Of titles, tittles, & tattles (2)
THE new dispensation in Malacañang is an original PDU30. Protocol Chief Ambassador Marciano Paynor Jr. tries his best, but every President sets his own protocol. President Ramon “The Guy” Magsaysay introduced the Barong Tagalog to Malacañang. Ferdinand E. Marcos thumped “This country can be great again!”(before copycat presidential candidate Donald Trump freely used the real McCoy… and before Melania plagiarized Michelle.)
Malacañang Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea conveyed the new management’s directive to all government offices to drop the honorific and not to address President Rodrigo Duterte as “His Excellency” in official communications.
** * The French take the Madame Antoinette cake in introducing revolutionary words and fashion. A 10 October 1792 edict dropped the terms “Monsieur” and “Madame” and replaced them with Citoyen and Citoyenne. (Not to be confused with a popular French motorcar brand; the new terms translate simply as “Citizen” for both genders.)
A new fashion also came to the fore with change – the “sansculottes”(“without britches”), referring to the common people of the lower classes in late 18th century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution. (Culottes were knee-britches of the nobility and bourgeoisie, as distinguished from the working class who wore pantalons, or trousers).
A popular epigram published in 1793 by Antoine Francois Momoro identified a “sans culotte”: “He is someone who always goes about on foot. [He] has not got the millions you would all like to have… [He] has no chateaux, no valets to wait on him…He is useful because he knows how to till a field, to forge an iron, to use a saw…and to spill his blood to the last drop for the safety of the Republic…In the evening he goes to the assembly of his section, not powdered and perfumed and natilly booted, in the hope of being noticed by the female citizens in the galleries, but ready to support sound proposals with all his might , and ready to pulverize those which come from the despised faction of politicians. Finally, a sans culotte always has his sabre well sharpened, ready to cut off the ears of all opponents of the Revolution.”
** * Further forward in history, after their own revolution, the Soviet Union also did away with the capitalist titles of Mister or Mrs. and replaced them with the unisex bear-hugging “comrade.” In south Slavic languages, the term “Gospodin’’ (Mister) carries certain authority that implies some dominance of that person above others. In socialist society where equality was one of the main postulates, it was seen as inappropriate
Socialist Yugoslavia went even further and replaced the capitalist titles with “Drug.” (Not be mistaken for the pet peeve of H. E. – oops, ‘cuse me, force of old habit – President Duterte. The term “Drug” literally translates as “friend” or “comrade” for male; and “Drugarica” is the feminine form of “drug”).