Rewarding Malevolence

The Top 40

I had just about had it this afternoon when channel hopping I inadvertently switched to "The Music Factory" a music channel subsidiary of MTV to find out that De Tokkies [1] were at number 11 of the Top 40 charts with their tuneless and toneless contribution to the Christmas chart melee.

You may ask who the Tokkies are. [2] But before we get to that, it appears there is a degenerative development in society that I might have missed and when I found out, I was already a beaten up victim experiencing the norms of our times.

Wherefore Society?

My concern is the tolerance of everything to the exclusion of nothing, the inertia of law enforcement and the indifference leading on to the numbness of society to act where hardly decades ago this would not have been the case.

The Dutch as a people are globally viewed as tolerant friendly people; that, one cannot dispute, but the acceptance of the freedoms that allow for the tolerance of every expression even where it encroaches or obliterates another person's freedom is becoming a cause for serious concern.

I have already highlighted a number of those situations in earlier blogs about queues and queue-jumping, customer service, the electorate's enlightenment, the victim status of proponents of intolerance and the choosing of national figures.

The Tokkies

The Tokkies, yes, back to these chart-toppers, this is a family of at least 3 generations who had by the beginning of 2004 become the most anti-social family in the Netherlands. Their infamy was publicised on our screens a number of times, having been evicted from so many neighbourhoods for every unspeakable asocial activity imaginable. At one time they were hopeless, homeless and hapless and some motivational speaker of allegedly dubious means did at one time attempt to purchase a home for them.

However, a number of bright sparks have tapped on the enterprising and entrepreneurial flair of the Dutch {Remember they first started slavery, made their money and moved on before others caught on}[3] to promote this unwanted societal black spot as celebrity and before we knew it they were raking in money for all sorts of contracts, deals and now the Christmas song. They also have an Internet search page. [4]

Really, wherefore society?

Anyway, the issue here is how society is more accepting of asocial and anti-social behaviour to the extent that the more extreme this behaviour is, it begins to confer notoriety and celebrity, by the time we know what is going on, the self-same people who have refused to be positive contributory members of our civil existence are then rewarded handsomely because notoriety and popularity have become so synonymous they have both lost the measurable parameter of values and morals.

For now, I would reserve invective towards the people who have engineered the transformation of these misfits into rich but unrepentant people; it is both shameful and shameless taken in context.

However, the bigger picture is that society accepts its members; which it should, but it is failing in defining the norms of civility and the taking of liberties. It is promulgating flimsy laws that attempt to address lawlessness but failing to enforce those laws. The presence of laws, rules and regulations not enforced allow for the fabric of stable and normal society to be shredded with impunity. Even now, not many believe the police would rise to the job of crime fighting until it becomes public property seized on by vested interests with nefarious agendas.

Where is the lid?

I will still maintain that the Dutch are a friendly, interesting, tolerant people, however, what is happening as the evolution of society here and elsewhere needs to be arrested well before it gets out of hand. Unfortunately, the lid to this Pandora's Box is lost.

[1] The family no one wanted - Expatica.com
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=10384&name=The+family+no+one+wanted

For translations, you might find The Altavista Babel Fish Translator useful
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

[2] De Tokkies - Wikipedia NL - In Dutch
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Tokkies

[3] Chronology on the History of Slavery 1619 to 1789
http://www.innercity.org/holt/slavechron.html

[4] Tokkies Pagina - In Dutch
http://tokkies.pagina.nl/

Here lies ...

Greatest person competitions

It was with interesting amusement that we all witnessed the climax of the mockery of history shows that tries to extract from popular opinion the greatest personality of a nation.

When the BBC conducted this event in 2002, Winston Churchill [1] was voted the first, and then in 2003, Sir Isaac Newton [2] who was sixth in the previous year was voted the first.

What a difference a year makes, or some people have really done a biographical study of the contenders and begun thinking rather than following the media hype.

Mind you, the English seem to have a knack for inventing new shows that get copied by other institutions like the Weakest Link, Who wants to be a Millionaire and now this charade of greatest countrymen.

So the circus came to the Netherlands amidst a lot of noise, a murder, tensions between communities and the reminders of a very recent political event.

Striding past a villa in a village in the Veneto region of Italy, a slightly weathered tombstone bears a newly engraved message - Here lies the greatest Dutchman of them all. [3]

You would be forgiven for thinking it was Vincent van Gogh, the painter, who came tenth in the list, but he was buried in French; nor was it Anne Frank, the refugee Jewish diarist from the Nazi times whose nationality was contested during this event, she died in a concentration camp.

Nor was it Rembrandt van Rijn, another popular Dutch painter and engraver; William of Orange who at one time was King of England and considered the founder of the Dutch nation came second. Erasmus is someone you might have heard of and for football fans Johan Cruyff who came sixth.

All these people represent a very positive and recognisable image of the enterprising, tolerant, intelligent and innovative Dutch, just like Philips and the invention of compact discs.

More so, there are no populist politicians, but people who painstakingly went about their business and in the process were recognised for what they did, what they represented and who they are.

Pim who?

So, it was with utterly bewilderment that we received the information that Pim Fortuyn was voted the greatest Dutchman ever.

It is likely, that you do not know this man, but he has the unfortunate record of being the first political murder in the Netherlands in over 300 years. He was gunned down by an animal rights activist in May 2002 in the media park of the assembly of radio and television stations in a distant Amsterdam suburb.

In my previous blog, I made mention of him in relation to a more recent murder of a descendant to Vincent van Gogh and how his rise to prominence was as a result of challenging the unfriendly commentary of minority group Muslim clerics in Rotterdam.

However, in all that can be said about Pim Fortuyn [4], he was vocally on the political scene for less than a year, he had quite a number of personal achievements, he was quite eccentric and was not affected by his alternative lifestyle related to his sexual orientation.

However, he represented a seemingly popular view that no one would express regarding immigration, integration and Islam; however, those views earned him lots of votes.

The media in general compared his banter to that of fascists and extreme right-wing propaganda. His animosity to Europe was quite evident, and though he displayed a flair for exercising free speech, he was not an espousing of the Dutch values of tolerance and friendliness.

After his death, his party which was a tribute to egomania in that it was simply "Pim Fortuyn's List" came second in the elections, but fell into terminal decay that within 6 months they caused the government to fall and then lost most of their seats in the election that came there after.

However, the vote occurred in the light of the recent killing of Theo van Gogh who is mistakenly given the accolade of a champion of free speech. He was NOT.

In a twist of irony; Mr Pim Fortuyn who so spoke of Dutch values and expression, defending the history, culture and political soul of the Dutch to the very end, died in the Netherlands but was buried far away from what he was martyred in protecting - in a little village in the region of Veneto in Italy.

Just as the highest point in the Netherlands is the platform from which you view the "highest" natural point in the Netherlands [5], be not surprised if whilst on holiday next summer in Italy you wonder how you can across a piece of Holland, where the greatest Dutchman is laid to rest.

References

[1] Churchill voted greatest Briton
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/2509465.stm

[2] Newton voted greatest Briton
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3151333.stm

[3] Fortuyn buried after Dutch bid farewell
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1978602.stm

[4] Pim Fortuyn - Obituary
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1971462.stm

[5] Drielandenpunt - the highest point in the Netherlands
http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~vdmeulen/deeper/Articles/Drielandenpunt.html