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The People of Graz
(original)The efforts of the city fathers of the Austrian city of Graz, often described as the "hometown" of Arnold Schwartzenegger, to make political capital and assume the moral high ground may have backfired. That is, they thought to chastize Arnold for his decision to not grant clemency to a murderer, and show how enlightened and liberal they were, despising the "medieval" practice of the death penalty, and scorning Arnold for doing his duty. But according to a German friend of mine, this has lead to the creation of a new German language expression, one which he refused to share, insisting that it did not translate well to English. Perhaps it is an Austrian colloquialism. Something to the effect that "The people of Graz are ungrateful/disrespectful/indian-givers/deceitful/pragmatic/etc." He said that this expression is new, and is being used like the infamous "A person from Porlock". The town of Porlock, if you might recall, had been forever cursed when a single resident interrupted the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, right when he was composing his masterful poem "Kubla Kahn", just to chatter about something inane and stupid. Coleridge lost the creative thread of the poem because of this, never finishing the poem, and attributed it to "A person from Porlock", a town that is forever associated with tedious bores interrupting creative pursuits. In this spirit, then, "The people of Graz..", for their betrayal of their once beloved son, may not profit as they had supposed, but instead may be cursed forever by this equally painful, if Germanically inscrutable, expression. Perhaps deservedly. Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-12-27 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=138431 |