Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Cut the OsloSpeak, why don’t you?
OsloSpeak is all about emphasizing the details and avoiding the substance. OsloSpeak is all about ignoring unpleasant truths that we’d rather not notice, in the hope they’ll go away. OsloSpeak is oh so civilized, so European, so Anglo-Saxon. Let us all just sit down together for some nice tea and biscuits and we’ll all feel much better.

Thanks to OsloSpeak, for the last decade we’ve busied ourselves with the details and hoped the substance would disappear. Well, surprise, surprise, it’s back again, and what do you know? The Arabs still don’t want us here; they still don’t accept our deep roots in this country; they still don’t respect our religious beliefs. They still refuse to compromise.

How can that be? OsloSpeak is such a successful, logical language, thought up by the best minds with the best of intentions. The Palestinians were all meant to be having a lovely time by now, all affluent and educated. The Palestinians were all meant to be benefiting and not just a tiny layer of “Tunisian” newcomers and a few American immigrants of Palestinian descent. The Palestinian leaders weren’t meant to be pocketing the money while feeding the people on hate. The Palestinian Authority was meant to be fighting the radical Moslem organizations and preventing terrorism against Israelis. How could it possibly not be working? It doesn’t add up.

It must be the Israelis fault.

Bzzzzzz. Wrong answer! Anyone else like to try?

How about: OsloSpeak is the wrong language.

I used to be quite fluent in OsloSpeak. Ah, those were the good old days. Some day, years from now, we old-timers will sit around the campfire on Lag Ba’Omer, after the kids have gone off to play Truth or Dare, and remember OsloSpeak.

But right now we need a new language, one that the oh-so-civilized West may not be able to decipher, even with it’s acclaimed LINGUISTS. We need a language that will be quite clear to the people in question (and not the Scandinavians).

Just do me a favor, while we’re trying to formulate the grammatical rules of the new language, DON’T TRY RESURRECTING OSLOSPEAK. It’s better for everyone, if it just stays buried.