Germany’s Spiegel’s Headline of Karen Hughes Interview: Bush “A Wonderful FuherFuhrer”
Medienkritik does a comparison of Spiegel’s interview with Karen Hughes between the English version and the German version. The German version uses the word Fuher. The amount of ellipsing in this interview surpasses Maureen Dowd. Plus, whole sentences are dropped to further distort Hughes response.
This tone of superiority by Spiegel is in alignment though with the American media elite. Those of the Democrat stripe should be happy with Spiegel, it’s like a campaign donation. I’m sure it wouldn’t bother the Democrats how Spiegel’s bias and distortion hurts America and turns Germans against America. Course, I know that the Anti-American sentiment has been diligently fostered with anti-war rhetoric. What the German publication doesn’t realize is that along with fostering this hate of America within Germany this sentiment is carried to middle America where the reaction is screw Europe. They aren’t our friends, why does the US even have any troops in Germany or anywhere in Europe. Germans/Europeans seem to forget that 53% of Americans voted for Republican George Bush. Europe is so myopic they think John Kerry and Cindy Sheehan represent America and this is far from the truth.
Yes the US still has a major military hospital in Germany with Landstuhl but if the US can close Walter Reed then Landstuhl could easily be gone. With the shifting of alliances and dangers in the world Germany might want to watch the abusive rhetoric towards the United States.
Just a side note on this, could Karen Hughes just stop with anything foreign? The appeasing tone of Hughes’ responses in the interview verge on sickening. Even the French diplomats have a sharper and more direct tongue than Hughes. The foreign media can eat Hughes for a midday snack. Her conciliatory tone is just that and evokes weakness.
Davids Medienkritik: SPIEGEL’s Karen Hughes Translation Nightmare: Bush “A Wonderful Führer”
It’s only been a couple decades since we were there, staving off the advances of the Soviet Union … how soon they forget.
Comment by mdmhvonpa — February 24, 2006 @ 8:56 am
First of all: The Headline was not “A wonderful Fuhrer”. There was a picture description which quoted: “Hughes: Ein wunderbarer Führer”. This simply means: “A wonderful leader”. And that’s what she said in the interview.
“Führer” is simply the german word for “leader” and there is no other word for it. The literal translation for “He is a wonderful leader” IS “Er ist ein wunderbarer Führer”. So Spiegel can’t be blamed for simply translating what she said.
“Der Führer” (The Leader) was the title of Adolf Hitler, that’s right, but “ein Führer” is simply “a leader”. It’s still a word of the german language and it’s still being used. So there is no reason to bash Spiegel over this.
Comment by Jonathan — February 25, 2006 @ 2:45 pm
So Jonathan, I guess that Spiegel addresses Merkel as Fuhrer then? I think not. I don’t think it’s “simple” like you say. The current day connotation of Fuhrer is that of Nazi. It’s quite disengenuous of you to label that as “simple”. And of course there’s a reason to bash Spiegel over this, I don’t believe for one moment this wasn’t their intention. Just look at the cover pages that Kaspars has included in his posting, from the pictures it’s pretty clear of the intent of Spiegel.
Oh and I did correct my spelling with the title of the posting. Sloppy of me.
Comment by Toni — February 25, 2006 @ 4:29 pm
The tone of the article takes on the usual air of moral superiority that Germans love to effect. I lived there for over five years and while I thought that Germans in general and Bavarians in particular are pretty good people, they do love to lord an assumed moral superiority over Americans.
It started with the first gulf war and all of their “No blood for oil” signs. We all know that the situation was much more complex than a simple exchange of blood for oil–Saddam could literally have influenced the global economy by controlling Kuwaiti oil fields, something that, unfortunately, is worth spilling blood over. I remember getting lectured by a German woman over the gulf war who eventually revealed that she had been an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth. Seems to me she has more to atone for than we do for preventing a ruthless, bloody dictator from cornering a serious percentage of the world’s oil supply.
Having said all of that, Jonathan is correct about the word “fuehrer”. The discrepency in spellings comes from the umlaut, a diacritical unfamiliar to many Americans. It’s the two dots over an “a”, “o” or “u”. We hypothecate the effect by adding an “e” after the vowel in question. It’s not a perfect substitution: an umlaut makes an “a” a long vowel and makes and “o” or “u” a sort of drawn out combination with an “r”. Anyway, having pointed out that the German press loves to put us down, I’m not entirely convinced that the word “fuehrer” really has WWII connotations. Bear in mind that most Germans would like to forget that WWII ever ocurred. Americans revel in bringing Nazi imagery on people they don’t like, Germans shy away from it big time. I agree that the article was anti-US, but “fuehrer” simply means leader.
Comment by snakeeater — February 26, 2006 @ 9:52 pm
I’m back to make a feast out of crow.
Havng thought about things a lot more, I’ll admit that “fuehrer” is, indeed, a highly charged word, and Der Spiegal most certainly chose it because it is a charged word.
I jumped ino the breach a couple of hours ago complacent in my knowledge that “fuehrer” is just another word. But it ain’t so. It’s definitely charged with Nazi imagery. “Leiter” is another, far more acceptable term for leader.
There can be no doubt that Der Spiegal was invoking, much as the US left does, Nazi imagery as they wrote about President Bush. I propose a field trip to Dachau and Auschwitz-Birkenau (been to both) before anyone on the staff of Der Spiegal or any other paper ever dares comparing us with Nazi Germany.
Comment by snakeeater — February 26, 2006 @ 11:07 pm
SE - thanks for the clarification. After reading your original comment I thought, hmmm, all those cover page pictures of Spiegel were definitely anti-American/anti-Bush. I was finding it difficult to believe this wasn’t the same thing.
Good suggestion tho for the staff of Spiegel.
Comment by Toni — February 27, 2006 @ 7:11 am