According to marketwatch: it’s a rare occasion when a German politician makes an Irish audience laugh with a joke about Italian politics. Yet recently, a former German vice Chancellor and foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, speaking at Trinity College here, did just that. He was referring to former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as the “Bunga-Bunga” prime minister. The phrase, in case you are wondering, is now a Europe-wide description allegedly first used by Berlusconi in reference to the sex parties with which his name has become synonymous.
What was interesting about Fischer’s use of the phrase, however, is that it is yet another example of how the hugely diverse 500 million people who live within the European Union are becoming more aware of the political culture and language of each other’s states.
It was not that long ago that the vast majority of Europeans, on hearing of the word Papademos, would have assumed that it referred to a bleach-based toilet cleaner rather than a Greek prime minister. Another word that has entered common parlance across the Continent because of the euro-zone debt crisis is “austerity,” although it has to be said it has taken on two meanings depending on where you stand in the political spectrum.
If you are near the political center, “austerity” is the unfortunate by-product of a need to make budgets balance and for spending and tax revenues to be at least within passing acquaintance of each other. Yet in Greece, Ireland or the other IMF program countries, “austerity” has become a code word, especially among the hard left, for a curious belief in the right to have other people’s money coupled with a sense of outrage if those same people dare to offer advice as to how that money should be spent…
Wait, wait…there’s more where that came from. Honest. Check out http://www.marketwatch.com/story/angela-merkel-and-the-politics-of-doom-2012-02-16
No comments:
Post a Comment