how formidable the force of well-cultivated fear can be. I would suggest that he and his strategists set aside some time to examine what were the most critical factors in Smith's loss to Herbert Hoover in 1928 and make sure that they do not find themselves bitten once again by those same factors.

The Pope's Name

A German pope is going to get attention from the German press, which, for the most part represents a far broader spectrum of opinions than we tend to find in the American press. Still, there was something unexpectedly striking about the language invoked by Die Tageszeitung, a left-wing paper cited in Mark Waffel's "World From Berlin" column for SPIEGEL ONLINE dealing with the Pope's visit to the United States:

The enormous magnitude of the nationwide pedophilia scandals will define the pope's visit. Will Ratzinger at least address the scandals fittingly? Or will he go as far as punishing those bishops who were more concerned with covering-up the scandals than exposing them? A lot will depend upon that.

The puritan Ratzinger is viewed in Washington as the "Enforcer," as someone who sternly watches over morals. That is why people's expectations are high. Although Pope Benedict already apologized for the child abuse cases on his flight over to Washington, that will not be enough if he wants to convince and reconcile the faithful. But that is something the Catholic Church desperately needs to do, as it is the only large church in the US to lose members.

There is a certain tone of defiance in the refusal to acknowledge the Papal name (with or without the number) in favor of a last name unadorned with any sign of respect. This is the linguistic tone that journalists apply to politicians, particularly when indicated disapproval.

It is not as if there is a sudden burst of cultural amnesia with regard to the Pope's birth name. The early years of the papacy of John Paul II focused on the diversity of activities during his youth. In London it even prompted a West End revival of a play he had written; and the playbill listed the author of the play as Karol Wojtyła (which is how the play was published). However, I do not recall any news reports of Vatican activities that referred to him by anything other than his Papal name.

Benedict is another matter. Under John Paul, as his Wikipedia entry reminds us, he "had been Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," which is equivalent to a position that one could find in most of the old Communist regimes, usually called something like "Chairman of the Committee on Ideology." As Joseph Ratzinger he used this position to serve as a major representative of the Vatican before the press, which put him right in the thick of the abuse scandal when it broke in so many places over such a short period of time. Prior to his arrival in Washington, the BBC showed some old footage of one of their reporters interviewing him about this scandal. The reporter was not satisfied with polite evasive language and kept pressing for a more substantive statement. Ratzinger's response was to dismiss the reporter by slapping him (lightly, mind you) on the wrist to indicate that the discussion was over.

I have no idea if this footage was representative of how Ratzinger tended to deal with the press, rather in the manner of a disciplinarian Parochial School teacher. Back in 2006 it was clear that Benedict was a highly intellectual Pope, probably one of the most intellectual in the history of the Papacy; but he also gave the impression that he might have been happier with a faculty position at the University of Regensburg than as the Holy Father. As a rule the press (whether left or right) does not take kindly to displays of intellectual superiority, nor do they want to be treated as misbehaving children. By denying Benedict his Papal name, Die Tageszeitung may have decided that, if they are going to be treated as if they were misbehaving, they may as well willfully misbehave in some significant manner.

This is unlikely to do any noticeable damage to the institution of Catholicism. Indeed, in an era in which civil behavior is practically obsolete, the level of misbehavior is pretty much too low to deserve more than this passing notice. Rather, it is one of those "safe" acts of misbehavior, to which we sometimes resort for no reason other than to feel good. Die Tageszeitung probably knew that they were not going to score any substantive points against the Vatican; so they probably decided to do something that would make them (and probably many of their readers) feel better, even if it had no impact.