First, congratulations are in order for Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, who today became the 38th Prime Minister of Iceland, and the first openly gay head of government in world history. Jóhanna,1 of course, is getting the opportunity primarily because Iceland has imploded, and the Icelandic people are saying, in effect, “What the heck, why not try it?” Sort of like how American got the first leader of African descent to lead a western nation. So this is progress, of a sort; if straight, white, male politicians keep screwing things up, eventually the population will give up on them.
Second, congrats to Puppy Bowl V MVP Matilda, a beagle, for scoring four puppy touchdowns — a new Puppy Bowl record.
Finally, I’m told that there was a football game today, and that John Cole was happy at the outcome. So congratulations to the denizens of Western Pennsylvania and the surrounding area; I’m only disappointed that Arizona didn’t hold you to a field goal in the closing seconds, rather than a touchdown, as it would have been fun to send this to overtime.
- No, that’s not a mistake. Icelanders’ last names are derived from parents’ names; usually they’re patronymics, i.e., derived from the father’s name. This is the case for Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, whose last name translates as “Daughter of Sigurðar.” Less frequently, they’re matronymics, but the convention is the same. The names are not passed on from generation to generation and are used more as a form of disambiguation than canon identity. If you look in an Icelandic phone book, you’ll see names listed in order of first, not last name. Similarly, while we refer to our president as “President Obama,” the Icelanders would refer to their prime minister as “Prime Minister Jóhanna.” [↩]
“Jóhanna,1 of course, is getting the opportunity primarily because Iceland has imploded, and the Icelandic people are saying, in effect, “What the heck, why not try it?””
I think that’s something of an overstretch – you can’t extrapolate the US presidential system to the Icelandic parliamentary system like that, really. “The Icelandic people” had nothing to do with the decision (though it’s true that they have seemed perfectly happy about it) – she was elevated to PM because the party she was already head of was asked to form a joint government by the president. Not like Obama, who was elected as an individual and shot to national politics very quickly. Obviously, it’s super that Icelandic citizens and politicians have been so unbothered by her queerness to elect her as a representative and party leader respectively, but that’s hardly a new thing. I think it’s giving Icelandic social mores a lot less credit than they deserve to assume they have to be confronted by a national crisis to resort to tolerance.
Apologies if this comes across as nitpicking: I just get quite annoyed at people talking as if everyone else’s politics work like the US model.
“America got the first leader of African descent to lead a western nation” – really? Then what the hell has been going on in Haiti for the past 200-odd years?
Also – Iceland has a very strong gay rights movement, or rather, there is a lot of public support of gay equality. There’s no reason to minimize their accomplishments – and Johanna’s – by reducing them to the politics of last resort.