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Louis VI the Fat
04-04-2007, 19:25
Portuguese TV recently aired a program where viewers could elect the Greatest Portuguese of all Time: 'Os Grandes Portugueses'.

Most of you will be familiar with the format. France, the UK, the USA chose De Gaulle, Churchill and Reagan respectively.

And Portugal?

Would it be king Henry the Navigator? Vasco da Gama? Bartolomeus Dias? One of the other thousands of Portuguese who openened up the world's oceans for Europe?
The philosopher Spinoza? Or would he be too Dutch?
Amália Rodrigues? The fado singer, who can move the heart of the most embittered of men to tears?
Fernando Pessoa, the brilliant author?
Eusébio, Luis Figo? What great footballers a tiny country can spawn.
Or even the Special One, Jose 'second only to God' Mourinho?

And the winner is...with a whopping 40% of the votes....Salazar.

The dictator (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37159).

~:eek: ~:mecry: :wall: ~:mecry: ~:eek:


I can not even begin to describe my shock and disappointment. ~:mecry:


PORTUGAL:
Salazar 'Greatest Portuguese Ever', TV Viewers Say
Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Mar 30 (IPS) - News media and academic circles in Portugal are vying with each other to explain why the public chose former dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (1932-1968) in a poll on state television channel RTP as "The Greatest Portuguese Who Ever Lived."

Economic problems, unemployment and the lack of opportunities, frequent corruption scandals and Portugal's laggard position in terms of development in Europe are the most commonly cited reasons for the number of votes for Salazar, the major figure in the 48-year-long dictatorship (1926-1974) which was overthrown by leftwing army captains on Apr. 25, 1974.

"Great Portuguese", a television programme based on the BBC show "Great Britons" which has inspired similar shows in several other countries, was aired on the night of Mar. 25 and ended in the early hours of Monday Mar. 26. Audience votes gave Oliveira Salazar a comfortable win at 41 percent, followed by the late communist leader Álvaro Cunhal, with 19 percent.

Historian and former parliamentary deputy José Pacheco Pereira told the newspaper Público de Lisboa on Tuesday that he was not surprised at the result, "because the programme format encouraged the mobilisation of vocal supporters of either Salazar or Cunhal, who in a way personify the divisions among Portuguese in the 20th century."

The 10 finalists also included Admiral Vasco da Gama (1469-1524) who discovered the sea route to India, King Alfonso Henríques, the 12th century founder of the nation, 15th century King João II, Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), Sebastião José de Carvalho de Melo (regent of Portugal in the 18th century), the poets Luiz Vaz de Camoes (1524-1580) and Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), and Arístides de Sousa Mendes (1885-1954), who as consul in France saved the lives of thousands of Jews in the Second World War.

How is it possible that the founder of the authoritarian "New State" (1933-1974), the longest-lived European dictatorship of the 20th century, was preferred by such a margin to the greatest figures of Portugal's rich history?

José Rebelo, professor of sociology of information and vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights in Portugal, gave IPS one possible answer.

The result does not reflect a desire to go back to a dictatorship like Salazar's, because "it wasn't a uniform vote for Salazar, but a mixture of different votes for Salazar, with different intentions which ranged from voting for him to express disenchantment with present-day politics, to voting out of a sense of rebellion or defiance, or even as a provocation," he said.

"A contest is just a contest. One could easily argue that the members of the audience who decided to participate weren't a sociologically representative sample. It's all true, but when over 40 percent of the thousands of votes received by RTP demonstrate a preference for Salazar, it's food for thought," he said.

Adelino Gomes, the chief editor of Público said, "Everyone is saying that Salazar won a contest, not an election, but some people talk of 'the symbolic death of Apr. 25' when they see the dictator's resounding victory over great kings, explorers, poets and politicians from throughout our history."

In the TV poll they were all left standing by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, a professor at the University of Coimbra who was invited to become finance minister by the military dictatorship that overthrew the republican government in 1926. Salazar, who lived 1889-1970, assumed full power and became the regime's strongman.

At a time when politics was carried on with pistols on the table, Salazar's political project, the New State, had a corporatist economic structure, and was the first to be clearly inspired by the doctrines of the Catholic Church as defined in the papal encyclicals Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931).

In 1930 Salazar founded the National Union party, inspired by Benito Mussolini who had ruled Italy since 1922. In 1932 he assumed the presidency of the Council of Ministers. His regime was intended to supercede liberal democracy.

Enjoying unrestricted power, he created the International State Defence Police (PIDE), banned any opposition, and in spite of international pressure insisted on maintaining a worn out empire which included colonies in Africa (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Sao Tomé and Príncipe) and Asia (Goa, Diu, Daman, Macao and East Timor), under the motto "Proudly Alone."

Salazar's first major international defeat was at the hands of India in 1961, when then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru dispatched an overwhelming force to retake the Portuguese enclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu. The Portuguese military garrisons received peremptory orders from Lisbon to defeat the invaders or die in the attempt.

