“Foot-in-mouth” disease made at least one live appearance on continental Europe this week when noted German television presenter Gunther Jauch said “we’ve become Greece” after a power outage blitzed his Berlin studio for 15 minutes.
Greece was definitely on the mind of the German TV journalist, his guests and audience because the program’s theme for the evening was something called ““The Euro-fright – where will the Greeks-anger?” (sic)
A cascade of criticism on social media and in several German newspapers the next day followed.
“It’s more proper to refer to ‘conditions of Germany’, rather than Greece” was the comment in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which reminded of similar outages in Germany.
In a more soul-search mode, FAZ harked back to the 1990s and early 2000s (pre-Merkel) to also reminisce over an era when Germany was considered the economic “slow poke” of Europe.
Handelsblatt, apparently sensing how touchy some Greeks are these days, referred to a “non-productive cliché”.
Jauch’s program finally got underway on the ARD network at 10:05 local time.