The Tolerance Week by ARD

The public-network folks continue to run this week with the topic of tolerance.  Our local public-run radio state (HR3) did their part yesterday.

One of the editors for the radio station out of Frankfurt did her part.....by donning a burka (completely covered, to include the face), and walked along the streets of Frankfurt to get commentary from people.  Generally, the tolerance level noted by the public....didn't get past the marginal level, as the dressed-up burka gal discovered.

You can imagine the scene.  Gal dressed in black burka....face covered except for eyes, and a film crew behind her covering the public viewing her along a major shopping area of Frankfurt.  A circus-like atmosphere to bring up into the public spectrum via the network's tolerance week theme.  The brief thirty-odd second clip with the tolerance coverage?  Short and to the point.....the public perception isn't progressing, and it's just not going to be accepted (in the long-run or short-run).

It's an interesting gimmick here....tolerance.  Because of intellectual status, a number of people were willing to use tolerance to reinforce their perceptions and beliefs upon the intolerant.....assuming that they weren't focused or thinking the right way.  All you needed to do....was simply put a few pieces of reality out there.....let them know that peer pressure was to be applied....and people would fall in your direction.  It's a simple task, if you think about it.

An entire network (state-run of course), spending an entire week, and working all of their news pieces, forums, and a fair amount of their entertainment works (movies, TV shows, etc) into the situation.  All focused on some element of tolerance, and selling it to you as the viewer.

I'm just an American who happens to be in the middle of this and logically viewing it the way that an American would see it.  The tolerance group assumes they are in the tolerate chair, and what they suggest is the right point to view everything.  The folks on the other side of this.....by their view....are intolerant.  So, their view is simply to right-a-wrong.  How they came to be in the right chair and focused in such a way?  Unknown.  Nor would I suggest that they have any understanding of the people that they are focused against.

It's a fair amount of effort that the network guys have used in this discussion....across the entire nation of Germany.  Oddly enough....from regular viewers.....there might only be ten million Germans who routinely view ARD....of the eighty million residents.  For what was put into this effort....I'm not sure if any pay-back will ever occur.

Anyway, the positive is that we are on Friday, and the theme has come to a conclusion as of today.  The tolerance sales job comes to a close, and reality goes back into prospective.