Column | Regrettable – NRC
:format(jpeg):fill(f8f8f8,true)/s3/static.nrc.nl/bvhw/wp-content/blogs.dir/114/files/2022/07/huiskamp1280x768.png "Column | Regrettable – NRC")
Somewhere in an insignificant room in a Van der Valk on the highway, between the DaytradeGuroes and self -help charlatans, media trainers themselves work on the devaluation of the word ‘regretted’. That is how I see it at least for me. I remember that ‘regretted’ meaning, reserved for the death of a loved one, bags for your driving test or that time last week that three people in the audience of a Utrecht café you voted with their red cards on stage after two jokes about the pope. The latter example is perhaps a bit more personal.
The word is hijacked by CEOs and politicians, who do not mourn something they had no control over, something she happened to, but as a distant reaction to something they could or can do something. Marjolein Faber who wants to give her performance in a debate about not giving ribbons to AZC volunteers’regulated« . The fraudulent Peter Gillis who has the summary proceedings about the sale of his holiday parks »regulatedOr the Rotterdam College that « regulated« That the municipality had not done anything for years with reports of corruption.
It can be even more distant. Regret the ‘state of affairs’. Or ‘the fuss’. The Avrotros regulated Last week the fuss that had arisen about the prohibition of the organizing European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for song festival artists on, among others, Pride or Palestinavlaggen. This way you remove yourself, your own influence, so far from the situation that you are two time zones away.
Something regrets at the bottom of the escalation ladder. It is regretted – being worried/worried – calling ambassador on the mat – drawing a red line – phase out a red line and drawing further on again – even more robber drawing – sanctions – actually intervening.
It is language for weak spinal cords, it is slightly sounding nothing. Regrisacy is dabbing with a little water if there is a dirty, large fat stain on your stove.
Something regrets ignorance disguised as powerlessness, an excuse not to do anymore. Certainly in politics. Why intervene when Trump comes up with sanctions against the International Criminal Court if you do it too just regret? Why take action against the Israeli government if you can also just regret tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian victims? Why should you not respond to world problems as you would do if on your birthday of the forty people you had invited but five showed up?
And so we regret from economic crisis to Third World War, from natural disaster to genocide. But if it is possible, we still regret the state of affairs around the image that arose about the fuss. And that, that is regrettable.
Frank Huiskamp Replaces Frits Abrahams this week.
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