John North Editor & Publisher

A story about the British government’s effort to formulate a statement of values on what it means to be British recently caught my eye and made me chuckle.

Never having had the equivalent of a Declaration of Independence, the Brits never came up with a written statement of national purpose along the lines of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” or “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.”

Despite the serious intent of the endeavor, the British citizenry has taken this in a decidedly British direction, making it the butt of self-deprecatory wit in pubs across the land.

Not to be outdone, The Times of London cynically sponsored a British motto-writing contest for its readers that included some side-splitters.

One that mocks Latin mottos intones, “Dipso, Fatso, Bingo, Asbo, Tesco.” (“Asbo” stands for “anti-social behavior order,” apparently the Brits’ version of a restraining order; and “Tesco” is their equivalent of Wal-Mart discount department stores.)

Other Monty Python-esque examples include “Once Mighty Empire, Slightly Used,” “At Least We’re Not French” and “We Apologize for the Inconvenience.”

Notwithstanding, the winner of the Times’ contest was: “No Motto Please, We’re British.”

The House of Lords even got in on the fun: The Earl of Mar and Kellie suggested adopting the motto of Scotland, “Nemo me impune lacessit” (“No one attacks me with impunity”), which he chose to translate as “Don’t sit on a thistle.” Earl Ferrers drily proposed that, all else failing, the House of Lords’ own motto

would do: “Questions and answers ought to be short.”
Many British dislike the idea of a national mission statement because they object to the soundbite/bumper-sticker mentality of reducing everything to some inane five-word phrase.

After all, it was a British author, George Orwell, who encapsulated the mind-control dangers of slogans in his classic, “1984,” by emblazoning the mottos of the all-controlling Party on the façade of the Ministry of Truth: “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery” “Ignorance Is Strength.”

From my own experience, a lot of Ashevillians feel the same way about the Greater Asheville Chamber of Commerce’s mottos for the city. The chamber started out with “Altitude Affects Attitude,” which prompted jokes about oxygen deprivation. Then, it must have been some overpaid marketing consultant who dreamed up “Asheville: Any Way You Like It,” which sounds vaguely like a hooker’s come-on. No one, of course, asked you or me whether we wanted either slogan, or any at all.

Maybe the best slogan of all is, regrettably, the least understood — North Carolina’s state motto, “Esse Quam Videri,” which means “to be rather than to seem.” In other words, look to the essences, not the appearances — or, as I would translate it for would-be official sloganeers, “Get real!”

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John North, publisher and editor of the Daily Planet, may be contacted at publisher-at-ashevilledailyplanet.com.