Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.08.2014, Blaðsíða 6

6
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 20116
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 2014
News | Scandal
So said filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard in
the 1980's, regarding France. Mutatis
mutandis … we are not there yet. Iceland
seems corrupt yes, at times fundamental-
ly so. And yet the work may not be com-
pleted. Since Tuesday, it seems as if one of
the country's higher public officials may
have refused to get involved in some in-
decencies. It is a highly unusual case, and
remains under investigation.
The journalistic merit of what follows
is questionable. I'm not sure what to call
it. Speculative journalism …? Whatever it
is, it takes place in a sort of semiotic twi-
light-zone.
In the Mood for Metaphor
Tuesday actually started with a meta-
phor. That morning, DV published what
may turn out the be the story of the year:
that chief of Capital Area Police Stefán
Eiríksson resigned from his post under
pressure, and due to abnormal interfer-
ences, at the hands of Interior Minister
Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir, regarding
the case against the Ministry, that has
lately been under investigation by Ste-
fán's force. Meanwhile, RÚV's top story
was headlined: Fox Fauna Stable, Re-
gardless of Hunting Ban. It sported a big
picture of a very cute baby arctic fox. So
that's it, I thought: so this is the best they
can do when confronted with a crisis of
this sort. They are telling us to stay calm:
even if they are not allowed to 'hunt', the
politicians will not grow in number, but
stay each in his/her respective ministry.
Carry on.
Of course I didn't mean this literally,
but I used the reading to mock RÚV a
little while they seemed reluctant to cite
DV's claim and run their own story on
the matter. Up until now, while evidence
has piled up against the Minister, RÚV's
newsroom has shown very little initia-
tive in covering the events leading to this
current crisis. Eventually, around noon,
they did cover DV's story. Probably they
were never even reluctant to begin with.
Just mindfully doing their job. All that is
largely irrelevant to this article, except
as to explain the circumstances of what
then happened. My mood. As I kept up-
dating news sites and scanning the highly
variable treatment the story got in vari-
ous media outlets, I was already in the
mood for metaphor.
One of My Favorite Songs
After DV ran its cover story, various me-
dia outlets obviously tried to reach Stefán
for comment. For a few hours he didn't
pick up the phone, leaving the press with
no comment except for a message on
Twitter. The ambiguous tweet explained
that he had quit because it seemed op-
portune.
Many have pointed out that this is just
about all a police chief could say, anyway,
legally bound by confidentiality, as he
is. As police chief (@logreglustjori), Ste-
fán is an erratic Twitter-user. His latest
tweet before the one quoted above, ap-
peared three days earlier, that is on Sat-
urday. Innocuously enough, Stefán then
tweeted: 'Here comes one of my favorite
songs with the Beatles' and a link to Ab-
bey Road's 1969 'She Came in Through
the Bathroom Window'.
As made evident in the third verse,
the song is sung on behalf of a man who
just quit the police, explaining why.
Later that day, hours after this tweet
was first mentioned on Facebook, Frét-
tablaðið —a medium up until now mostly
uninterested in practicing any actual
journalism about the Interior Ministry's
mess— reached Stefán to ask him about
it. Stefán confirmed that, in his mind,
the song indeed had some relation to his
departure from the police. How delight-
fully cryptic.
She Has a Lagoon?
Now, there are two fundamentally op-
posed ways to interpret this latter tweet.
As there would be. It can either mean
something, or it can mean nothing. Noth-
ing more, that is, than saying, for exam-
ple, 'I quit the police'.
The song's title, chorus, and first
two verses, focus on a female character
'protected by a silver
spoon', who seems
to have lived in some
sort of denial, as the
singer asks: 'Didn't
anybody tell her?
Didn't anybody see?'.
That is, right until
the singer explains:
'And so I quit the
police department'.
Then the lyrics turn
back to the woman.
Those who belief
Stefán's tweet means
something, take that
line and the follow-
ing verse as key to its interpretation: 'And
so I quit the police department / And got
myself a steady job / And though she tried
her best to help me / She could steal but
she could not rob.'
She, then, would be Interior Minis-
ter Hanna Birna. The Minister has in-
deed proven clumsy, to say the least, at
any sustainable, long-term abuse of of-
fice, showing little tactic and even less
strategy in response to the apparently
believable accusations she has faced for
the past months. Within this interpreta-
tional framework, the rest of the song is
rather self-explanatory, not least the line:
'Well I knew what I could not say' —the
police chief being, as already said, bound
by confidentiality. This interpretation
seems to be valid if and only if DV's cover
story about the Minister's interferences is
true. The tweet was posted, then, accord-
ing to the well-known dictum: whereof
one cannot speak, thereat one must hint.
