Has there ever been a chain reaction like last week?
We don't mean the last twitches of our nuclear power plants, but the rhetorical loss of control that began with a former national goalkeeper, then hit another former footballer and finally ended with the meltdown in the fast breeder in Tübingen.
Then you probably don't have much to do with so-called social media and you are also not one of the regular readers of the Bild newspaper.
Berthold Kohler
Editor.
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To recapitulate briefly for you: Jens Lehmann had allegedly inadvertently sent a message to Dennis Aogo, both of whom are no longer television presenters, with the question “Is Dennis actually your black guy?”.
A few days later, he said in front of the camera that a team was training "to the point of gassing".
Thereafter, the mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer, said he had to defend Aogo with the statement: “Aogo is a bad racist.
Has offered women his ****. ”We don't want to expect you to use the term, which is made up of the N-word and a vulgar term for the male genitalia;
even the Bild newspaper only published the less bad half of the word, that is, the one with the genitals.
Sarrazin's warning doesn't help Palmer
The tweet is said to have only been a quote and, as Palmer emphasized, above all a "recognizably completely grotesque and insane accusation of racism". But for the Greens, who have long suffered from Palmer's humor, it was finally too grotesque and too crazy, which is why his party wants to exclude him. The green candidate for Chancellor Baerbock ruled that Palmer's subsequent appeal to irony did not undo the process.
Wait a moment! Wasn't it previously true that satire was allowed to do everything? Yes, but of course only left-wing satire. And that is Palmer's growing problem. That is why it will not help him at all that Thilo Sarrazin of all people warned the Greens not to exclude Palmer - that is a shame for the party. The former enfant terrible of the SPD worries about the Greens? Probably more about his unique selling point as a martyr of the widest possible spectrum of opinion. Because Palmer also wants to stand on his back legs and fight in the party exclusion process against the rampant “Cancel Culture” - as “the last service I can do for my party”. Already Palmer's penultimate service - to sharpen the sense of his party friends for satire - certainly went crashing into those pants, as we had seen, into which he had reached so deeply.
Yes, irony is such a thing.
It is not for nothing that even as a journalist you get to hear during your traineeship: Irony - never!
Not everyone masters, not everyone understands them.
Smart politicians therefore use all their might to suppress the tendency to ironize, even if it exists.
It is all the more noticeable when the irony breaks out of a politician, which can happen in a more subtle form than in the case of Palmer.
Söder's persistent peaks against Laschet and now also against Merz are really of much finer quality.
Palmer could still learn a lot from the CSU boss, especially because both probably share the conviction that they have a lot more to offer than those who are now allowed to compete for entry into the Chancellery.
A valve for overpressure
We understand only too well that there is a need for a valve through which the internal overpressure can escape. Also in the form of comments that mean the opposite, such as Söder's praise to Merzen's helpful political experiences from the nineties. The title “The CDU's new miracle weapon”, awarded by Söders' friendly fire specialist Blume Merz, transported the honoree even further back into our past. It is a miracle that after this comparison with V1 and V2 there was no shit storm over the CSU. Of course, the republic was still fully occupied with the Freisler scandal.
However, Söder himself cannot be blamed in the slightest. With him you really have to pay attention to every word, which is also important to him. And he had only promised to support the Laschet team without resentment. There was never any question of renouncing biting irony.