I truly admire the ability of the journalists working for tabloids to break down complicated and confusing world events so everybody can understand what is really going on. While it’s not quite clear who the apparently confused Bild editor is referring to when claiming that “We are pope”, and while the Daily Mirror is struggling to find suitable canine metaphors that link “conservative”, “strong”, and “German” – ending up with “God’s Rottweiler” -, the Sun once more excels with a most admirable combination of knowledge and courage.

One clearly needs some guts (and a one-track mind) to use a nazi allusion in a headline describing the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI, the German Cardinal Ratzinger. Of course, after characterizing him as “ex-World War II enemy soldier” the newspaper suddenly felt the need to state at the end of the brief article that

“[h]e was 14 when forced to join the Hitler Youth. He later manned a German anti-aircraft battery – before deserting.”

The Sun editors probably don’t even believe themselves that anyone will keep reading long enough to get to that clarification.

That’s probably also the reason why they decided to use red smoke to indicate their endorsement for a third term of a Blair government. While I don’t think they wanted to imply that all Labour recently produced was red smoke , given the current state of Mr Blair’s government’s popularity, The Sun’s endorsement once more confirms that the Tories are doing everything they can to help Britain advance on its way to a one party state.