Silly season
The silly season is the period lasting for a few summer months typified by the emergence of frivolous news stories in the media. This term was known by the end of the 19th century and listed in the second edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and remains in use at the start of the 21st century. The fifteenth edition of Brewer's expands on the second, defining the silly season as "the part of the year when Parliament and the Law Courts are not sitting (about August and September)". In Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the silly season has come to refer to the Christmas/New Year festive period on account of the higher than usual number of social engagements where the consumption of alcohol is typical, which are in the Southern Hemisphere summer.
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[edit] Motivation
Typically, the latter half of the summer is slow in terms of newsworthy events. Newspapers as their primary means of income rely on advertisements, which rely on readers seeing them, but historically newspaper readership drops off during this time when, for instance, in the United Kingdom, Parliament takes its summer recess, so that parliamentary debates and Prime Minister's Questions, which generate much news coverage, do not happen. Similar recesses are typical of legislative bodies elsewhere, and there is also a decline of other news because vacations are common during that period. To retain (and attract) subscribers, newspapers would print attention-grabbing headlines and articles to boost sales, often to do with minor moral panics or child abductions. For example, the extensive British press coverage devoted to Operation Irma, a humanitarian airlift during the Siege of Sarajevo, was criticized as a "silly season" tactic.[1]
[edit] Other names
Other countries have comparable periods, for example the Sommerloch ("summer [news]hole") in Germany; French has la morte-saison ("the dead season" or "the dull season"), and Swedish has nyhetstorka ("news drought").
In many languages, the name for the silly season references cucumbers (more precisely: gherkins or pickled cucumbers). Komkommertijd in Dutch, Danish agurketid, Norwegian agurktid, Czech Okurková sezóna, Polish Sezon ogórkowy, Hungarian uborkaszezon, Hebrew עונת המלפפונים (Onat Ha'melafefonim) and Estonian hapukurgihooaeg all mean "cucumber time" or "cucumber season". The corresponding German term is Sauregurkenzeit ("pickled cucumber season"); the same term is also used in Slovene as čas kislih kumaric.
The term "cucumber time" was also used in England in the 1800s to denote the slow season for tailors.[2][3]
A silly season news item is called rötmånadshistoria in Sweden and mätäkuun juttu in Finland, both literally meaning "rotting-month story".
In Spain the term serpiente de verano ("summer snake") is often used, not for the season, but for the news.
[edit] Side effects
A side effect of stirring up the public in this manner comes when an authentic story is dismissed as a prank, or when a superfluous story is taken as legitimate.
A 1950 short story by Cyril M. Kornbluth, titled "The Silly Season," makes use of this concept by having invading aliens stage one strange but harmless event after another. All are duly reported by the newspapers until the public is bored with them, and when a final "strange event" occurs, no one is prepared to accept it as an invasion until it is too late.
[edit] Sport
It also refers to off-seasons in sports, such as association football,[4] professional ice hockey,[5] Formula One,[6] NBA,[7] or NFL[8] - where due to lack of action on field/track, speculations are instead made on possible team changes and debuts of any star involved in the sport.
[edit] Politics
In US politics, the silly season is a period from early summer until the first week of October of election years. Primary elections are over at this time, but formal debates have not started and the general election is still many weeks away. Issues raised during this period are likely to be forgotten by the election, so candidates may rely on frivolous political posturing and hyperbole to get media attention and raise money.
[edit] References
- ^ Willman, John (24 December 1993). "Mercy's short shelf life". Financial Times.
- ^ Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
- ^ Notes and Queries, 1853 - Google Books
- ^ Sky Sports, 2009
- ^ ESPN, 2008
- ^ ESPN, 2008
- ^ ESPN, 2008
- ^ Sky Sports, 2009
[edit] Bibliography
- Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, 15th edition, 1996 published by Cassell.
- Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, 2nd edition, 1898, online: definition for silly season
[edit] External links
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Look up silly season in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Let's hear it for the silly season, Jonathan Duffy, BBC News, 31 August 2005
