January 22, 2005 7:23 AM

Gee, d'ya think they know something we don't?

Norway reads something sinister in ‘Hook ‘em’ sign: Jenna’s gesture shocks those who recall it meaning devil worship

I suppose it can mean different things to different people in different parts of the world. I guess the Norwegians and Italians should be happy that our mascot was a longhorn and not a unicorn.

  • Harley Clark

Living in southeast Texas as I do, I can surely recognize a “Hook ‘em Horns” sign when one is flashed. While I may chide the Bush clan for being closet Satan worshippers, I am fully aware what the hand signal they seem to be so fond of actually signifies.

Folks in Norway, though, seem to be burdened with no such knowledge, and they’ve got their panties in a HUGE wad over the President and his family being out-of-the-closet Satan worshippers. All Hail the Dark Lord, indeed. I suppose it does make sense in one way, though: the GOP IS the party of Newt Gingrich, eh?

Jenna Bush’s Longhorn salute during her father’s inauguration festivities caused a stir in Norway, suggesting that Austin and Oslo are two cities separated by the same hand gesture.

“Sjokkhilsen fra Bush datter,” read an outraged headline on Norwegian news Web site Nettavisen. Translated: “Shock greeting from Bush daughter.”

Sjokkhilsen, indeed. The University of Texas marching band and Norway’s death-metal musicians inspire the same reverent hand gesture from their respective legions, the time-tested “horns” produced by extending one’s index and pinkie fingers.

The “Hook ‘em, Horns” that Bush flashed when The Eyes of Texas was played at the Black Tie and Boots gala Wednesday was misconstrued by some in Norway as a sign of the devil used by a musical scene that terrorized the country in the late 1980s and early ’90s….

In Norway the horns carried a greater menace. The country has long been a hotbed of death metal, a subgenre of music with a sordid history of church burnings, murder, inadvertant bludgeonings (with sheep skulls), pet sacrifices and sundry behavior best described as anti-Christian. There the gesture has little to do with sports rivalries.

Largely a reaction to the country’s conservative population, its black or death-metal scene popped up roughly 20 years ago and has a grisly history, best documented in the book Lords of Chaos.

The appropriately named band Mayhem was at the epicenter of Norway’s unsettling music movement. One of its founders, Oystein Aarseth, was stabbed to death in 1993 by a member of rival death-metal band. Of course, Aarseth was hardly a saint. When one of his bandmates, ironically nicknamed “Death,” killed himself, Aarseth and another musician reportedly cannibalized him.

Well, George W. Bush may be many things, but I don’t know that I could ever reasonably accuse him of cannibalism. If Norwegians were this upset about a innocent gesture such as “Hook ‘em Horns”, I wonder what the reaction might have been had Bush trotted out this gesture:

It sounds as if Norway has enough problems of their own without interpreting the symbols of another culture using the definitions of their own. Hey, it could have been worse; at least Bush wasn’t on stage ritualistically carving a sheep’s head. That was probably Cheney’s job. Yeesh….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 22, 2005 7:23 AM.

Is it any wonder I'm becoming disillusioned with professional sports? was the previous entry in this blog.

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