Monday, October 13, 2003

This scares me a bit:

BERLIN (Reuters) - Call it the "Arnold Effect."

The straight-talking Hollywood action star's election win in California has had an electrifying impact on Germany, leading to calls Friday for top politicians to voice clear ideas in simple language or be swept away at the polls.

"The more confused we are by what they say, the greater our longing for a man or woman with simple words," wrote Bild newspaper columnist Franz Josef Wagner. "The only problem is that it's the wrong ones who usually master simple language."

Schwarzenegger's victory in the California race for governor has led to editorials calling for German politicians to abandon their barely comprehensible speaking style in favor of "Klartext" (straight talk).

..."My first thought was 'Oh my God, not another Austrian emigrant -- the first one caused enough damage"' wrote Peter Boenisch, a former government spokesman and newspaper editor, in an analysis on Schwarzenegger for the tabloid Bild.

"But Germany urgently needs something Schwarzenegger-like: a can-do spirit, unconventional thinking, courage, strength and vision. We're facing the worst crisis since the war," he wrote....

"People want to be entertained and not bothered with problems," wrote the liberal Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "People want a strong leader."...


All right -- let me say that Arnold Schwarzenegger is not, at the end of the day, actually a believer in Nazism. And let me also say that Germans have tried really, really hard to learn from their mistakes in the middle of the last century.

OK, I said those things. I still don't feel any better.

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