The answer, my friend, is generational angst
It seems you can’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the television any more without reading or hearing the newest revelations of the latest political scandal du jour. The media’s role in reporting alleged acts of indiscretion has taken on a new meaning in this competitive age of 24-hour news, Internet access, tabloid journalism and a growing emphasis on television ratings and newspaper sales. For proof of this, you don’t have to look far. Just grab a copy of the Bild Zeitung. If you’re not familiar with it, maybe you will recognize one of its cousins: The Sun or The New York Post.If you have paid any attention to the German media this year, you have, no doubt, noticed an unrelenting and lurid fixation on certain members of the government. Obviously, there isn’t enough real news to fill all the newscasts, newspapers and news magazines, because a politician’s youthful past — even when it isn’t hidden — is now being served as the main course for what is perceived as the public’s insatiable appetite.
It started with the publication of archive photographs of Foreign Minister and Deputy Chancellor Joschka Fischer fighting a policeman at a Frankfurt demonstration in 1973. And it was followed soon thereafter by Bild am Sonntag's disclosure that the new Health Minister — Ulla Schmidt — had worked in “questionable” nightclubs while she was a student. In quick succession, we were hit with even more “breaking news”: accusations that Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin advocated political assassination in a student newspaper article; that Interior Minister Otto Schily worked formerly as a defense lawyer and had a guerrilla group as a client; and, that a former long-haired lawyer — Chancellor Gerhard Schröder — had defended politically radical clients. “It was my job after all,” an aggravated Schröder was quoted as saying after this pressing news broke. Ironically, the quote appeared in the arch-conservative Die Welt.
Let’s pause here for a moment, because obviously the German media must think that everyone in this country — and the rest of the world — was born yesterday. Why else give headline status to information that is already part of the public record? It’s not as if any of this is new. More likely is that the German media has finally awakened to the fact that the post-war generation is in charge. This is the group that molded and defined the 1960s and early 1970s around the world — the hippies, student antiwar protesters, anti-establishment crusaders and self-declared champions of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Today, grown up and graying, these individuals are wearing suits, carrying briefcases, investing in mutual funds and running the show in top government positions around the world. It’s fair to say that they are the ones making the editorial decisions in news organizations around the world, too.
Germany’s recent bout of generational angst is — as with many things — years behind the rest of the world. After all, the United States and Britain have had baby boomers at the helm for some time now. Sure, it’s true that the German government has a cast of characters whose colorful pasts would’ve delighted even the brothers Grimm. But there is no evidence yet that the youthful histories of these individuals have any relevance to the jobs they are doing today.
Of course, there is a subplot to this story. While the media forces members of the Schröder government to answer for the ghosts of their generation’s past, the country’s aging, former long-reigning conservative leader — Helmut Kohl — is charged with real political scandal. It seems he engaged in shady dealings to fatten the coffers of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party while he was German chancellor. So, any adverse media attention on the youthful actions of Kohl’s former political adversaries is certain to take some attention away from the investigation of his own corrupt actions while in office.
Mr. Fischer, who has never hidden his leftist past, has offered a public apology for his street fighter student days. But there is a clear dividing line between leftist outrage and terrorist violence — which Fischer maintains he has always opposed. Fischer stands by his biography, saying “I am what I am, the good and bad. And my principle is: I must be true to myself.” Interestingly, an American newspaper — The New York Times — came to Fischer’s defense. It wrote that even Germany’s conservative politicians “acknowledge that the activism of the so-called generation of ’68 played an important role in democratizing the Federal Republic and in forcing a society in denial to acknowledge its Nazi past more directly.”
In Britain, where the media pursuit of political scandals is a blood sport akin to fox hunting, the Observer took note of the media circus in Germany. Neal Ascherson marveled jealously that it appears easier in Germany than in Britain for politicians to say: “This is what I did when I was young. Some of it I am sorry about; some of it I am proud of. And this is why I have changed my opinions since then.” Is the 1960s generation the first to be called to task for the decisions of its youth? Certainly not. And it won’t be the last.
