By Henry Rosenfeld Ocean Park
All this campaign rhetoric about “change” reminds me of being in Greece in 1981, when they held presidential elections. As journalists at an English-language daily called The Greek Times (we called it “The Times” of course), we learned a few words of Greek to put into our stories, the most popular being one we heard at every political rally: “Alla-yi!"
I’ve mistransliterated it, but the word meant “change.” It was chanted over and over with the accompanying heads-held-high/fists-in-the-air approach, like this: “Allayi! Allayi!”
And the opposition Socialist party called Pasok, headed by Papandreou, won and ruled until 1990.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 15, 2008. Read the original PDF.