Final Word from Wednesday, May 29, 2013
"Who in Prague is a kmotr (godfather)?" asked Pavel Bém in his blog this week. "Even the public," he wrote, "must be fed up and disgusted with the expression 'godfather.' Perhaps a solution would be to legally ban the flaunting of the words 'godfather' and 'corruption' in the context of our politics. Maybe this would reveal the true reasons why political ethics and stability are going to hell." Words of a true statesman, no doubt, but how about a little experiment? What if we substituted a word here or there? How about this? "Even the public," we might write, "must be fed up and disgusted with the expression 'democratic.' Perhaps a solution would be to legally ban the flaunting of the words 'democratic' and 'civic' in the context of our politics. Maybe this would reveal the true reasons why political ethics and stability are going to hell." And to further paraphrase Bém, How would the political battle look today if the velvet revolutionaries more than 20 years ago hadn't created the myth of the "Czech democrat"?[Czech Republic democracy]
Glossary of difficult words
to be fed up with something - to be annoyed or irritated at a situation or treatment; to have had enough of something;
to flaunt - to make a great show of something; to display something ostentatiously.