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Konrad Werner: The dishonesty of being honest

There is nothing worse than politicians being honest. Just look at Heinz Buschkowsky. He's honest, and he's a twat. Basically, 'honesty' just means they're spewing out more bodily fluids, with an added layer of lies and deceit.

Image for Konrad Werner: The dishonesty of being honest
Photo courtesy of the SPD

There is nothing worse than politicians being honest. Just look at Heinz Buschkowsky. He’s honest, and he’s a twat.

One of the most dishonest things that politicians do is go round being ‘honest.’ It is almost as much of a lie as when they go round ‘telling you things that the other parties don’t want you to hear,’ or even ‘talking about taboo subjects.’

Basically, it just means they’re spewing out more bodily fluids, with an added layer of lies and deceit. In Germany, this taboo subject always turns out to be ‘integration’ and that is the only thing that anyone ever talks about, especially politicians.

It is with this massive soggy chip draped over both shoulders – with its centre balanced awkwardly on my head – that I report that Heinz Buschkowsky, the SPD mayor of Neukölln, has been awarded this year’s Gustav-Heinemann-Citizen prize. I have no idea what that is, but while it is probably not intended to be given precisely to the biggest twat in Berlin, it is has managed to miss the mark with unerring certainty this time, especially since Thilo Sarrazin moved to Knobheadland.

In fact, the Gustav-Heinemann-Citizen prize, named after the world famous Gustav Heinemann, is an SPD prize intended for “people or organisations who have taken responsibility for promoting peace and justice.”

Now, I dare say there is some peace and justice in the social projects that Buschkowsky has started in Neukölln – but that’s not what SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel talked about when he described Buschkowsky. He talked of a “carer with a large and hot heart” – some translation issues here – who had the “virtue of clear speech.”

Those that praise Buschkowsky like to bang on about how he is “not afraid to address difficult issues” – meaning that when Buschkowsky says racist things like “multiculturalism has failed” and “Turkish adverts are a danger to the community” he is ‘being honest’.

This is the most fragile taboo in Germany, and right-wing people get little smooth erections whenever it gets broken, and when SPD members like Buschkowsky and Sarrazin break them, a tiny bubble of clear liquid emerges gently from the tip.

(PS Gustav Heinemann was the West German president between 1969 and 1974, and was not famous then either. People used to hand him their coat when they wanted to tie their shoelaces.)