Vivid Foreword October 2004

Vivid Foreword archive:

Regulars
FOREWORD
With or without mustard?

October 2004

Fragmented. That's the only word to describe nearly all Romania's media, with its multitude of television stations and newspapers, many of them struggling to stay afloat and peddling a blend of shock-horror news reports and celebrity trivia. Romania is second to none in its ability to create vedete - stars. None of them are big stars, but there are so very many of them. And don't try counting the number of girl and boy bands in this country. Shortly half the population of Romania will be vedete, and the other half will be employed in writing about them and filming them.

We're lucky to have our vedete, though. We need our vedete. If we didn't have them we would have nothing to read about. How many corruption scandals do you want to read about? After a while it all sounds the same, and the details are hardly important. Reading about serious stuff can give you such a rotten feeling deep down inside.

One of the jewels in the post communist media scene is Libertatea. It is put together so that you can read it on a metro trip and is extremely popular with commuters. As one contemporary writer pointed out: ''The great thing about Libertatea is that you don't have to look at the people around you when you ride to work. The other great thing about Libertatea is you can wipe yourself with it.''

And it caught the big story of last month: ''Iliescu attacked with a hot dog''. President Iliescu, on a state visit to Canada, was greeted by a Romanian émigré, who shouted ''You animal!'' The protestor simultaneously launched his missile at the head of state, so it was obvious whom he was talking to.

Accounts of the incident conflict. Eyewitnesses, quoted by Mediafax, sustain that Iliescu was struck by the remains of a hot dog, complete with its cardboard packaging. The president's security officers, on the other hand, deny that the box, which struck Iliescu on the head, contained any hot dog. They claim it was just an empty box.

What is not disputed is that the president's walkabout was completely spoiled by dozens of Romanians, annoyed that Iliescu had followed them all the way to Canada. They made rude noises and displayed banners with slogans like ILIESCU, ASASINUL written on them. The President was clearly rattled, and later described it as ''a demonstration of retarded people.''

Throwing the remains of your lunch at somebody has no place in civilised political discourse. The curious thing, however, is that Iliescu has to travel abroad in order to meet dissatisfied Romanians.

The retarded Romanians in Canada were bringing up something that people here don't talk about much any more. About how, in the early 1990s, Iliescu, fresh from a successful career as a communist in one of Europe's most brutal dictatorships, called in the miners to clear protestors from the streets of Bucharest. The protestors got hit with more than hot dogs. They got hit with steel pipes and chains, and some of them died.

The protestors back then had realised that their 'Revolution' to get rid of Ceausescu had been manipulated by Ceausescu's inner circle, using it to hold on to power. In Prague a dissident became the new president. In Bucharest the old guard decided they could probably stay if they wanted to. It was a defining moment. The protestors knew that if the criminals of the old regime were not flushed out decisively, they would install themselves as a permanent feature in the political landscape, with the populace reduced to shrugging its shoulders tiredly, saying ''Asta e, ce sa facem?''

And Iliescu understood that too, which is why he did what he did, and why we are where we are today, still in his company and that of his Party of pSeudo Democracy, looking at retarded Romanians in Canada throwing their lunch at the president, delighted that this time round nobody is going to come and kill them for expressing their feelings.

Asta e!