Tin ears
June 5th, 2008
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):
June 5th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
The English edition of Spiegel Online explains that the Tageszeitung headline was trying to be cute but ended up being stupid.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
[…] 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): […]
June 5th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
[…] Online International: German Newspaper Slammed for Racist Cover Davos Newbies: Tin Ears Davids Medienkritik: Die Tageszeitung: “Uncle Barack’s […]