I know, admittedly, only the German site, but I have a hunch, the others are in no way better.
If I want a dose of irritation, I go there, and they never fail me.
This time it was the following article:
Joke on Jewish director as Germans shun Hitler comedyIt is deserving of thanks that they have a "letter to the editor" functionally at their website, which I put to good use:
A slapstick comedy by a Jewish filmmaker about Adolf Hitler opened nationwide in Germany last week to a chorus of bad reviews and condemnation by Jewish leaders. We check out the controversy.
The German pressed has slammed the film
Barring a miracle, Swiss director Dani Levy's "Mein Fuehrer" looks likely to be the biggest box office flop of the year in a nation which, for weeks now, has been embroiled in pre-release debate over whether Germans should allow themselves a good chuckle at Hitler's expense.
In a nation not known for self-deprecating humour, Levy's film goes to great lengths to portray Hitler - and the Germans - as being laughably ridiculous. Not surprisingly, many film reviewers have derided precisely that aspect of the film.
"Levy's film is laughable but, unfortunately, it is not very funny," wrote a reviewer in Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper. "This reviewer found little to laugh about in this sadly unfunny movie."
"One of the most enduring crimes of the Third Reich is the embarrassment it has caused for subsequent generations of Germans," wrote Der Spiegel news magazine. "That is about the hardest thing Germans have to endure - that the Third Reich is so unforgivably embarrassing."
Levy, a Jewish Swiss filmmaker who has made a career out of directing irreverent comedies, picked one of Germany's most outrageously irreverent stand-up comics to portray the fuehrer.
Helge Schneider, who plays an impotent and incontinent Hitler playing with toy battleships in a bathtub, is an anarchic comic who himself has directed and starred in a number of slapstick comedies - films that largely appeal to adolescent male audiences.
"Helge is precisely the man to deflate Hitler down to human size," Levy says. "Germans have been conditioned to think of Hitler as a larger-than-life demon whose actions and crimes are beyond human comprehension."
"As long as they think of him as being non-human, they will never come to terms with the fact that he was a very human, very mortal buffoon of a man. I needed a buffoon to play the role and Helge is the perfect buffoon."
Schneider says the controversy over the film only shows that Germans fail to see the ludicrous side of Hitler. Echoing Der Spiegel's suggestion that Hitler's most unforgivable crime was in being a continual embarrassment to all future Germans, Schneider says, "Hitler was a pathological nincompoop who got where he was only because a lot of people somehow ignored the fact that he was a pathological nincompoop."
Jewish leaders outraged
Jewish leaders in Germany have been outraged by the film saying it makes Hitler seem harmless.
One of the Jewish community's most strident, high-profile leaders is Lea Rosh, a veteran newswoman who was a guiding force behind the Holocaust Monument located on the block between Brandenburg Gate and Hitler's one-time chancellery building in the heart of Berlin.
"There is no way that any film director can make Hitler funny," says Rosh. "Levy's film denigrates the horror and suffering that millions endured. It's not something you can laugh about, not now, not in 200 years, not ever."
Well-respected in Israel
Levy's last film was a black comedy about the estranged sons of a German Jewish father whose dying wish was that they make amends and share his estate in harmony.
The film was critically acclaimed but played at only a few art- house cinemas. His Hitler comedy is not expected to do even that well, despite or perhaps because of all the advance publicity.
Even so, Levy is well-respected in Israel, where his last film was shown to cheers and also to boos and catcalls.
"I'm looking forward to the screening in Jerusalem," Levy says with a strong sense of schadenfreude. "My last film was accused of being a piece of Goebbels Nazi propaganda. What on Earth will hardliners in Israel think of this film?"
And the filmmaker is also curious to see how right-wingers in Germany react to "Mein Fuehrer."
"I'm just waiting for the complaints to come in from neo-Nazis, and from old-Nazis for that matter, who gripe that my film is disrespectful of their fuehrer and shows him in a bad light," Levy says.
"I mean, it's so typical of Germans to take it all so terribly seriously and not realise that their total lack of humour makes them a laughingstock around the world."
Dear Sir or Madam,I mean these people are claiming to inform about Germany and have NO IDEA either about Germany's great tradition of comedians, Karl Valentin, Liesl Karlstadt, Werner Finck or Otto Reutter come to mind or the great contemporary ones. Harald Schmidt is just the best known one, and no comedian in any language will ever beat the wonderful, wonderfully subtle and refined Loriot.
I have yet to remember a visit at Expatica.com where I was not appalled at the ubiquitous self-conscious political correctness and -- worse -- sloppy journalism and liberal use of clichés.
Here we go again: At http://www. ... some shmok informs us under the header "Joke on Jewish director as Germans shun Hitler comedy" that the film "My Fuehrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler" "...opened nationwide in Germany last week to a chorus of bad reviews".
This is not true.
Neither is true that "Germans shun Hitler". In fact, this dirty little mercenary effort was Germany's top film after its release. And condemnation by Jewish leaders... But of course, what did you expect! Those Jews doggedly refuse to see what a huge joke the Holocaust was!
And are we really amazed that a Jew like Dani Levi, who is playing court-jester/Jew for the children of those who tried to wipe his people from the face of the earth, gets acclaims for his "audacious, ground-breaking ideas"?
So much about "bad reviews". If it only were so!
Are we -- your shmok and I respectively -- following the same media?
Next:
"In a nation not known for self-deprecating humour..."
Did your shmok ever see the wonderful German comedian Loriot? Or the less subtle but still great Gerhard Polt?
No?
"I mean, it's so typical of Germans to take it all so terribly seriously and not realise that their total lack of humour makes them a laughingstock around the world."
I mean, it's so typical of shmoks to never do any research and not to realise that their total lack of knowledge makes them a laughingstock around the world.
Ever heard of Harald Schmidt? Otto? Werner Finck? Evelyn Hamann? Harald Juhnke? Hape Kerkeling? Michael "Bully" Herbig"? Karl Valentin? (In no specific order.)
No?
Next:
"One of the Jewish community's most strident, high-profile leaders is Lea Rosh..."
No she isn't. That embarrassing crone is not Jewish. In fact, her real name is Edith Rohs. Lea Rosh is her nom de plume, cleverly chosen for its faintly Jewish "sound" and the attention grabbing effect that goes with it in a Germany that is still, and always will be, sickly fascinated with anything Jewish.
May God save the Jews from the megalomaniac egoes of German philosemites like Lea Rosh!
(Of course, a little Google search would have enlightened your shmok...)
Last:
"The editor reserves the right to edit letters prior to publishing for reasons of space or coherence."
While I basically consent with the publication of anything I am sending you and can even empathise with the concept of editing for reasons of space, I find the concept of "coherence" insulting regarding the general level of Expatica.com's reasoning, writing and research.
If I may say so -- one can not condescend from below.
Best regards
That are the same people, mind you, who would be all in a twitter of righteous outrage if one would refer to -- say -- African Americans as being fond of eating watermelons.
Or, on a more serious note, to the Muslin faith as a perverted death cult.
Or to the "hardliners in Israel" as people who have, different from the Dani Levy's of this world, a sense of self-preservation.
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