almost a diary

Yesterday evening I took a long walk and a lot of pictures of campaign posters for next Sunday’s regional election. After all, next Monday, they will be gone.

So this poster is the first in the series I’m going to post over the next days – think of them as some kind of election calendar.

This “ingenous” poster reading “Deutsch ist geil” is making use of a word play, “geil” being a slang (well, not just slang anymore) word meaning “great” as well as “horny” in high German. The latter, of course, explains the presence of the young lady on the picture, although it is hard to see what in particular is German or “geil” about her. She’s smiling, but I doubt her expression justifies the use of either meaning of “geil”.
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If you are entitled to vote in the upcoming state elections in Rhineland-Palatinate, you might want to check with the regionalised Wahl-o-mat if your current party of coice actually pledges to do what you care about most (in German).

Wahl-O-Mat – Landtagswahl Rheinland-Pfalz

There’s only 40,000 of them in Rheinland-Pfalz now, but at least the CDU is on the case: “Jobs: Let’s not to do things by halves”, they say on this campaign poster. Quite right. There should be at least 80,000 kids in need of welfare prgrammes…

Looking at this SPD advertisement for the upcoming regional election, I’m thinking the American administration may have finally found their master in reductionist political communication…

Speaking of political communication, in the coming weeks, I will present you, my gentle readers, with a couple of outstanding examples thereof…

Clicking the image will take you to my flickr account.

“… we also honor the important friendship between the United States and Germany. Our nations share beliefs in human rights and dignity, and on this day, I join all Americans in celebrating the bonds that tie our two nations and in reaffirming the importance of our continuing friendship.”

(via germany.info)

Leaving the the podium the President added to a close advisor – “… of course, we can always suspend it unilaterally, hehehe… that Chancellor guy I hate, what’s his name again, does he still rule those folks? Hmm, whatever, now go, get me a Pretzel! And buy some German knives. And guns. Germans know how to make guns. And knives. Oh wait a minute… guns… hmmm… were these folks really always our friends? Whatever… where’s my Pretzel?”

Ring out the old, ring in the… old? Doesn’t he look a little like he had a hunch?

Besides, “Die Partei” clearly knows best how to protect expensive campaign material from vandalism…

To bad only 10300 people voted for “Die Partei” which was created by the editorial staff of the German satire magazine “Titanic”. I would have loved to seem in coalition talks. Their most important campaign promise was to rebuild the Berlin Wall. I suppose that might have suited at least the frustated Bavarians around Edmund Stoiber to some extent.

Gregor Gysi gets the second price in the category “most blatantly stupid campaign claim” for the line “Left policy deserves to be trusted because it means developing alternatives with the people.” The first price obviously goes to everyone depicted on a poster with the claim “better for the people.”

It’s a well known fact that property is not something people on the economic left have a lot of sympathy for. So it should not be too surprising to see that Oscar Lafontaine has appropriated Victor Hugo’s realisation that there are times when nothing is more powerful than an idea and put it on the poster in a way that looks lke it was his own… by the way, replying “we’re not mad” to his invitation (scribbled on the poster) was probably wrong – to some extent. While not as many people voted for the Linkspartei.PDS, it was still 8.7% (or 4,086,134 people) of Germans, 4.7% up from 4 years ago.