German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s election rival took more fire on Friday for a magazine cover showing him making the vulgar middle-finger gesture, with many questioning his fitness to lead the nation.
While some defended the photo as a human and ironic gesture, most commentators questioned the political judgment of Peer Steinbrueck, 66, in allowing himself to be shown flipping the bird and then authorizing the picture’s publication.
The striking black-and-white portrait of the Social Democrat was published in a newspaper’s weekly magazine, but had already gone viral online, sparking a storm of social media ridicule ahead of the Sept. 22 vote.
Photo: AFP
The most damning commentary, predictably, came from the ruling conservatives, who said it showed Steinbrueck — whose personal approval ratings lag behind Merkel by 20-to-30 points — had already thrown in the towel.
“Someone who presents himself like that before the elections does not want to become chancellor,” said lawmaker Wolfgang Bosbach of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
The photo of Steinbrueck — a former finance minister and self-styled “straight talk” politician — was taken more than a month ago for the regular photo feature in which subjects are asked to respond non-verbally to questions.
The gesture by a sneering Steinbrueck was his response to nicknames such as “Problem Peer” given to him by the media over blunders and gaffes that have hobbled his campaign.
Communications expert Stephan Lermer judged the picture “a pubescent gesture, extremely vulgar” and predicted it would become iconic and define Steinbrueck, the way Albert Einstein is best remembered for the photo with his tongue out.
“As Germans, we have to cringe,” he said. “It will cost him votes. The gesture is unappetizing. It lacks class. It will especially turn off elder, conservative voters... He thought he could score with irony, but the Germans are a serious people.”
Social Democratic Party (SPD) chief Sigmar Gabriel had jumped to the defense of the candidate, saying on Twitter that Steinbrueck “used an ironic photo interview to ironically show emotions.”
Steinbrueck again defended himself on Friday, saying that the campaign had to be kept “a bit funny,” that he had just been himself and acted “spontaneously.”
“When you do this interview, you don’t have a lot of time to think ... you have to react quickly,” he said during a telephone conversation with a well-known entertainer, released online by the SPD.
In the photo essay with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s magazine, he said: “I hope that the country will understand that the grimaces and gestures relate to the question, and show a sense of humor.”
However, many were not amused.
“Angela Merkel also has a sense of humor, but you wouldn’t see such a photo or gesture of her, that’s the difference,” CDU lawmaker Steffen Kampeter said. “Peer Steinbrueck’s personality means there is a limit to his fitness for political leadership posts. He’s a funny guy, but chancellors face extreme situations and have to be aware every second that they represent Germany.”
Far-left Die Linke party Chairman Bernd Riexinger considered the picture the “official end of the chancellor candidature of Peer Steinbrueck.”
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily imagined how, after a Steinbrueck win, the offending image could be used in protest placards from Greece to Afghanistan. “A picture speaks more than a thousand words,” said a commentary. “The gesture of the chancellor would tell the world just one thing: ‘Fuck you.’”
The image stood in stark contrast to one of Merkel, often called Europe’s most powerful leader, on the cover of Friday’s Economist weekly, with the headline “One woman to rule them all.”
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the