Mind your language: It’s silly season

Silly season has hitherto been defined as that slack time of year when the media does not have enough real news and hence resorts to playing up trivial or frivolous incidents. It now deserves to be redefined—at least in India—as that time of year when public figures seem to be struck by such an acute foot-in-mouth epidemic that the media has little option but to fill pages with their ridiculous or outlandish pronouncements.

It should be a matter of some concern that politicians are the most affected by the silly season malaise and have extended its patently deleterious effects to a nearly year round occurrence. From state governments being likened to nail-pierced bottle gourds to Darwin’s theory being de-volutionised, not to mention the provenance of the Internet and plastic surgery, politicians seem to be unable to be low-key, or is it lauki?

At one level, these people should be lauded for bringing some comic relief in these trying times, even if their intention was not to elicit chuckles. However, the probability that those who make these pronouncements and their audience actually take silly season-affected utterances seriously is alarming. Unfortunately, orders from above to desist from making ill-considered statements depends on motormouths understanding what constitutes a silly utterance. Clearly they do not.