The other interpretation, the anti-inter-
pretation, that the tweet means nothing,
seems likewise, to only hold true if, and
only if, DV's story is false. Then it would
not even have occurred to Stefán Eiríks-
son that the silver-spoon-protected fe-
male small-time crook central to the
song's lyrics would ever be considered a
reference to his superior. That point of
view is mainly supported by the argu-
ment that 'we should not read too much
into this'. Which is, of course, absolutely
correct. All sides to this lovely little de-
bate surely agree that we must read no
more than the right amount of stuff into
this. And then, of course, no less
She Could Steal but She
Could Not Rob
So far, no one, except the Minister her-
self, has outright denied that she inter-
fered in the police investigation. —Even
she limited her negation to 'improper
interferences', leaving open the possibil-
ity of any interference she might consider
appropriate. In any case, if the story holds
true, and Stefán's tweet was intended as
commentary on the prelude to his early
departure from the Police, its purpose
would seem, at least, to be to vent some
steam. At least that. Actually, it would
have a somewhat greater significance.
If this story has an end, and if that
end will involve clear evidence of the
Minister's meddling
in the police investiga-
tion against her, as she
now stands accused of,
Stefán will have pre-
emptively distanced
himself loud and clear
from that whole af-
fair. He will also have,
pretty unambiguously,
shown that when con-
fronted with a choice
between the fair
weather from a politi-
cian and her party on
one hand, and princi-
ples established for the
public good on the other, he did not take
the easy road. And he will have, tongue-
in-cheek, nudged people a little towards
finding out what it is that he himself
could not say. He would then have sided
with the common good, against the cor-
ruption that more cynical members of
the tribe take for granted. Taking prin-
ciple over privilege, he would have put
himself at risk to reveal an urgent truth
about injustice being done, to the Min-
ister doing it, a ruler with the habit, as
it seems, to scold and ignore those who
confront her, and to the public suffering
all that. Stefán would then be entitled to
more credit than most of us are used to
granting officials. Basically, this stunt of
his would smell of ethics.
Inconclusive Evidence
On the other hand, if DV's claims turn
out to be false, which remains at least
technically possible, then Stefán's tweet
was just a tweet and the song remains
just a song. About a woman who sucks
her thumb and wanders / by the banks
of her own lagoon. Having not been to
Twitter for three days, last weekend,
Stefán logged in to post a link, on a whim,
because he really loves the Beatles. Inci-
dentally, the only Beatles-song involving
the resignation of a police officer centres
on a female character in a privileged po-
sition, who clumsily involves herself in
some dubious affairs, while not realizing,
and no one telling her, something that she
really should know. Something evident to
almost everyone else.
But wait, what? Ethics? An ethical
attitude of resistance exposed in subtle
satire, elegantly even, on Twitter? From
within the police? What a blatantly ab-
surd proposition! —I told you. Specula-
tion. Speculative despair and hallucina-
tory ramblings, obscured in semiotic
shades and sprinkled with hope-glitter.
As chief of police, though, as @logre-
glustjori, Stefán has, until now, not been
known to tweet videos trivially. —You're
lost, you're lost in over-interpretation!
Snap out of it! —Alright, alright. It's still
true. —! And so on.
She Came In Through The
Bathroom Window
Lennon/McCartney
She came in through the bathroom window
Protected by a silver spoon
But now she sucks her thumb and wanders
By the banks of her own lagoon
Didn't anybody tell her?
Didn't anybody see?
Sunday's on the phone to Monday
Tuesday's on the phone to me
She said she'd always been a dancer
She worked at 15 clubs a day
And though she thought I knew the answer
Well I knew what I could not say
And so I quit the police department
And got myself a steady job
And though she tried her best to help me
She could steal but she could not rob
Didn't anybody tell her?
Didn't anybody see?
Sunday's on the phone to Monday
Tuesday's on the phone to me
Oh yeah
What If Sunday Is On
The Phone To Monday?
The Police Chief, the Minister &
the enigmatic Beatles tweet
Words by Haukur Már Helgason
Photo by Kaisu Nevasalmi & Haukur Már Helgason
Nothing like a country that every day walks further down
the path of its own inexorable decline. Nothing better than
an ever more provincial country run by a rotating crew of
the same incompetents, dishonest, corrupted by their sup-
port of a permanently and totally corrupt regime. What is
better than living in a land where justice is a bazaar? What
artist wouldn't dream of such a nation?
As made evident in the
third verse, the song is
sung on behalf of a man
who just quit the police,
explaining why.