(Il)literacy and censorship: 3 UK journalists expelled from Pakistan

[Claude Almansi]

Thanks to the journalist Afzal Khan for the facts mentioned here, i.e. the Daily Telegraph article and the notice of the explusion of the 3 Daily Telegraph journalists caused by the article. I alone am responsible for the reading of these facts and for the title of this post.

On November 9, 2007, the Daily Telegraph published an editorial, Bankrupt relationship, about Pakistan as an ally of US and UK in the war against terrorism. It begins with:

Despite George W Bush's rhetoric about freedom, the struggle against terrorism is provoking a reaction familiar from the Cold War and nowhere is that clearer than over Pakistan. In the old parlance, General Pervez Musharraf is "our sonofabitch". He has failed to stamp out extremist groups and close the madrassas that inspire them. He has allowed the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan to fall into the hands of assorted jihadis. And he has sacked independent-minded judges for fear that the Supreme Court declare illegal his re-election as president last month.

and ends with:

...But that should not blind Britain and America to the fact that their "sonofabitch" in Pakistan is a spent force.

The use of "sonofabitch" drew an immediate, incensed and official comment:

The language used for the President of Pakistan in your leading article ("Bankrupt relationship", November 9) is offensive and flouts the norms of decent journalism.

For a newspaper of The Daily Telegraph's reputation to resort to such derogatory language is highly regrettable.

This deserves an apology.



Posted by Imran Gardezi, Minister Press, Pakistan High Commission, London SW1 on November 9, 2007 5:52 PM

as if the author had been making allegations about the Chief Of Army Staff Musharraf's mother's conjugal fidelity. And the next day, Pakistan's Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim told the Associated Press that the offending story had appeared on Friday, and the men had been given 72 hours to leave (see for instance Journalists expelled from Pakistan, Press Association, The Guardian, Saturday November 10, 2007 4:03 PM)

Noobody is expected to immediately recognize all allusions to all quotations from memory. But you'd expect the Minister of the Press at the Pakistan High Commission and a Deputy Information Minister to be at least literate enough to recognize the presence of such an allusion from the quotes around our sonofabitch and sonofabitch. Especially when the first instance is introduced by In the old parlance, and check before publicly blowing a gasket and possibly diplomatic relations with an allied country.

If they had bothered to search - or to have others search - for "Our sonofabitch" (with quotes) in Google, they would have found several texts explaining what "in the old parlance" refers to. For instance William Safire's "On Language" column Realism (New York Times, Dec. 24, 2006):

Pragmatism was the word that proponents of realism preferred in the Nixon administration to define the opening to Communist China and détente with the Soviet Union, as well as a tolerance for authoritarian (O.K., dictatorial) leaders like Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore who were on our side in the cold war. In that temporary renaming of realism, Nixon speech writers liked to quote the famous saying attributed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about a Central American strongman: “Somoza may be a sonofabitch, but he’s our sonofabitch.”

(Tangent: That “famous saying” first appeared in Time magazine in an unsigned article — as all were in the era of group journalism — about a 1939 visit to Washington by President Anastasio Somoza García. “To prime President Roosevelt for the visit,” Time reported in 1948, “Sumner Welles sent him a long, solemn memorandum about Somoza and Nicaragua. According to a story told around Washington, Roosevelt read the memo right through, wisecracked, ‘As a Nicaraguan might say, he’s a sonofabitch, but he’s ours.’ ” No source for that “story” was ever found; it must be put down as apocryphal, a word rooted in the Greek “hidden.” This debunking denies today’s realists one of their best lines.)

I.e. In the old parlance, General Pervez Musharraf is "our sonofabitch" and their "sonofabitch" in Pakistan is a spent force, in the Telegraph article, are directed at this realism policy and to its dangers.

The expulsion the 3 Telegraph journalists on the basis of such a crass misreading ridicules the COAS' regime far more than the article did. And it confirms the appropriateness of both its title and its conclusion.