Overheard in London

Parent: Harvard is offering you a place; you should take it.

Son: No, I am not going to university in a fascist country.

Parents in Need

Does the press approach these parents to entertain their readers or do journalists truly believe that a parent who is stuck in this unenviable situation can come up with a sensible reaction? More than that: do we actually want to know what the parent is saying?

Hours after his son had killed 50 people in a gay bar in Orlando, the father who apologised and hastened to add that the killing had nothing to do with religion, explained that some months earlier, his son had seen: "two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry…They were kissing each other and touching each other…” 

Last week, also in America, Dan Turner, whose son was given the outrageously light 6 month sentence for raping a fellow student at a party in Stanford, pleaded: “That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20-plus years of life.”

And an Israeli mother, whose 17-year-old son was a member of a gang of young men who for 3 years raped and sexually abused a girl from their high school, informed us that her son was “a normative boy, a nice boy, who will soon be going to the army and now this prosecution will destroy his life.”

STD in Berlin

Berlin continues to be obsessed by sexually transmitted diseases and the underground stations are full of posters sending the no longer joyous riders to see their doctors. Are the posters somewhat crass? You decide. 

 

Putsch – the civilised option?

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has a track record of acting carefully when it comes to military action. Yet, he now seems to have totally lost it:

It has been made public that Netanyahu has offered the defence portfolio to one of his arch rivals, a man he despises and who despises him: Avigdor Liebermann. Lieberman is a dangerous ultra right-winger who in the past has suggested bombing the Aswan dam, he calls for death penalty to those he defines as terrorists and refers to Israelis who hold a mirror to Israel’s outrages as traitors. 

Barak, a former prime minister of Israel, has arrogantly once said that Israel was like a villa in the jungle. It was arrogant at the time and it is now becoming evidently absurd. Israel is part of the jungle, it has now reached the level of Turkey and Egypt, where a military coup may be the more civilised option for the country.

A day of mourning for the Jewish people.

Erdogan

Erdogan’s latest: Western countries care more about gay rights and animal welfare than about the fate of Syrian women and children. He added, or perhaps explained this evidently sick attitude prevalent in the West that these countries possess a mindset “remnant of slavery and colonialism.”

It seems to have become dangerous to criticise Turkey’s President Erdogan. Since he was elected as President in 2014, more than 1800 cases were opened in Turkey against people for insulting the President. Not only are journalists, Erdogan does not approve of, being jailed in his own country, he now has German lawyers who sue on his behalf in Germany. 

It leaves me no alternative but to sing Erdogan’s praise: Thank you God for having placed amongst us this self-restrained, reasonable and modest man - a man who is more than a man - a truly wise man, a courageous visionary, an iron-willed yet magnanimous leader who has rightfully earned the extraordinary respect he is being shown worldwide.  

Hitler in London

 

London’s former mayor, public school educated, or rather mal-educated Boris Johnson, who is a leading figure in the Brexit movement, explained why the British should vote to get out of the EU: “Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.”

Hitler seems to be forever useful: a few weeks ago, there was a great uproar in the British Labour party after Johnson’s predecessor as mayor of London, Labour party’s Ken Livingstone, explained that Hitler supported Zionism.

Israeli democracy

They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly. (Amos, 5,10)

Israel’s deputy Chief of Staff, Major-General Ya’ir Golan, in his address at the memorial service for Holocaust Day, last week said:  

“ If there is something that frightens me about the memory of the Holocaust, it is seeing the abhorrent processes that took place in Europe, and Germany in particular, some 70, 80 or 90 years ago, and finding manifestations of these processes here among us in 2016,… there is nothing easier than to simply hate the other, there is nothing easier than to provoke fears and strike terror; there is nothing easier than barbaric behaviour, moral corruption and hypocrisy.” Adding, “On Holocaust Remembrance day, it is appropriate to discuss our abilities to extricate from among us signs of intolerance and violence, signs that we're heading towards self destruction and down the road to moral depravity. In fact, Holocaust Remembrance Day is an opportunity for self-examination.”

Ever since, General Golan has been under attack from the right-wing political class (to call them elite would be a contradiction in terms), from the gutters - sadly well represented in Israel’ government and parliament - right up to prime minister Bibi Netanyahu who called the comments outrageous, saying at his weekly Cabinet meeting that "they cause harm to Israel and cheapen the Holocaust." Look who is f*** talking.

Maybe a serving general should not be talking about issues, which can be seen as political by some – but Golan – who is one of the two contenders to become Israel’s next chief of staff – was evidently willing to give up his career chances because of his deep worries as to what is happening in Israel.

But, of course,  They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

I do not know how long Israel will last or whether it will ever become the secular democracy it was originally established to become – but Yai’r Golan will be remembered as one of the very few moral lighthouses shining his warning words in an attempt to prevent a total shipwreck.

God Bless America(n “democracy”)

Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has announced that he will support the other – albeit bankrupted - casino mogul Donald Trump’s candidacy for President of the United States of America, because he would…”be good for Israel”.

Note for teachers: This must be the definition of democracy – one mega rich funding another mega rich to run their country in a way that will further the interests of a foreign country. 

Frankfurt II - Who should run the Städel?

Can one blame politicians for being populist? The answer is yes. In 2001, Frankfurt’s then mayor Petra Roth, met a fundraising assistant at the Guggenheim in NY and brought him to Frankfurt. She first gave him the Schirn exhibition hall to manage, then made him Director General of Frankfurt’s most important art museums, the Städel and the Liebieghaus.

Hollein is a marketing man and ran his museums accordingly. Big, crowd-pleasing exhibitions and constant publicity. Not least, self-publicity. Now that he is leaving, Frankfurt should seriously consider going back to the academic model of art museums. Museums should, after all, be more than exhibition halls with fanfare.  

This will not be an easy decision, as publicity is a drug and Frankfurt got used to it. The mayor who will decide to opt for an academic, an art historian, rather than a marketing man, will have to bear the accusation that “nobody mentions the Städel anymore”.

Frankfurt I - Petra Roth

Petra Roth was the mayor of Frankfurt until 2012. A couple of weeks ago, on April Fools’ Day, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) ran an almost half page story reporting that Frankfurt airport would be renamed after Roth (as in Charles de Gaulle or nearer home Franz Josef Strauss).  

Here’s the email I did not find:

From: Roth

To: FAZ editor

For 17 years, I was constantly in the papers. I even managed to get someone to put up my name as candidate for German President (but then again, they also suggested Bubis). Nowadays, all I get is a pathetic story when I turn 70.

Here’s the plan: You will run an April Fools story suggesting that the Frankfurt airport be named after me. This, sadly, will not happen, but it could start a public discussion about the urgent need to honour me by naming something after me. A university would be nice but a bridge would also do.

Over the years - as I hope you still remember - I fed you many stories and gave you many scoops. How about some payback?

This response was also not to be found:

From: FAZ editor

To: Roth

OK. We will do it.

PS: Colleagues suggested naming the flea market after you. They are particularly aggrieved by the dirt and the many traders and visitors who pee in their gardens on market days.