Political mumbo-jumbo

Reader question:

Please explain “mumbo-jumbo” in this sentence: “Ever get confused by all of the political mumbo-jumbo in the media today?”

My comments:

Have you ever got confused by all of the political mumbo-jumbo in the media today?

The answer has to be yes, of course, when we get to understand what political mumbo-jumbo is.

So, what is political mumbo-jumbo?

In a word, it is officialese or official language, or simply a politician’s speech, any speech.

The very best politicians, to use the words of their best critics, can speak for hours without saying anything. That’s about nailing it. A politician’s speech is so full of jargons, euphemisms and empty talk that afterwards, you remember nothing.

That’s right. And that’s what mumbo-jumbo does to you.

You may view mumbo-jumbo as a variation of mumble-jumble. To mumble, you see, is to try to make sounds while you are chewing food. Jumble, on the other hand, means mixture. When we see these two words bundled together, it’s easy to guess their meaning.

Yes, mumble-jumble refers to unintelligible sounds we make as though we had a mouthful of food.

Political mumble-jumble, then, refers to a seasoned politician’s empty talk.

A good politician, we understand, will beat about the bush for hours without coming to or near the point. In other words, he or she will talk about anything but the real issue. And when they eventually do address the issue, their language is so full of jargon and platitudes that they become empty and confusing.

And that is the point, perhaps. That’s what being a politician is about today. They just won’t, ever, call a spade a spade – perhaps so that the public cannot hold them accountable even though they seem to be responsible for having made of mess of everything.

Anyways, in sum, political mumble-jumble is a politician’s muddled and evasive language intended to obscure meaning and, we assume, help the speaker evade accountability in the end.

To be fair, this is not any one single politician’s fault. It’s just the way it is, how things have, sadly, come to be. I am to suggest that all politicians are at fault, but I immediately realize that’s not saying anything either. So I’ll quit finding fault with politicians and just keep feeling sad for them.

I won’t keep feeling sad for them either. I mean, not for long. After this article is written and dealt with, I’ll clear the subject of politics off my mind completely.

Hopefully you will, too – after, of course, having coming to firm grips with “mumbo-jumbo”.

Mumbo-jumbo, incidentally, was coined by Francis Moore in the 18th century, as explained by The Phrase Finder (Phrases.org.uk):

The phrase probably originated from the Mandingo name Maamajomboo, which was a masked dancer that took part in religious ceremonies. In the 18th century Mumbo-jumbo referred to a West African god.

Francis Moore, in his 1738 work Travels into the inland parts of Africa noted:

“The women are kept in the greatest subjection; and the men, to render their power as compleat as possible, influence their wives to give them an unlimited obedience, by all the force of fear and terror. For this purpose the Mundingoes have a kind of image eight or nine feet high, made of the bark of trees, dressed in a long coat, and crowned with a whisp of straw. This is called a Mumbo Jumbo; and whenever the men have any dispute with the women, this is sent for to determine the contest, which is almost always done in favour of the men. One who is in the secret, conceals himself under the coat, and bringing in the image, is the oracle on these occasions. No one is allowed to come armed into his presence. When the women hear him coming, they run away and hide themselves; but if you are acquainted with the person concealed in the Mumbo Jumbo, he will send them all to come, make them sit down, and afterward either sing or dance, as he pleases; and if any refuse to come, he will send for, and whip them. Whenever any one enters into this society, they swear in the most solemn manner never to divulge the secret to any woman, or to any person that is not entered into it: and to preserve the secret inviolable, no boys are admitted under 16 years of age. The people also swear by the Mumbo Jumbo; and the oath is esteemed irrevocable. There are very few towns of any note that have not one of these objects of terror, to frighten the poor women into obedience.”

That seems like a nice trick if you can do it and it isn’t much of a surprise that the phrase migrated in meaning to mean nonsense and meaningless speech. In the same book Moore anticipated the eventual nonsense meaning of the term by defining it like this:

“A cant language... call’d Mumbo-Jumbo.”

