Thursday, December 11, 2014

Balls, Butts, Heroes, Traffic Accidents & Torture

The title of this post might well be the best one line description of German tabloid Bild Zeitung, if we re-did it in all caps, like so BALLS, BUTTS... you get the picture.

To clarify, BALLS includes soccer balls, but despite lots of soccer reporting, the balls kicked around in that game make up only a small percentage, and the balls fulfilling FIFA regulations an even smaller percentage.

The BUTTS are of such variety and diversity that you could be forgiven the belief Germany is a nation of immigrants. Not only that - but [hey, c'mon] prominent families around the world who, for reasons better left to historians don't emphasize the heritage, will invariably see some of their family behinds in this paper.

When it comes to BUTTS, BILD can be surprisingly free of social stigma. This should not be seen as betrayal of their family value editorial policy. BILD will print means tested HARTZ IV social security behinds next to upper class boobies, but make no mistake, this is only a nod, a long one sure, to some of their regular readers from this demographic.
The same appears to be true for young immigrant ladies. It's not voyeurism if you ditch the niqab and everything underneath! It shows you successfully assimilated.

Traffic accidents & torture. Do you really want to read about these? Go to the BILD Zeitung web site. Today, their mainliner is about a gruesome traffic accident, yesterday it was about the American torture architects.

Oh, and right now, they switched to a full on Dick Cheney lambasting the torture report. And they added an inset about TV show Homeland next to the Dick. The inset says: nobody likes the CIA but everybody loves Homeland.

Underneath the article about death and destruction? Have a look:

See, not a single word of German needed to understand the lady part.

Even though it may look dumb, BILD is run by professionals who know that the average sentence length in their paper should be somewhere around or under 10 words. Don't say, ah, German words, that's not so serious then!
BILD also uses shorter words than less colorful publications.

BILD has mastered the art of taking a stance without sticking to most. It is a policy that can infuriate lesser minds like those of us at the K-Landnews, because they can go and disprove any statement you might level at their prose.

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of BILD is that they are the one mass circulation paper any German government goes to if it wants to get news out.

If BILD wasn't printed on paper, the best choice of medium might be Teflon. But, luckily for some poor old folks and hermits, this would seriously limit recycling options.

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