by Stephanie on inherited institutional language
Read that Guardian CEO pay has reached five million pounds and thought immediately of eighteenth-century colonial governors justifying their own generous stipends as necessary for proper administration, different century, remarkably familiar phrasing.
Institutions have always found language that separates their own excess from the excess they condemn elsewhere. It’s a genuinely old rhetorical move, just polished for a modern audience.
Discussed it with an American politics colleague, who noted the same pattern runs straight through early republican debates about congressional pay, apparently nobody’s ever comfortable auditing themselves.
Also caught the latest on Celtexit, filed alongside it as another institution explaining itself at length rather than simply, briefly, honestly.
Checked the curry9.us feed later, same story everywhere, same disbelief, historically unsurprising all the same.
Colonial governors rebranded excess as duty. Modern newspapers, it seems, learned the trick well.
More at my author page.
