Böhmermann: Right in the middle - this gag rarely failed like it did here

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How do you satirically address a national tragedy like the racist attack in Hanau?

This question should have come up at some point in the past few weeks in the editorial team of “ZDF Magazin Royales”.

The solution: swipes at the interior ministers - those who are responsible for the security of citizens in Germany.

This turned out to be a tightrope walk, during which the ZDF satirical magazine slipped and fell.

And with an announcement.

On Friday evening, on the anniversary of the attack, ZDF satirist Jan Böhmermann began his broadcast with recourse to the hate act a year ago.

Read the names of all nine people who were murdered in their city on February 19, 2020 because a right-wing extremist presumed to determine who was allowed to live in this country.

Böhmermann asked urgent and literally existential questions such as the locked emergency exit in one of the attacked bars or why right-wing extremist terror in Germany is again and still a danger.

That was the intro for the list of the “17 most spectacular German interior ministers in the world”.

The idea, which was promising in theory, however, turned out to be unsuitable in practice within minutes and drifted visibly in the direction of a lukewarm, ideologically driven joke parade.

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Saarland's Klaus Boullion (CDU) was hit hardest of all "17 lime-white potatoes", as Böhmermann calls the troop of interior ministers.

His offense, which earned him number 12 on the list: he was "the only interior minister" to own a complete collection of Tapsi törtels.

A Google search later, eBay, “Eierwiki” and the “Eierlei Shop” suggest that these are turtle figures that children were able to peel from surprise eggs in the 90s.

Well, a few days after the broadcast was broadcast, the plot twist that was to be expected comes: Klaus Bouillon doesn't even own a Tapsi-Törtels collection.

He had it officially announced and corrected by ZDF in the form of a reply.

The Tapsi Törtels - for free.

The alleged collection of toy figures was in any case only the most harmless of all the attributions that were applied to bouillon.

His contribution was garnished deliberately with the most unfavorable, scariest exposed photos that the Internet spits out of him.

Against this background, Germany's oldest Minister of the Interior was presented as one who had "really enjoyed the heat on the stove for 73 years".

Someone whose wallet was crumbling leftovers and who might also cook crystal meth in his basement - was just a joke, of course.

Seldom has the gag “middle equals right” been as unsuccessful as in this issue

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What do we learn from this?

Fatshaming and Co. are bad - unless it's about an old, white man.

Others, such as North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU), Bavaria's Joachim Herrmann (CSU) and Hesse's former Interior Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) received comments in the form of “fresh face”, the description “8000 kilos of interior minister incarnate” or Dracula Pictures for their looks on the hat.

You can do anything, after all it is satire and as such it is pointed.

But the same applies here as on Twitter: Anyone who concerns the other personally obviously doesn't have much else to offer.

This premonition solidifies in the course of the program.

The more interior ministers are dragged through the cocoa on the way to number one on the list, the clearer it becomes that what at first glance might appear promising idea has been researched to the ground.

Apparently there was not nearly enough material to be found to substantiate that 16 + 1 incompetents are doing their job here.

There are still tangible mistakes to be found about some ministers, such as Andy Grote's (SPD) corona party, which earned him a fine of 1000 euros.

Except for a handful of found objects, the failure narrative quickly runs out of air.

And so the contribution is increasingly turning to the free courage emergency tactic of selling middle-class views such as stricter action against clan crime as the latent right.

Böhmermann often manages to hold a mirror up to conservatives.

But it has seldom been as bad as this issue.

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Brandenburg's Michael Stübgen (CDU) has three photos in which he makes a similar expressionless face.

That's it, on to the next seat.

Obviously there is nothing worse to say about Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Torsten Renz (CDU) than that there are photos of him in which the wallpaper in the background seems “more enthusiastic” than “himself”.

That's true, but that's about it.

And so the curiosity about spectacular, pointedly commented missteps turns into boredom and finally to eye rolls with every additional place in the list.

From the middle of the list, the editors were apparently so desperate for material that they couldn't resist the old trick of accessing short, contextless video snippets of police officers wielding baton to prove their authoritarian sentiments.

Different goal, same principle: Lorenz Caffier's gun purchase scandal.

The disastrously communicated by the former CDU interior minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to buy weapons from a man who later turned out to be a right-wing extremist offers the most grateful satirical food.

Accordingly, it is said that Caffier probably has a preference for Nazis - they are one of his "greatest weaknesses".

The at least partially relieving spin, however, that Caffier probably only found out afterwards who he had done business with, is left out for dramaturgical reasons.

Didn't fit into the picture.

The horseshoe reproach should not be missing

The bankruptcy declaration had already been submitted.

Boris Pistorius, an SPD man from Lower Saxony, made it to 14th place.

He, it is said, is evidently of the opinion that fascism is "almost as bad as anti-fascism" - because he had an anti-fascist ban examined.

Anyone who does something like this can only be blind in the right eye and is a supporter of the horseshoe theory, it is suggested.

Taking action against right-wing extremism and fighting questionable activities on the left does not work at the same time.

At least not if you are morally on the right side.

It was not mentioned that Pistorius also exerted pressure on Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer to enforce the study on right-wing extremism within the police, which he spurned.

Or called for closer observation of right-wing extremists including an early warning system.

Or warned that one had to deal with right-wing extremist infiltration of "lateral thinkers" earlier than with Reich citizens and identities, because it took "far too long" there.

But, we have to say it again so clearly: Anyone who condemns crimes from the left automatically equates them with crimes from the right.

At least if you're on the right side.

Without any right framing, Bavarian Joachim Herrmann made it to second place on the List of Shame.

You can accuse him of many things, from the controversial police law to corona lunches almost a year after the start of the pandemic.

But just not what Böhmermann insinuates.

His gag: Herrmann drinks five liters of water from a water cannon every morning.

Twitter took the trouble to look, and lo and behold, under Herrmann's thumb, there was not a single water cannon in Bavaria.

Except for the occasion when the vehicles helped irrigate urban green spaces in Nuremberg in 2018.

The Bavarian Ministry of the Interior wrote on request that it was the last time it was targeted at people in 1989.

Ouch.

And while we're in Bavaria: Horst Seehofer (CSU) is probably one of those German politicians who have amassed the largest satirical material collection in the course of their careers.

From his inhuman joke about 69 Afghans who mostly did not commit criminal offenses and were often integrated in an exemplary manner, who - “not so ordered by me” - were deported to the war country on his 69th birthday to the unhappy communicated and withdrawn complaint against a “taz “Columnist.

The latter moved Böhmermann to a completely wrong comparison.

On the one hand Seehofer, on the other hand the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who likes to let unpopular journalists disappear into jail for flimsy reasons.

Wanting to report provocateurs for provocative columns and imprisoning journalists for doing a good job - see no difference.

At least if you ... well, should be clear.

All of this would only be largely lost in the pipe of satire if it had not been sold with the hook for the racist attack in Hanau.

To misuse the fate of those killed, their relatives and the city as a ramp for unimaginably pasted, partly factual or twisting polemics against everything that is to the right of the left is opportunistic and disrespectful.

You can do it all.

But then you shouldn't be surprised if you are occasionally perceived as an activist.