The dignity of clucking hens

By Mohammad Badrul Ahsan

More than two hundred years ago Benjamin Franklin was a one-man band of talents, a noted polymath, leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. He proved electricity and lived a long life. “Better slip with foot than tongue,” is how he concentrated the expression of his prolific life.

Our prime minister doesn’t always exercise that wisdom in her choice of spoken words. Most lately she commented on the ruthless murder of a journalist couple, and what she said has left this nation reeling under its impact. Not that the PM has been insensitive or rude. She was quick to give her personal commitment to look after the deceased couple’s only child. She also said she was going to personally monitor the investigation so that the killers would be brought to trial.

A perfect picture until then, it became a masterpiece of shattering once the PM tried to speak more on that subject. She said that too many people milling around the crime scene had destroyed evidence and also that it was not the government’s responsibility to safeguard people’s bedrooms. People didn’t know if she was talking as the head of government, or a forensic expert, or the chief of police. Public image is like a conversation. Some people are adept at it, but others find it difficult to carry on.

It was back-to-back in the same week that the PM also told a visiting delegation of the European Union that Dr. Muhammad Yunus should be considered for the top job at the World Bank. A head of government is supposed to get briefed before her meetings with high-powered foreign delegations. We don’t know whose idea it was, but that apparently well-meaning proposition has backfired as yet another harebrained slip of tongue.

The master of minds Sigmund Freud tells us that everybody produces slips of tongue. In 1901, he based his monograph, Psychopathology of everyday life, on the assumption that those errors resulted from repressed thoughts. In plain English, people in their subconscious minds carelessly give away what they most consciously try to hide.

In that sense, this country is divided into two sides. One side has the majority of people who are afraid to speak their minds. They plop their thoughts into the river of oblivion, and live in the mortal fear lest those thoughts ever rose to their mouths and got them in trouble.

Then we have got the minority side of people who speak whatever comes to their minds. They don’t care what they say, true or false, genteel or grotesque, and whom they hurt or whom they please. These are powerful people, who have nothing to fear because nobody dares to challenge them.

That, in a nutshell, is the dynamics of our democracy, where the minority is footloose and the majority is tongue-tied. If we closely listen to our politicians, weird expressions, malapropos, shockingly silly comments, vulgar vitriol, incoherent speeches, unwarranted interjections, inflected invectives, terminal threats and inappropriate aspersions characterise their dialogues and monologues. This People’s Republic is a contradiction in terms. Bigmouths run this country, while people have lost their voice.

The statements of statesmen can reveal their stunningly shallow minds. Former US president George W. Bush spoke incorrect English with incorrect pronunciations, perhaps the worst amongst the US presidents. But when it comes to this Bush and his father, also a former US president, one could say that the slip doesn’t fall far from the tongue. In 1988, while describing his experience as Ronald Reagan’s vice president, Bush senior said “We have had some sex . . . uh . . . setbacks.”

Some slips are inadvertent mistakes. Words are wrongly pronounced, often marked by wrong choice of words. But these slips can also be conscious and intentional, aimed at giving a purported message under the excuse of a slippery tongue. Richard M. Nixon, the only American president to resign from office due to a scandal, once boasted: “I would have made a good Pope.”

In our case it’s not always the fault of unctuous tongues; some of it is forged by acrimonious hearts. Politicians have domesticated national chaos into snatches of their conversations or snippets of remarks. Singing insults like canaries, they have turned rudeness into mother’s milk of their hallowed profession.

Back in the 8th century Arab linguist Al-Ki-sa-i believed that slip of the tongues might provide clues as to how language changes. Language has indeed changed in our politics. And it provides alarming clues as to why the politicians are slipping too often with clumsy foot in their slippery mouth.

Even the hens of the world know the rule; they cluck after they lay an egg. Our politicians may not have the dignity of those fowls. They cluck to cover up their incompetence.

The writer is the Editor of weekly First News Magazine and an opinion writer for The Daily Star.

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