"Artist" and Statesmen: Wenders, Schäuble, Scharping and Burt on ARD
In the meanwhile, I have received some more materials from our Germanophone French correspondent, who has done a great service in transcribing large extracts from last Sunday’s episode of the Sabine Christiansen show: touted by German public broadcaster ARD as “the most important political talk show in Germany”. There are also extracts from each participant’s remarks available on the show’s website. I’ve compared the two sets of transcripts and it is interesting what the editors of the Christiansen site prudently opted to leave out: notably, Wim Wenders’s description of the United States as a “fundamentalist totalitarian country”. What follows are some translated extracts from the extracts. Besides the host, the cast of characters are again: German film director Wim Wenders, CDU/CSU foreign policy expert Wolfgang Schäuble, Former German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping, and Former American Ambassador to Germany Richard Burt. (Journalist Peter Scholl-Latour was also present, but is not cited here.) I will be back tomorrow with related comments and a bit of speculation on the place and extent of anti-Americanism in the German media versus German politics more generally, as well some comparisons with the French media and French politics.
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Sabine Christiansen: Bush has made war, lost 2.7 million jobs, and not exactly made the world safer with his fight against terrorism…..
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Wim Wenders: I love this country [the US] deeply...its generosity, its easygoingness. And this country, which I deeply love, will soon no longer exist. It is already on the way to disappearing. Four years of Bush have turned this country into almost the opposite. They have made this country into an evil mixture [ein ganz böses Amalgam] of big business, petty bourgeoisie, and right-wing religion…. I still live there, but four more years of Bush I won’t live there, I won’t survive it. And the whole country won’t survive four more years of Bush. Before the end of these four years the country will implode like a giant balloon….Poverty in America is so heartrending, 40 million people live under the threshold of what is considered humane. It’s a powder keg….This powder keg will explode in the next four years if Bush continues in power…. This solar explosion… this black hole… will sweep us all away [wird uns alle mitreissen]….That’s why for me there is no choice whatsoever between Kerry and Bush. Kerry must win. Anything else is a catastrophe for each of us sitting here
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Wolfgang Schäuble: We will have to live with the result [of the US election]. And because I feel responsible for German politics, I find that we should show restraint. Everyone has an opinion. But, in the end, the Americans must decide. Of course, there is much cause for concern. Above all, it is a cause of concern that the country is so divided, and if they again have an election result that is in doubt, that is also not in our interest. A strong America is in our interest, an America that is at peace with itself and not so divided. And it is in our interest to have a rational working partnership, one that functions to the greatest extent possible. A lot has gone badly, on both sides of the Atlantic. We should not continue like that.
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Wenders: [on Osama Bin Laden] …Who knows where he lives, maybe not in the lion cave, maybe in a villa in Switzerland….He’s always watching television and then he doesn’t believe his eyes: Bush goes into Iraq….The whole army is in Iraq and is fighting someone who is not even his ally. He must rejoice every day like a fool. And his biggest triumph: his fanatic fundamentalist politics [sic.] has driven this free country to become also a fundamentalist totalitarian state....
Rudolf Scharping: One can’t say that America is a fundamentalist and totalitarian country. It’s a misleading exaggeration, no matter of what America you are speaking. We should guard against always appearing before America in the role of the moral superior [moralischen Besserwissers].
Wenders: It is the President who thinks he is morally superior. He treats the world as if he were morally superior. Just look at television in America. The press, the media, the judicial system have all laid down. One day in front of Fox TV, and then my brain goes soft, then I need to go to a mental clinic.
Richard Burt: I give interviews on Fox. I hope you haven’t seen me. I hope I haven’t contributed to the softening of your brain....
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Sabine Christiansen: Bush has made war, lost 2.7 million jobs, and not exactly made the world safer with his fight against terrorism…..
....
Wim Wenders: I love this country [the US] deeply...its generosity, its easygoingness. And this country, which I deeply love, will soon no longer exist. It is already on the way to disappearing. Four years of Bush have turned this country into almost the opposite. They have made this country into an evil mixture [ein ganz böses Amalgam] of big business, petty bourgeoisie, and right-wing religion…. I still live there, but four more years of Bush I won’t live there, I won’t survive it. And the whole country won’t survive four more years of Bush. Before the end of these four years the country will implode like a giant balloon….Poverty in America is so heartrending, 40 million people live under the threshold of what is considered humane. It’s a powder keg….This powder keg will explode in the next four years if Bush continues in power…. This solar explosion… this black hole… will sweep us all away [wird uns alle mitreissen]….That’s why for me there is no choice whatsoever between Kerry and Bush. Kerry must win. Anything else is a catastrophe for each of us sitting here
....
Wolfgang Schäuble: We will have to live with the result [of the US election]. And because I feel responsible for German politics, I find that we should show restraint. Everyone has an opinion. But, in the end, the Americans must decide. Of course, there is much cause for concern. Above all, it is a cause of concern that the country is so divided, and if they again have an election result that is in doubt, that is also not in our interest. A strong America is in our interest, an America that is at peace with itself and not so divided. And it is in our interest to have a rational working partnership, one that functions to the greatest extent possible. A lot has gone badly, on both sides of the Atlantic. We should not continue like that.
....
Wenders: [on Osama Bin Laden] …Who knows where he lives, maybe not in the lion cave, maybe in a villa in Switzerland….He’s always watching television and then he doesn’t believe his eyes: Bush goes into Iraq….The whole army is in Iraq and is fighting someone who is not even his ally. He must rejoice every day like a fool. And his biggest triumph: his fanatic fundamentalist politics [sic.] has driven this free country to become also a fundamentalist totalitarian state....
Rudolf Scharping: One can’t say that America is a fundamentalist and totalitarian country. It’s a misleading exaggeration, no matter of what America you are speaking. We should guard against always appearing before America in the role of the moral superior [moralischen Besserwissers].
Wenders: It is the President who thinks he is morally superior. He treats the world as if he were morally superior. Just look at television in America. The press, the media, the judicial system have all laid down. One day in front of Fox TV, and then my brain goes soft, then I need to go to a mental clinic.
Richard Burt: I give interviews on Fox. I hope you haven’t seen me. I hope I haven’t contributed to the softening of your brain....
posted by John Rosenthal at 1:34 AM
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