The inevitable surrender by the governor of Portuguese India, General Antonio Vassalo e Silva, was the spark that detonated independence wars in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique which resulted in thousands killed on either side, and ended when the leftist captains wrested power from Marcello Caetano (1968-1974), Salazar's successor in Lisbon.

The dictatorship's dark record included thousands of people who were tortured by the PIDE, and more who were transported to concentration camps in Africa and East Timor.

Augusto Vilela, a journalist closely connected with Diario de Lisboa, the only newspaper that held out untamed against the regime, told IPS that the choice of the old dictator as the greatest Portuguese who ever lived "by public vote organised by the state television channel, brought shame upon the programme directors and on the political authorities who allowed it."

"It was repulsive to democratic sectors, while it caused carefully concealed satisfaction among the right, who have been patiently biding their time since the 1974 revolution," he said.

What happened is part of a phenomenon involving "a significant number of media outlets all over the world, especially television channels, that are directed by persons of no intellectual stature or integrity, without principles or values, who are merely gangmasters of their reporters and purveyors of infotainment shows," he said.

Visao Online weekly columnist Miguel Carvalho said that all the complaints and bitter comments he had heard on the street from taxi-drivers, bus and train passengers led him to think that the Portuguese chose Salazar "out of revenge," because of the dire situation in the country.

"Portuguese people have a strange mentality. They bite their tongues and rarely speak out directly. But since they spend all day and all night in front of the television, I think they slyly took up their remote controls and chose Salazar, who was conveniently at hand, as a sort of coded protest, using the old tyrant to symbolise the many petty 'little Salazars' that make their lives miserable today," Carvalho concluded. (END/2007)

Banquo's Ghost
04-04-2007, 20:10
Now that is depressing.

Mind you:


"because the programme format encouraged the mobilisation of vocal supporters of either Salazar or Cunhal, who in a way personify the divisions among Portuguese in the 20th century."

is quite telling, in the same way the British version had Princess Diana leading the field for some time.

Ronin
04-04-2007, 20:31
these results hardly mean anything...

The voting was conduct on a call-in basis with hardly any safe-guards that prevented people from voting more than once....also there was only 60 000 votes....hardly representative......thirdly no one really cared about the damn show.

On the same week of the TV show´s final, a poling company conducted a poll following the normal rules to ensure a correct result and asked a sample of the population who they thought the greatest Portuguese ever was.....the result?....Don Afonso Henriques...the country´s founder came in on first place...

Salazar and Alvaro Cunhal?.....dead last on the last 2 places...

you can´t trust on this kind of tv voting...it´s too easy to influence the result.

Pindar
04-04-2007, 21:00
Most of you will be familiar with the format. France, the UK, the USA chose De Gaulle, Churchill and Reagan respectively.

The U.S. chose Reagan? That is surprising.

Louis VI the Fat
04-04-2007, 21:06
Gah, Ronin, gah! There I was, hoping for a huge sociopsychological essay from your hand, wherein you declare the Portuguese 'Geist' fundamentally the product of a meaninglessness, preconstructivist society, stating that the primary theme of Pessao's critique of subcultural capitalist theory is the bridge between your nation's sexual identity and consciousness, whereas da Pinto's school suggests that this language is part of the collapse of consciousness, given that Foucault’s model of postdialectic discourse is valid here, but that this tv show's result is a projection of a patriarchial narrative that doesn't include reality as a totality, but is rather a reflection of Baudrillard's paradigm of hyperreality.


But no. :shame:

Louis VI the Fat
04-04-2007, 21:07
Okay, so Ronin had to ruin a perfectly fine 'shock! horror!' thread with reason and clearness of mind. ~:mecry:

But I'm not giving up that easily. Maybe the British have a mind more geared towards shock, horror and outrage.

the British version had Princess Diana leading the field for some timeWot! That's ridiculous!

Out of all the great minds that created the greatest empire this world has ever seen, Britain wanted to choose a bimbo whose greatest intellectual effort was writing her name correcty on her alimony papers!? ~:eek:

Louis VI the Fat
04-04-2007, 21:12
The U.S. chose Reagan? That is surprising.Ridiculous, isn't it?

I can't believe that out of all the great minds that created America, the greatest succes story of mankind, the Americans picked Reagan, a demagogue, a vengeful reactionary, who turned America's post-Vietnam and post-Nixon anxieties into a rancid populistic us versus them warmongering mentality, the results of which are showed in the desastrous Iraq campaign. :no:

Andres
04-04-2007, 21:19
We had this in Belgium as well

De Grootste Belg was Pater Damiaan.
Le plus grand Belge was Jacques Brel.

So we have two Greatest Belgians...

Gotta love Absurdistan Belgium !

~:cheers:

Ronin
04-04-2007, 21:31
Gah, Ronin, gah! There I was, hoping for a huge sociopsychological essay from your hand, wherein you declare the Portuguese 'Geist' fundamentally the product of a meaninglessness, preconstructivist society, stating that the primary theme of Pessao's critique of subcultural capitalist theory is the bridge between your nation's sexual identity and consciousness, whereas da Pinto's school suggests that this language is part of the collapse of consciousness, given that Foucault’s model of postdialectic discourse is valid here, but that this tv show's result is a projection of a patriarchial narrative that doesn't include reality as a totality, but is rather a reflection of Baudrillard's paradigm of hyperreality.


