The Gorsuch Topic

I sat and watched the 8PM ARD (public-TV, Channel One) news last night.

Somewhere along item six to eight on this short 15-minute national news segment, they went to a US piece....the new Supreme Court judge.

It was a 90-second piece, with around 15 bits of information on Gorsuch.  Toward the end, they wanted the German public to know that the Democrats considered this a "stolen seat".  They kinda ended the story at that point....never explaining the stolen seat part of the story.

I sat for a while....pondering over this.

From intellectual Germans.....all of this matters in some way.  Most can tell you the head of the US Supreme Court (Roberts), and maybe name two or three of the US Justices, along with Gorsuch now.

The odd thing?  If you asked a hundred Germans to name any member of their supreme court....I doubt if any of the hundred could do so.  I would guess that 50 percent can name the German chief prosecutor.  But from the court system itself?  No.  They are more or less....nameless individuals.  Merkel might be able to name two or three because she's bumped into them at some dinner or party.  But the typical average German can't name a single one.

But then you ask yourself.....why pump this story up?  It has zero affect on most Germans.  In fact, most Germans can name the German national soccer coach than the VP of the US.  Most Germans can probably name one promi German cook rather than the head of the House of Representatives in the US.

I often look at the German news media and wonder how connected they are to the general public of the nation.  The chief goal or aim is always some intellectual game.  For a lot of Germans, the nightly news is some mystery show (ask them to point out Libya on a map and fewer than 10-percent can probably do it).