tim's experiment

Well it happens to all of us at one time or another. We say something stupid, and when this is pointed out we say we that was not what we meant at all. The first symptom of foot in mouth disease is the “I didn’t really say that” line.

Which brings us to Michael Chugani’s piece in the Post this morning. Mr Chugani says he “chuckled at the feeble attempts to make me out as a fan of the world’s dictators just because I said Hong Kong needed firm leadership.” Well it is always nice to find that one has given a reader pleasure. I am always entertained when a columnist in the Post (circulation in the hundreds of thousands) decides to waste his precious space commenting on my blog (read by 50 people on a good day). But Mr Chugani is not inhibited by irrrelevant shibboleths like accuracy, because he did in fact not just say that Hong Kong needed firm leadership. Indeed if that were all he had said there would have been no reaction from anyone. He said we needed a dose of dictatorship, which is not the same thing at all. We can most economically see the difference by considering who might be considered suitable examples. Leadership: Lincoln, Kennedy, Churchill, Mandela, Gandhi. Dictatorship: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Galtieri, Mao. Got it, Michael?

Now let us dispose of a fringe matter which is bothering Mr Chugani, which is that people commented on his possession of an American passport, “as if a Hong Kong-born Indian naturalised as a US citizen has no right to speak his mind”. Nobody is suggesting that anyone has no right to speak his mind. Freedom of speech involves not only the right to speak one’s mind, but the right of other people to respond with the contents of their minds. Where Mr Chugani was born or the ethnic origins of his ancestors are not relevant. The fact that he has a US passport is, because it means that if we follow his advice and it all ends in tears he does not have to share the consequences. He is a surrender monkey with a “get-out-of-Colditz-free card. He is inviting us to a Titanic tour on which he has a lifeboat but many people do not. This is not a reason for rejecting an argument but it is certainly a relevant consideration. If your aeroplane fills with smoke and a voice on the speaker says there is “no cause for alarm” you would be interested to know whether the author of this reassurance was in the cockpit or on the ground.

Nestling in the fourth paragraph of the predictable diatribe against democrats and other usual suspects we have Mr Chugani’s defence in a nut-shell: “I said we needed a dose of dictatorship – read that as firm leadership – to get things done.” What Mr Chugani does not explain is why anyone should read “a dose of dictatorship” as “firm leadership”. After all the “dose of dictatorship” was not just an oratorical flourish or an elegant variation. It appeared twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. It looked as if the writer was pleased with it and the headline person took the hint and used it in the title. As the Law Lords put it in a long-ago libel case: “The rule is well settled that the true intention of any writer of a document … is that which is apparent in the ordinary and natural meaning of the written words.”  Most of us know what dictatorship means and if offered it as a political prescription we have a perfect right to ask which of the current dictators the author regards as a suitable model.

Well it is easy for prolific writers working in haste to slip in an ill-chosen word. No doubt Mr Chugani did not really mean he wanted a dictatorship. But that is what he said. Under these circumstances one does not expect an apology. But complaining that “anyone who wanted to understand would have known that,” as Mr Chugani does, is blaming the reader for not being a mind-reader. Next time silence might be a better option.

And be careful with those big words. Dictatorship is like war: the more you talk about it the more likely it is to happen.