I am pretentious and long-winded
I find the way we refer to world leaders very interesting.
Most world leaders are referred to by their title and last name or by their first and last name; for example, President Bush or Tony Blair. The first is a sign of respect, the latter, I would argue, even a sign of affection. I can’t think of a time when I’ve really heard Tony Blair referred to in the American media as Prime Minister Blair. Adding his first name to the equation implies the familiar relationship our country has with England.
Conversely, using only the last name for a leader seems to imply some nature of tension. For instance, I had to think for a moment before I came up with Zimbabwean president Mugabe’s first name, which is Robert. Derisive articles about our President often refer to him just as “Bush.” In my lexicon, the Mexican president is Vicente Fox, but a Google News search of “mexico” and “fox” brings up many news articles in the past few weeks where he is referred to by last name alone; only one snippet on the first page mentions his first name. Most of the headlines start, “Mexico’s Fox;” a small commentary on the recent immigration woes? Maybe.
To the crux: I can only think of two instances where world leaders are not commonly given the courtesy of a last name reference: Fidel and Saddam.
At first glance it seems to be a quick and dirty rhetorical device - removing the importance and respect from your enemy by reducing the stature of his name. But I actually think it’s more a comment on their lack of relevance.
During the Cold War, Cuba was a Soviet threat 90 miles from American soil. After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, Cuba, and by extension Fidel Castro, really ceased to have any global relevance. It’d take more research than I care do to at the moment (especially without some kind of grant funding), but it’d be interesting to see if he was the casual “Fidel” when he might have had weapons pointed at Florida.
Similarly, there is an argument that we went to war with Iraq (as opposed to our other two Axis of Evil choices) because we knew that Iraq didn’t have capabilities we accused them of having. What if these casual references to the “Butcher of Bagdad” by his first name were a subconscious way of telling the American people that this war was eminently winnable? I mean, they were right - we didn’t really have anything to fear specifically from Hussein.
And yet, I don’t think I ever heard al-Zarqawi referred to Abu. He, ironically, gets the full name reference much of the time. Is that because the United States largely created him and caused his ascendancy within al-Qaeda?
Then again, maybe I’m totally wrong. You never hear Kim Jung-Il referred to as Kim or just Jung-Il. Maybe that’s because Americans just can’t figure out the crazy way those Asians arrange their names. Then again, maybe it’s a commonality thing - I do know a lot of Koreans named Kim; I’d be really sad if my friend Bryant was thought to be threatening to test a long-range missile. I know a Chavez or two as well, none of them named Hugo.
Interestingly, the article in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune that prompted me to start thinking about this has been changed. Yesterday the headline read: “Prosecutor Seeks Death for Saddam,” now it reads “Hussein.” But how about the rhetorically interesting “Bush and Saddam” from the McCook Daily Gazette in Nebraska? No one thinks you’re talking about the king of Jordan.
Oh, this is one of those things that are only interesting to me, right? Add it to the list, I guess. If you’ve made it to the end of this, you get a big gold star. It’s similar to the one I gave to Kurt Russell for his performance in Vanilla Sky last night, especially the last ten minutes. Tom Cruise gets yet another big black X for making his height 6′0″ in his mug shot, amongst numerous other things. Love who you are, Tom. Love who you are.
There you go. A little pop culture reward for listening.
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