You are in:
- Archives » 2007 » December 2007
Airbrushed From History
Old habits die hard, especially if you're a German Communist.
Hardline leftist MEP Sahra Wagenknecht was snapped in a restaurant by a colleague, tucking into a plate of lobster in a Strasbourg restaurant.
Not wishing her voters to see her enjoying a "rich man's dish", Frau Wagenknecht dispatched a lackey to the office of the photographer, who is also a member of the Left Party.
She asked to "borrow" the camera to "take photographs with an acquaintance" (the Guardian reports.
When the camera was returned the following day, the incriminating shots were missing. Wagenknecht admits she deleted them because she "didn't like them" (surely vanity is a bourgeois weakness as much as lobster?)
The photographer, Feleknas Uca, has lodged a complaint against Wagenknecht for searching through her private photos.
One is reminded of the maxim that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The Communists Frau Wagenknecht admires (she mourns the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Guardian claims) were experts at the dark arts of airbrushing people and incidents from the pages of history. Those removed from photographs of party functions were also likely to have been "removed" for real, like Leon Trotsky, who was "disappeared" from a photograph of Communist leaders and later ended up with an ice pick in his head.
Doubtless Wagenknecht wishes she had similar news management techniques at her disposal.
Fortunately for her, the story is out, and in a Germany which is increasingly uncomfortable with vulgar displays of wealth. The public's esteem for politicians is likely to suffer not only because of the MEP's choice of meal and post-prandial antics, but by the fact that taxpayers are forking out for MEPs to gorge themselves in Strasbourg's many wonderful restaurants. Indeed, only yesterday, your correspondent was reading in a French food magazine of how one four-star joint was "a favourite with Members of the European parliament" on their regular visits to the French city. Rooms go for between 285 and 485 euros a night.
