The 21st century dictionary

So Alan Sugar is now Britain’s enterprise czar. How odd. When assessing an applicant’s suitability, the future Lord Sugar of Amstrad seems to prize the ability to make inedible chocolates and the willingness to be economical with the truth on a CV. 

Czar, derived from Caesar via its Slavonic form tsesar, is distinctly related – think second cousins – to the word “potentate”, a tag that suits Sugar far more snugly. Tsar – Czar is the Westernised version – was the title bestowed on the ruling monarchs of Bulgaria, Russia and Serbia. Only one living person can truly call himself a tsar – an elderly Bulgarian gent with the Scrabbletastic name of Simeon Saxe-Coburg Gotha (and a distant relative of the Queen), who was Tsar Simeon II until the Communists took over Bulgaria in 1946. Simeon later returned to Bulgaria, becoming head of state again, but doesn’t use – though he hasn’t formally renounced – his title.

So instead of old-fashioned, autocratic blue-blooded czars, we have enterprise czars (Sugar), a communications czar (Stephen Carter who recently resigned to a chorus of “Who?” and “So what?”), a drugs czar (Gil Kerlikowske in the US), a pay czar (Kenneth Feinberg, appointed by Obama although the prez has asked people not to call Ken, who is obviously a sensitive soul, a pay czar), a privacy czar (in Ontario) and a heart disease czar (in the NHS). Reuters estimates that Obama alone has appointed 21 czars – count em! – prompting Senator John McCain to quip: “He’s got more czars than the Romanovs.”

The first fake czar, if you will, was Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis – dubbed the “baseball czar” for cleaning up the sport after the 1919 World Series had been fixed. The title was in dubious taste – only a year before, the last Russian czar, Nicholas II, had been shot in a cellar in Ekaterinburg.

The popularity of czars suggests a terrible deficiency in the language of democracy. We have presidents and prime ministers but, faced with some large, amorphous problem like drugs, we mysteriously, undemocratically decide there ain’t nothing like a czar. 

Does this reflect some deep-seated, atavistic need to bend the knee? And why czar, rather than emir, sultan, grand vizier, nabob, viceroy, overlord, or just plain old commissioner? Or is this a variation on the linguistic principle perfected in Mills & Boon novels where the romantic hero has a decisive, monosyllabic name (like Brad) while the wishy washy blokes who always lose the girl have drippy two syllable names like Douglas?

Such puzzles will not deter Lord Sugar of Amstrad. But he might want to ponder this. Ersatz czars have one thing in common: no one knows who they were or what they did while glorying in this strange, anachronistic autocratic title.