If you have never seen a complete broadcast of "Nuhr im Erste" but somehow became curious after last Friday's "ZDF Magazin Royale", then you probably felt like me. Jan Böhmermann had parodied Dieter Nuhr and his guests in his show and I thought that was completely exaggerated. Now it turns out: It's all much worse.
Of course, we are used to a lot of humor in Germany, the same more or less funny people always tell the same, more or less funny incidents, little jokes and anecdotes in front of their respective audience. That with the audience is very important, because such a show by Dieter Nuhr or Lisa Eckhart only works for a certain clientele. They then sit in front of the stage and laugh and smack their thighs while listening to superficial, little pointed and at times completely predictable satire.
"SUV is a box spring bed with wheels," Johann König, for example, joked about his appearance, which was essentially limited to neighbors and dog excrement. If you think that's not very original, then you don't know Frank Lüdecke. Luckily, he only used his relatively short stage time to bash Berlin. You can do that, of course, there is enough that is worth telling about and in the capital. But please, airport and central station jokes? It is 2023 and truly everything has been said on these subjects for all time. But hey, someone who manages to fit another Walter Momper joke into their program might need a few more years to find new material. Momper was Governing Mayor of Berlin from 1989 to 1991.
We should be more lenient. Or more critical. Because besides all the harmless and really boring Berlin jokes, there was this one moment where I wondered why no one in the audience stood up and yelled, "Is it okay?" The gag, which can certainly be understood as racist, revolved around a clerk who had a cold and, according to Lüdecke, responded with "it's no wonder with all the refugees". Are these the thigh slappers we really want to see as a society?
Apparently yes, because the spectators present are happily clapping their way through the program, it's better not to think, everything is so bleak out there right now and the atmosphere in the studio is so good. One can very well console oneself with the thought that none of this is meant that way, that one might be aligning oneself with something that one perhaps didn't want to get close to. But that's the way it is, satire. Biting, evil, and Jan Böhmermann didn't show it himself: anything is allowed for satire. So why not a little hahaha with Dieter Nuhr? Lisa Eckhart's jokes about sodomy in the village, they're funny, as is the mockery of the anti-feminism agency that was just set up to record anti-feminist violence. We'd rather laugh about it freely, Eckhart certainly doesn't mean it that way.
And Mathias Tretter and his stories from his childhood in Franconia are certainly not foreign to many from their own experience. All his omissions on the subject were laughed off, but they are a prime example of people who say: The toughness in the past didn't hurt me either. How do you know this is a misconception? Anyone who has to appear in satirical programs today in order to crack misogynistic jokes in addition to parent-bashing might still have an issue somewhere.
Tretter wished that Defense Minister Marie-Agnes Stracke-Zimmermann should go to the examination before her next talk show appearance. "I will never forget the grip", says Mathias Tretter, "and neither will you". Ahaha, that's just kidding, just kidding.
In fact, exactly one part of the evening was funny, and that was when Dieter Nuhr explained why he believed more in science than in politics. No, that's not the joke itself. "Regarding the future of my children," said Nuhr, "please don't let Robert Habeck decide, but Gyro Gearloose." You do you, dear Dieter Nuhr, but anyone who believes that a character from Duckburg would be able to contribute new insights into the climate crisis might also believe that misogynistic jokes against King Charles and Frau Camilla are funny. Or that an opinion suddenly becomes a verifiable fact just because you say it out loud on television.
So did Dieter Nuhr not respond to Böhmermann in his show? He couldn't resist a little side swipe. In his introduction, he briefly addressed the "ZDF Magazin Royale" by saying: "We deal with the really important things of the week – so not with me."