All right. Here are media examples of mumbo jumbo, or mumble jumble:

1. Calling it “political mumbo jumbo,” County Executive Habern W. Freeman has vetoed an environmental land-preservation bill that the County Council passed in time for Tuesday’s election.

The bill, approved by the council late last month, would have created an environmental land-preservation commission that would coordinate preservation of environmentally sensitive land with the state environmental land trust program.

The bill was set up to protect sensitive areas that might not be protected under other preservation programs, such as the agricultural preservation program.

“It was nothing but political mumbo jumbo,” Freeman said Thursday.

“There was no funding attached. And there’s nothing in that bill that we can’t do already.”

- Exec Rejects ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ Land-preservation Bill, The Baltimore Sun, November 4, 1990.

2. Greenbarg suspects the school administration may be creating a consolation prize when the administration announced in the bid-rejection document that the contract would be split into two. One company will be hired to manage design and construction and another company will be hired to deal with cost and program control services.

The administration is splitting the contract “to give somebody a consolation prize so nobody causes a commotion,” Greenbarg said.

“They are trying to break it up so Jacobs can still get a piece…so it doesn’t look like something they screwed up on,” Marchetti said in an interview. He described the district’s reasons for rejecting the bids and for dividing the contract into two as “mumble jumble…They are making this up as they go…Transparency is a joke.”

In a Friday email, school district spokeswoman Tracy Clark said that splitting the contract into two would help in the “implementation of improvements in district school facilities. These will address indoor air quality and operational life safety systems…”

- Broward School Board’s budding bid rigging scandal takes a twist, FloridaBulldog.org, March 16, 2017.

3. They crammed into the century-old parlor, finding room amid the doilied end tables and overflowing bookcases: Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, Joe Biden, Richard Gephardt, Paul Simon, Gary Hart, Howard Dean, and Jesse Jackson.

Bill Clinton has sat in this living room. Hillary Rodham Clinton has visited, too.

“Being the first primary state, they all come down, you know,” said Mary Louise Hancock, 94, from her living room, largely unchanged for decades. The flowered wallpaper, lamps, and pictures are as they were in 1988, 2008, and the presidential primaries in between.

The Concord native wryly notes that if she lived anyplace but New Hampshire, “I wouldn’t be nearly so important.”

Hancock plays an unlikely gatekeeper, with the ability to smooth the path of would-be Democratic presidents new to the Granite State.

“You know the saying, ‘Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it’? Well, she knows the history . . . more so than anybody else in the state of New Hampshire,” said Kathy Sullivan, former state Democratic Party chairwoman. “It’s just a wise thing for someone to sit down and talk to her and get her input and her wisdom.”

Hancock serves as a reservoir of wisdom on the political landscape of a state that, with its first in the nation primary, can knock candidates from the race or rescue them from obscurity. John Lynch, the former governor of New Hampshire and one of Hancock’s longtime friends, said that her stamp of approval is more than an endorsement.

“She will spend hours and hours and hours writing personal letters to her friends, telling them why she is endorsing,” said Lynch, who first met Hancock when she ran for state Senate nearly 40 years ago. “These are also influential people she’s writing to who have the ability to bring their own friends along.”

...

Hancock was the state’s first female planning director, but she left the job and ran for state Senate, winning a seat held by Republican men since its inception. She held the seat for 2½ years before resigning to work for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

At the time — it was 1979 — the Concord Monitor said Hancock would be missed at the State House: “If there was anyone in the state Senate who disdained political mumbo-jumbo, who said bluntly what she thought, sometimes in salty terms, and who was the conscience of the Senate, it was Mary Louise Hancock. She’s a mover and a shaker who knows the innards of bureaucracy like the palm of her hand.”

Much is the same today — the insight, the candor, the humor. Ask about the current state of affairs, and Hancock says, “Sometimes I swear. I shouldn’t, but I do,” before bemoaning the bitterness and cynicism permeating politics.

- At 94, Democratic doyenne is still the go-to person in N.H., The Boston Globe, April 20, 2017.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.