It's the inflation, dickhead
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Loading... - Juan Alvarez
- 21 Mar 2022
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There should be no doubts that public servants, particularly those that are designated in their posts, have a higher responsibility than other members of society in that they represent their people and their countries, particularly when it comes to the international arena.
One would expect, for example, a foreign minister to speak a certain level of English, given its prevalence as the lingua franca of the Western World. In a speech at Expo Dubai, Santiago Cafiero — Argentina’s Foreign Minister who is considered an undercover Cabinet chief after being removed from that post — tried his best to please the international audience but was seen to be lacking in his pronunciation and vocabulary, sparking the mockery of the Twittersphere. Another picture of his tour, where he was looking to attract much-needed investments into the country showed him standing before a huge screen with a pathetically written slide behind him, full of basic mistakes including misspelt words. Of course, one would expect Cafiero and his team at the Ministry, considered domestically an efficient organisation, to take more care with basic details that could make the country look amateurish in the global arena. The mockery, which reached the traditional media outlets too, was laced with a certain malice, almost expressing a sort of “class violence” which Cafiero hinted at when in a radio interview he noted he hadn’t been educated in a bilingual institution, just before calling an important journalist, Jorge Lanata, a “dickhead.”
Cafiero comes from a traditional Peronist family with a long-history of major political appointments, grew up in the well-off northern Buenos Aires municipality of San Isidro and has university degrees from two prestigious institutions, political science at the University of Buenos Aires and a master’s in public policy from the Universidad Di Tella. His poor grasp of English doesn’t come from a lack of opportunities but probably from lack of trying, but that shouldn’t be the underlying point: he’s a political appointee, not a career diplomat. Yet, his failed attempts at speaking the world’s most important language from a geopolitical perspective is evidence of a lack of preparation at the Foreign Ministry he runs. He was indeed mocked on social media and by certain elements of the press — everyone should know Lanata is a feisty one — and he has every right to defend himself, even through mockery and chicanery. Calling a journalist a “dickhead” is probably one more example of improvisation. Despite the connotation of the term in English, which renders it a relatively light insult, its direct translation into Spanish is extremely vulgar to the point of backfiring and makes him look even less prepared to lead the Foreign Ministry.
Yet, what’s really at stake here isn’t the petty war of words between Cafiero and the media, but the same level of improvisation that has infested this administration from day one. Alberto Fernández, a handpicked placeholder given Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s incapacity to win an election, has had his fair share of gaffes and public demonstrations of unpreparedness. The issue is that these things trickle down from language to action, becoming an initial demonstration of incompetence in the public sector that has very real effects on the lives of every Argentine. Read More...
