by CLARE MACCARTHY
Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs Villy Sovndal/SOURCE/Elections Meter
What’s wrong with a Dane having a Danish accent? Nothing whatsoever is the sensible response. It’s a rather silly question and one that wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s printed on were it not for the tizzy that politicians, commentators and the hoi polloi have worked themselves into these past several weeks over Villy Søvndal’s English language skills.
One cannot help but have a certain sympathy for the beleaguered foreign minister. They’ve really had him in the stocks. The Twittersphere has been buzzing; he’s been satirised on YouTube and ridiculed on newspaper chatboards for his perceived shortcomings in speaking the queen of languages. Opposition politicians have pitched in with caustic little sideswipes and patronising suggestions that he should sharpen up his English act – pronto.
In public, at least, Søvndal is laughing the whole thing off, saying that the mocking videos are quite funny. But he must have taken the flak to heart at some level because he has signed himself up for lessons at the Folketing’s language lab.
So – just another skirmish in a teacup then? Just another wave of harmless flap that we will all have forgotten about by this time next week? Well, no actually. This little ballyhoo is important for two reasons.
First, it’s obscuring the real political issues that should be focusing the minds of politicians and public alike. While everybody is busily sniggering at the foreign minister for his halting delivery and arcane vocabulary, serious political issues are popping up like mushrooms and going un-noticed.
Or if not entirely un-noticed, at least given short shrift on the front pages before making room for yet another dig at the foreign minister.
Across the Danish mediascape at the moment, the persistent recurrence of Villy-engelsk stories is matched only by Helle Thorning-Schmidt tax tales. Just like her foreign minister, the prime minister is being put through the blender with an unremitting stream of innuendo about her tax status – despite the fact that the tax authorities have long since cleared both herself and her husband of any misbehaviour. What’s even more surprising is the scant attention (aside from the initial media frenzy as the news broke) being paid to the forthcoming judicial tribunal that is investigating at least one former minister and his spin doctor over the suspected leaking of Thorning-Schmidt’s file to the tabloids.
The Copenhagen Post for more