By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
The greatest deal of the trouble that Marija Vukovic got herself into – primarily with a stupid statement – stems from disappointment resulting from the exposed hypocrisy.
Representative sport is a patriotic business. It includes the anthem, the flag, a few tears, “We love you Montenegro”.
It implies national pride. It also implies identification: people celebrate successful athletes because they identify with their successes, which they see as their own, but also as the nation’s successes.
Maria is in that business. If you triumphantly raise the Montenegrin flag at a big competition, or maybe even kiss it a few times… Then, naturally, people are disappointed when they find out that you feel contempt for the eagle on that flag, which you call a chicken.
Let alone that it’s not fair. But it’s not even smart to show so much hypocrisy. It is simply fascinating that Marija failed at that very thing: because she learned from the church – from the best. In Montenegro, where there is more hypocrisy than corruption, where the entire political elite day and night pretends to be what it is not, she slipped on her own hypocrisy.
The entire video clip that horrified the public carries an aura of gleeful stupidity. Because: how did she get to mention the chicken in the first place? The athlete got to it while she was trying to guess – what is the mascot of the Olympics in Paris? Then she remembered that the French have that symbol, what is it called – the chicken. Fuck it. It’s not a chicken, it’s a rooster. And a Gallic one.
What is your impression – if you had to guess, what would you say: do Andrija Mandic and his colleagues, let’s say Radunovic and Zogovic, think about the Montenegrin flag like Marija Vukovic? And what about Cyril and Methodius – excuse me, Joanikije and Methodius?
What do you think, why did the priests and those beautiful, spiritual, but proud girls furiously remove the Montenegrin flags from the Cetinje monastery? So, they removed Ivan Crnojevic’s eagle from the Monastery that Ivan founded. Less than three years will pass, and we will learn that both Cetinje and the Cetinje Monastery were founded by Saint Sava. Just as Njegos learned to write by reading the literary works of Sava – literary works that, admittedly, do not exist. But since when is that a problem? What does not exist, and what people have chosen to believe, has a far greater influence on reality than what does exist, but people have chosen to ignore.
I want to say this: not a single part of the attack on Marija Vukovic is devoid of hypocrisy. Because what, if not hypocrisy, is the attitude of the church’s Khmers, the screws of the Montenegrin political elite, who are super-cool when their church shows disrespect for the flag, while for the disrespect shown by Marija Vukovic they demand a harsh punishment? What is it, if not hypocrisy, when you defend Andrija Mandic, who by displaying the flag of another country practically “remakes” the Montenegrin flag, and you attack Marija Vukovic?
What is it, if not hypocrisy, a piece of hypocrisy the size of an elephant’s turd, when the creators of public opinion who supported the religious processions, promoted the “emancipatory potential” of the Serbian Orthodox Church, brought Dritan to power, fought with their hands and feet for Mandic to come to power while normalizing the Chetniks and de-secularization, attacked Marija Vukovic. And they did it with all their might, because she bit their Montenegrin patriotism’s heart.
And things are like this: if she lived for three hundred years and if she talked shit about the flag every day, Marija Vukovic could not do even a micron of harm to the Montenegrin society that the said defenders of public morality have done to her.
(The opinions and views of the authors of the columns are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
