By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Senior Writer
Published 7/11/2003 10:12
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WASHINGTON, July 11 (UPI) -- These are irritating days for a consummate advocate of the European unification process. The old continent, one realizes, has fallen into the hands of petty proles incapable of rising above stereotypes and peevish postures inconsistent with the grandeur of cities like Rome, Paris or Berlin.
If you wonder why the framers of the European Union's new constitution lacked the generosity to even mention the role of Christianity in shaping the continent's civilization, just look at the caliber of those controlling it now.
Let's start with the leader of this writer's homeland, Germany. Having just excelled in the Iraq crisis as postwar Germany's premier diplomatic underperformer, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has now slipped into the role of what we call "beleidigte Leberwurst," or miffed liver sausage.
Because a demented undersecretary in Italy's ministry of tourism badmouthed Germans roasting their bellies on beaches along the Adriatic coast, Chancellor Schroeder, ever the populist, cancelled his holiday in that man's land, where leading German leftists have been summering ever since the late 1960s - chiefly in enchanting Tuscany.
Instead, Herr Schroeder will relax among his garden dwarves, if indeed he has some of those on the plot of land surrounding his Hanover home. Anyway, that's where he'll be, and other prominent Social Democrats have threatened to follow his example.
In other words, they vowed: Let's engage in virtual combat. Let's punish Italian pizza bakers, hoteliers and waiters vicariously for the nasty stuff tourism official Stefano Stefani has said about his German ex-wife's fellow countrymen.
He labeled them beer-swilling nationalistic boors. Acually, this characterization does in fact apply to some of the hordes manning the beeches of Rimini, where you won't exactly find Germany's elite in July and August. Still it doesn't make much sense to insult a nation providing Italy with 40 percent of its tourism revenues.
Of course, the most suave member of Schroeder's cabinet, foreign minister Joschka Fischer, will not stay home in order to avenge the Fatherland; like eight million other Germans he will travel to Italy to rest up.
What we don't know, though, is this: Had he originally planned to vacation in Sweden? If so, a ranking Stockholm politician' thoughts for the summer might have put him off. She labeled him a terrorist. That description was blatantly unfair. We all know that back in the revolutionary late 1960s Fischer was a nasty thug battling cops -- but a terrorist? No, surely not - not a terrorist!
There is yet another region of the European Union German politicians with a populist bent ought to boycott these days - the Principality of Wales. There, four teenage students of a Christian boarding school were just suspended for one day after giving a German teacher the "Heil Hitler" salute.
Seriously now, it's not that Germans have no reason for being annoyed with officials, tabloid editors, educators and kids stuck in clich� thinking about their country almost six decades after the end of World War II. It's just, well, that a more sovereign reaction to the invectives from beyond the Alps, the Channel or the Baltic Sea might serve Schroeder & Co. better.
Take the pathetic scene in the European Parliament where Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi likened German deputy Martin Schulz to a concentration camp guard (an insult followed up by the inveterate Stefani with the claim that Schulz "probably grew up taking part in noisy belching contests").
When gentlemen were in charge of Germany - yes, we really did have politicians of that persuasion after World War II! - they would simply have ignored the insults and enjoyed the gratification of having others put Berlusconi in his place.
But Schulz is not a gentleman. He got all puffed up, thus taking much of the sting out of French, British, Dutch, and even Italian reproaches leveled against Berlusconi. And Schroeder, his eyes firmly set on banner headlines in his nation's tabloids, demanded an apology, prompting Berlusconi to think up more abuses still.
As Germans say, "Ach, haette er doch geschwiegen!" - if only he, Schroeder, had kept quiet.
One is tempted to dismiss all this as a temporary irritation due to a very hot summer. After all, in the end at least Stefani resigned Friday in response to the furor his lunatic remarks had created in Italy. Still, to those concerned with Europe's future these substandard tiffs are deeply troubling, however. For at a crucial moment in the European Union's evolution it seems to be in the hands of people poor in common sense and upbringing but richly endowed with the desire to appeal to popular biases and irrational fears.
As a recent caller from Germany said, exasperated with this low level of leadership: "I want my Kaiser back - now!"
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