But no. :shame:

Pessoa´s main point was that he spent his afternoons in a bar in Lisbon drinking absinthe..and when we wrote his stuff he was wacked out of his mind...:laugh4:

either that or the whole "critique of subcultural capitalist theory" thing....yeah :juggle2: :laugh4:

Caius
04-04-2007, 21:33
How can a dictator be the Greatest Portugese of all times?

They voted because he was a bad administrator?

:dizzy:

English assassin
04-05-2007, 09:57
But I'm not giving up that easily. Maybe the British have a mind more geared towards shock, horror and outrage.Out of all the great minds that created the greatest empire this world has ever seen, Britain wanted to choose a bimbo whose greatest intellectual effort was writing her name correcty on her alimony papers!?

I know, its absurd. I can only guess that page 3 girls* must have been excluded from the competition. Jordan for teh win.


* Cultural note for foreigners: the Sun "newspaper" prints a picture of a topless model every day on page 3, often accompanied by some very bad punning purporting to represent the model's views on some matter of topical interest. The Sun is by far the largest selling newspaper in the UK...

Blodrast
04-05-2007, 14:38
I know, its absurd. I can only guess that page 3 girls* must have been excluded from the competition. Jordan for teh win.


* Cultural note for foreigners: the Sun "newspaper" prints a picture of a topless model every day on page 3, often accompanied by some very bad punning purporting to represent the model's views on some matter of topical interest. The Sun is by far the largest selling newspaper in the UK...

See, this is how you know you're getting old... it's Keeley Hazell these days, EA... Sheesh, get with the times, will ya ? ~D

English assassin
04-05-2007, 15:42
See, this is how you know you're getting old... it's Keeley Hazell these days, EA... Sheesh, get with the times, will ya ? ~D

Older than you think mate, I put Linda Lusardi at first, but I realised none of you whippersnappers would remember her. :beam:

Of course this was in the days when breasts were made out of breast, not plastic and the policemen were 8 feet tall and half a pound of lemon sherbert was sixpence and...

doc_bean
04-05-2007, 16:46
Older than you think mate, I put Linda Lusardi at first, but I realised none of you whippersnappers would remember her. :beam:

Of course this was in the days when breasts were made out of breast, not plastic and the policemen were 8 feet tall and half a pound of lemon sherbert was sixpence and...


:hijacked: I believe Keeley Hazell at least claims they're natural.


as for the tv show, the less aid about it the better, we all chose ridicoulous people...

Banquo's Ghost
04-05-2007, 17:04
Wot! That's ridiculous!

Out of all the great minds that created the greatest empire this world has ever seen, Britain wanted to choose a bimbo whose greatest intellectual effort was writing her name correcty on her alimony papers!? ~:eek:


Sadly, I jest not - Di came third (http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/11_november/25/greatbritons_final.shtml) after some while leading the field:

1. Churchill 456,498

2. Brunel 398,526

3. Diana 225,584

4. Darwin 112,496

5. Shakespeare 109,919

6. Newton 84,628

7. Elizabeth I 71,928

8. Lennon 68,445

9. Nelson 49,171

10 Cromwell 45,053

Pindar
04-05-2007, 17:19
Ridiculous, isn't it?

I can't believe that out of all the great minds that created America, the greatest succes story of mankind, the Americans picked Reagan, a demagogue, a vengeful reactionary, who turned America's post-Vietnam and post-Nixon anxieties into a rancid populistic us versus them warmongering mentality, the results of which are showed in the desastrous Iraq campaign. :no:

I like Reagan. The Cold War was us vs. them. Even so, Reagan is not the greatest by a long shot. Politics of the moment (which I think the Reagan choice reflects) shouldn't trump critical thinking.

You should start a thread in the Backroom where our various nationals can weigh in on who they would choose for their peoples.

Ronin
04-05-2007, 17:25
Sadly, I jest not - Di came third (http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/11_november/25/greatbritons_final.shtml) after some while leading the field:

1. Churchill 456,498

2. Brunel 398,526

3. Diana 225,584

4. Darwin 112,496

5. Shakespeare 109,919

6. Newton 84,628

7. Elizabeth I 71,928

8. Lennon 68,445

9. Nelson 49,171

10 Cromwell 45,053

Diana in front of Darwin, Shakespeare and Newton????:skull:

next to this the Portuguese list doesn´t look that bad....sure Salazar was a bastard.....but he was an important bastard that shaped this country deeply (with bad results but still...he left his mark)...

what the hell did Diana ever do?

English assassin
04-05-2007, 17:51
what the hell did Diana ever do?

As far as I can work it out she seemed to become a sort of figurehead for women who don't like their husbands very much.

I guess its quite a big constituency.

(NB, nothing in this post should be taken to imply the slightest sympathy for Mr Charles Windsor).