Why won't the British media just get over it?
POSTED BY: Khyron
UPDATED: Friday, June 7, 2024 18:43
VIEWED: 8774
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
He was joking...
Oh...
Other people can occasionally be useful, especially as minions. I want lots of minions.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SimonWho:
One of my close friends remembers it all vividly, how she suffered, how her husband suffered and how the country suffered. How her friends died. How her family died. Now if you'd care to tell her that she should "get over it", please, do so here and I'll pass it on to her.
It's as the old saying goes "If you don't want your country to get the occasional jest at its expense, don't embark on mass campaigns of slaughter, hatred and genocide."
But how does this relate to young people/children being born in Germany today? The point of this thread is that modern day Germany shouldn't be held responsible for the acts of their ancestors.
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Ancestors... no, that would be unfair.
Living relatives who committed this acts of evil... can't they still carry the blame?
There are still Nazis in Germany. There are still neo-Nazis in Germany.
Perhaps it is easy to be superior when your country has no traditions of fascism and dictatorship. But then again, if there is a standard to judge countries against each other, is there a better one?
Other than football, obviously. (And if the US team is the fourth best in the world... well, it isn't, no matter what the FIFA rankings say.)
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Quote:
Originally posted by Grounded:
But how does this relate to young people/children being born in Germany today? The point of this thread is that modern day Germany shouldn't be held responsible for the acts of their ancestors.
Yup that was the point, but now I'm not sure if SimonWho totally missed it or if he meant the first post in jest (in bad taste, mind you, in the context of the overall topic). I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and look at what is, quite frankly, the dribbel he wrote in his second post as a frustrated reaction to me not picking up that his first post was a joke.
If, on the other hand, Simonwho, you didn't mean the first post as a joke and you do mean what you said in the second post, then you really are a moron.
i) Some comedians making fun of their nation's own history does not rival the press of another country making fun of that nation's history. Do you really think the English would be okay with it if the French were making fun of them for their crimes during colonialism?
ii) So one of your close friends suffered during the war, that makes the tabloid press making war-related jokes about Germans alright? And this may sound cruel, but yes, 'get over it' is exactly the advice I'd give to her. If she spent most of the 60 years since then thinking about the sufferings during the war, then that's not really living. I know it's not easy to 'get over it', but it's some sound advice. Feel free to pass it along.
iii) I'm sure you made that 'old saying' up
.Other people can occasionally be useful, especially as minions. I want lots of minions.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SimonWho:
There are still Nazis in Germany. There are still neo-Nazis in Germany.
I don't disagree, but there are neo-Nazis in England too, and there are a lot of them in America these days. So these days it can hardly be seen as a purely German thing.
Quote:
And if the US team is the fourth best in the world... well, it isn't, no matter what the FIFA rankings say.
I don't disagree with this either
.Other people can occasionally be useful, especially as minions. I want lots of minions.
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Like I said it's a popular culture thing that will die out when the generation that remembers the war does. It's a fine tradition in Europe to make fun of your neighbours, we have a whole class of joke called Englishman/Irishman/Scotsman jokes and most other places do the same. In Spain notherners make jokes at southerner's expense.
Brit/French and Brit/German jokes are tame compared to French/German or German/French ones.
"Don't mention the War" is from an entire episode of Fawlty Towers dealing with German tourists and Basil's bad reactions.
"'Ello, Ello," was an entire series about the inept French resistance, inept Germans and the Inept English.
Both these shows sold very well abroad, in fact the only change that was made to Fawlty Towers is that when it was dubbed into Spanish they made Manuel the idiot waiter Italian!
The nastiness of it in the tabloids is just the way nasty tabloids are and doesnt vary much were ever you are.
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I agree with everything you said Fletch, except that it's 'Allo, 'Allo (and not 'Ello, 'Ello) .
It's important to keep in mind that 'Allo 'Allo made fun of everyone (in later series it made fun of the Italians as well), and not just of one nation. Had it made fun of just one of them, I doubt it would have such a broad appeal, unless it's a nation everyone hates (like France... just kidding!).
Besides, Nazis deserve to be made fun of, and Brits/Germans mocking each other is fine too, but my point is that the current generation of Germans doesn't deserve to be made fun of with Nazi references. Nations making fun of each other is of course completely understandable, but it shouln't get too nasty, and to a lot of Germans, the British tabloid humour is going too far.
Other people can occasionally be useful, especially as minions. I want lots of minions.
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"Ello Ello" was a police series 
I think the point about tabloids is that to get the readership they do they have to appeal to the lowest common denominator and if that means appeals to cheap nationalism they'll do it. It works on the scattergun principle. You gode the Germans, then you insult the French, you print some celeb scandals, you throw in a topless girl. There is a chance that at least one of those will work for your reader and if at least one thing hits every day he'll keep reading.
One thing to understand is that many Tabloid owners like the current level of UK isolationsm from Europe. I can easily believe that in a choice between what was best for the UK or the EU and their own narrow financial interests they would prefer to keep the divisions strong.
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I had a question about Ello Ello but never mind (never heard of it, that's all).
Other people can occasionally be useful, especially as minions. I want lots of minions.
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It's not bad they don't forget history, it's bad they never learn from it.
And what was the name of that BBC TV comedy in the French Resistance? I must admit I laughed at that. Sort of like Hogan's Heros, making Nazis look like imbeciles. Allo Allo?
My favorite British comedy of all time was Spitting Image muppet show, which was so funny it's banned forever, apparently. It skewered the royals and Parliament and White House. Never seen a rerun. Even better than the elderly Monty Pythons.
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Ghosts in the Machines
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WW2 and UK motorsports collide at the White House
Nazi Foo Fighter UFOs vs USA in World War 2
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