It would make good sense, too, because a photocopy of this eulogy could be forwarded to the National Tourist Organization together with a form requesting a full page, monthly, four color separation ad, payable in advance.
But the truth is people on package tours rarely see The Athenian and when they do, toss it aside, saying, “When we pay good money to get as far away from home as possible, why should we read about your local problems?” We intend to reply to this query, but have not settled yet on how to word it.
A year ago last spring this magazine was taken to task by a responsible local newspaper for publishing an article on terrorism on the advent of the tourist season. That this article was upbeat and commended the new airport security measures passed unnoticed. The criticism stemmed from the fact that because it was written in English, The Athenian was a window facing onto the outside world and therefore had to be, willy-nilly, prettily dressed. In other words a subject was being asked for cosmetic treatment (if treated at all) which in fact was matter of life and death. As “17 November” struck again a week later, a reply to this criticism was felt unnecessary.
But history being long in Greece has greater opportunities to repeat itself, and often awkwardly. In reply to an opposition motion of censure in parliament this year which brought up the matter of terrorism, the government asked if it was for the good of the country that this subject was aired at the beginning of the tourist season?
Due to two highly publicized acts of terrorism during the last month, Greece became the object of hostility in some quarters of the international press. It was accused of inefficiency, corruption, moral laxity and incompetence. So soft on terrorism, has the country become, wrote The Economist, “that western counter-terrorist agencies now withhold intelligence from the Greeks for fear of leaks.”
Of course, criticism levelled at a government is quite different from that aimed at the country it represents, but in democracies people are held responsible for the governments they elect and when one reads “Greece’s reputation among tourists has been left in a shambles”, the censure is pretty wide-ranging – and it may not be true, either.
All this, combined with lethal heat waves, intolerable levels of pollution in Athens, forest fires that have devestated the rest of the country and economic woes which have now allowed even Portugal to pull ahead in per capita income, leaving Greece during its presidency at the bottom of the EC heap, make painful reading for Philhellenes everywhere.
In an increasing number of letters addressed to this magazine the negative attitude mentioned above has been pointed out and some have attributed it to an outbreak of violent self-criticism in Greek life that is becoming contagious. It has been pointed out that this kind of criticism has even seeped into these pages – unfortunate but not unreasonable, since it is Greek life that these pages are mean to reflect. But such criticism must not be left unanswered.
Letters to the editor are usually written with some particular gripe in mind and if one took them all at their face value one would imagine a world full of pushy, boorish, egoistic, conniving, critical, noisy folk.
Yet let these people speak out in truth what they forget to write in anger, and most probably they will say they are pushy because they are curious, boorish because they are straightforward, egoistic because they have a sense of honor, conniving because they are smart, critical because they hae a sense of humor and noisy because they have a boisterous love of life.
An acquaintance who, on a first trip to Greece spent half her holiday brooding over the fact that she had been ripped off by the taxidriver who drove her from the airport to her hotel, admittetf when she left two weeks later that the greatest attraction of Greece were the Greeks themselves.
Needless to say, the Greeks who heard her say this were struck dumb with disbelief, and no less skeptical either when she added with conviction that a Greek was probably the worst judge of his countrymen’s character (which would be true everywhere), that he had a mostly mistaken idea of what it was about his country that attracted tourists, and that the weaknesses and follies tor which he criticized his fellow citizens were just the qualities that foreigners like best.
It has not been a policy here to promote government slogans, but when, on assuming the EC’s rotating presidency last month, PASOK worked up the catch-phrases “an integrated social space” and “a community with a human face”, it seems to have unwittingly stumbled on reality. An ancient grammarian once remarked that one should not be reluctant to state the obvious so long as it was true. Such is the case. Despite its notorious political divisiveness, Greece is indeed an integrated social space, and, despite its being at times distorted by outbreaks of gunfire, a community with a very human face.
