Chatter Over Chatter

 Last Friday evening, a 'cancel' event occurred within the German public media and it's ricocheted around the media for several days now.

The basic story?  Focus carried a decent explanation.

WDR (a lesser public TV network for the NW of Germany) has this show....'The Last Instance'.  I'd call it a public chat forum....they (the network) invite various guests to come and appear....in a round-table forum.

Now, I should state this funny fact over the forum....it runs at 11:30 PM on Friday night (for an hour).  If you'd asked how many Germans watch this?  I'd go and suggest 100k or less....mostly all over the age of forty, and categorized as 'intellectual'.  You won't have hardly any teens or working-class people who watch any of these Friday night-type shows (there at least five that run via the regional public networks).

So on this show....the moderator (Steffen Hallaschka) had a writer/public authority  Micky Beisenherz , the show moderator and part-time entertainer Thomas Gottschalk, Janine Kunze (actress, mostly known for comical roles) and singer Jürgen Milski (well, to be honest, he's mostly a Mallorca party-bar singer, and probably marginally known to half of Germany).  My son (30 years old and a complete German) would suggest he couldn't identify none of the four.  

If you were asking me....with the guests invited....they were mostly 'older' types and maybe the audience now existing....were seeing things differently than they did.

So the topic was....should certain words or phrases that were normal up until the 2020 era...be still used today?  The example?  Ziguenerschnitzel (it loosely translate to 'Gypsy Schnitzel').  

A description of Ziguenerschnitzel?  You go and have a sauce for regular schnitzel, with a tremendous amount of peppers, onions, and a whole bottle of red wine.  Generally, I'd describe it as awful spicy and if you sat down with a group of Americans...all eating it....you'd notice by the 4th minute that everyone had a sweat building up....getting red in the face....sipping the beer or water a good bit.  

I should note here....my German wife would never make the dish because of the intense taste involved.  

I'd generally caution folks against it as a selection, unless they really wanted a spiced-up dinner to the extreme, and there ought to be a bottle or two of water at the table for the midway point.

Ziguener?  Well....the history to the dish says that Gypsies invented the dish, and so the dish is named after them.  

The German affection for Gypsies?  If you go and bring up the society....among Germans over the age of 50, it's a fairly critical view.  If you had some Gypsy group show up in a rural German community, the immediate reaction is to keep an eye open and call the police upon any suggestive problems (hint: robbery or break-in's).  This isn't a new position.....it's been around since WW II and probably even goes back a hundred years.

So WDR took the four, all known for a sense of humor....to position them with a poll....should the word 'Ziguenerschnitzel' be retired?  The poll with the public said 'no' (84-percent).  

The chat started up.  The viewers?  Commentary began to come from people watching the show unfold.....suggesting the show and guests were all racist.  The terms "without empathy", "uncritically" and "naively" were thrown around. 

The situation of zero non-white Germans among the guests?  Yep, that was another problem (suggesting that if you'd just had some black-German, or Turk-German, or Italian-German)....the view would have been corrected.  I'm not really convinced of that idea....I would suggest almost all of the group were noted for non-serious views (none of them are exactly confrontational).  

Where did this 'dump' start?  Well....back around two weeks ago, the publication Spiegel (the news magazine) did a piece on this....saying Germany's Roma/Sinti population deserve more respect from the general public.  Someone within WDR probably read the piece and then figured....why not run a public forum over the subject.

How many of the Roma/Sinti society exist in Germany today?  Generally, the number 170k to 300k is used.  

Could the show have found any famous German-Roma folks?  Well....I started thinking about it.  I can name numerous German-Turks who are comedians, journalists, and politicians.  I can probably name five or six German-blacks who are musicians-or-singers.  I can even name a few Cubans who moved into Germany and got famous one way or another.  In the last couple of years, even a few Syrian or Iraqi comedians have broken into the system.  But German-Roma-Sinti?  I just can't think of that many.

Should they have invited some German promi-cook on and have him or her cooking away with the dish while the chat took place?  Maybe.

So as the show advanced through the hour....another poll was put up....has social media been a step forward in Germany?  The 'no' vote? Around 65-pecent.   Yeah, those folks don't see any real plus-up for German society with Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

The third poll to advance conversation?  Should the German still trust the police? 83-percent of the public said 'Yes'.

The fourth poll to advance the chatter?  There's this trend in Germany with teachers who are extremely pierced and tattoed....is this a good thing to introduce to German youth?  The 'Yes' answer?  39-percent felt it was OK, and acceptable....the bulk at 61-percent said 'No'.

How this came to rank with the top ten topics of a Monday morning in Germany?  More than likely....with such a small audience viewing it....a bunch of folks got the commentary via Twitter and the social media folks.  Does this mean much of anything?  While Instagram is a big deal with some Germans.....it's much less so with Facebook and Twitter.  

The four in trouble for the conversation?  I'm guessing they are sitting there and questioning how four brief topics at 11:30 PM got so much notice and wondering if 10-million Germans actually watched the show.  

As for forbidden topics in the future?  I would imagine the WDR managers are looking the chart for the next two months and asking if topics could be left to Nazi-guilt, the dog-tax, bad beers, bad poetry, Covid-19 (everyone always likes that as a discussion), cheesecake, and Donald Trump (you just can't get enough dumping, even if he is gone).

Yeah, on my 'crazy scale', this show probably bumps up around a '9' rating.  For the record, I try to limit myself to Ziguenerschnitzel to once every five years because of the spice-content and sweat-reaction.