Davos Newbies

Thanks to Scott Hanson for pointing me to the German coverage of Die Tageszeitung’s astoundingly ill-judged headline. Here’s some of the Der Spiegel reporting (Die Tageszeitung is apparently known as Taz):

The headline refers to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which has become controversial due to its perceived stereotyping of African-Americans. The novel led to the expression “Uncle Tom” being used to pejoratively refer to an African-American who is subservient to whites.

Gary Smith, executive director of the American Academy in Berlin, a private center which promotes trans-Atlantic relations, told SPIEGEL ONLINE Thursday that the cover left him “speechless.” “‘Uncle Tom’ is a racial slur, and the Taz editors clearly sacrificed substance and principle for an unreflected laugh,” he said. “A journalism that prides itself on treating stereotypes with irreverence needs to think harder about its own deployment of stereotypes and racial allusions. There are countless ways to address the issue of race in this year’s election more intelligently.”

Editors at Taz defended their decision to run the headline on Thursday. “The headline is intended to be satirical,” deputy editor-in-chief Reiner Metzger told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ is a book that all Germans know and which they associate with issues of racism. The headline is supposed to make people think about these stereotypes. It works on many levels.”

He said that the issue of race surrounds Obama in the presidential election campaign. “The fact that he is African-American plays a constant role in the campaign, but no one talks about it explicitly. One can play with that fact.”

Metzger said that the Taz is famous for not being politically correct and is well-known for its ironic and cheeky cover headlines. “I’m sure 99 percent of our readers would understand it correctly. As for the rest, well, tough luck. You can’t please everybody.”

But many were clearly displeased by the Taz’s cover choice — including representatives of Germany’s black community, who reacted with indignation. “I find the Taz cover very problematic,” said Yonis Ayeh, a board member at the Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD). The ISD represents the interests of black Germans, who are estimated to number up to 500,000 within Germany’s population of 82 million.

“The newspaper is comparing Obama with Uncle Tom, a subservient slave,” Ayeh said. “I’m sure Obama doesn’t see himself like that. It transmits an image of black people as submissive, uneducated people, which is simply not true.”

Ayeh was not surprised that an insensitive headline could come from a left-leaning newspaper. “There is also acute racism within the left-wing scene in Germany,” he said. “They are no angels, and the Taz contributes to that when it commits such gaffes.”

Apropos of newspaper front pages (see previous post), I want a daily paper that looks as great as Portugal’s Público.

The Newseum in Washington offers a great service of today’s front pages from around the world. I had a scan today of how Europe’s newspapers covered Obama’s clinching the Democratic nomination and one oddity leaped out. Berlin’s Die Tageszeitung, which is a left-of-center daily, has the huge headline: Onkel Baracks Hütte. Did they really mean to associate Barack Obama with Uncle Tom? I thought German education was better than that. I’m astounded.

Update Looking at the various front pages, I like that Il Corriere della Sera (not my favorite Italian paper, that’s La Repubblica) majored on Barack and Michelle Obama giving dap (and I wanted to use the word dap, which I only learned today):

Foreign Policy points to an article in Le Monde bemoaning that Barack Obama “doesn’t speak any foreign languages (except Indonesian)”. What that really means is Barack Obama doesn’t speak French. Not only is Le Monde wrong, because Obama does speak some Spanish, but the seeming belittlement of Indonesian is very misplaced.

Here’s how languages rank in terms of native speakers according to the very sober, conservative estimates of Ethnologue:

1. Mandarin (873 million)
2. Spanish (322 million)
3. English (309 million)
4. Hindi/Urdu (242 million)
5. Arabic (206 million)
13. Javanese/Indonesian  (75 million)
19. French (65 million)

So ya boo sucks to all those snooty people who don’t know any foreign languages (except French).