As I have established, in the run up to the Bundestag election American media coverage was week. However they did pick up on the story of Vera Lengsfeld, the 57 yeaer old CDU representative who ran for the Berlin-Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg-Prenzlauer Berg Ost Wahlkreis. What drew US media attention to here was not her politics but her now infamous campaign poster where she posed in a low cut evening dress next to the image of Merkel in a similar dress. The slogan underneath translates as “we have more to offer.” Indeed!! This story was picked up by CNNs German Correspondent , Frederik Pleitgen, on August 13th (Transscript here: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0908/12/sitroom.02.html). Wolf Blitzer’s transiton to the story went “In Germany, raising the level of interest in this year’s election campaign along with some eyebrows…” The next day the St. Petersburg Times, Florida. It was only a 10 line blurb. It was a purley “candy” piece of reporting, meant to break up the program on CNN and pique the readers interest with something saucy to encourage them to read the rest of the international column. There was no meat to the story, no implications suggested or even what the policies of the CDU were.
The story was also picked up by the writers of Comedy Central’s the Colbert Report. This television program sometimes referred to as “fake news” is a satire of the news of the day. It is meant to be comedy but a surprising amount of College Students and adults use this program and the Daily Show hosted by Jon Stewart (in a similar “Fake News” fashion) as a source of national and international news.
Watch the video clip HERE!
As you can see from the clip, Colbert uses the campaign ad to poke fun at Obama, former president Bush, and Republicans in congress (suggesting they should wear low cut dresses to attract the “schwing” vote). Again, like CNN and the St. Petersberg Times report, there was no important information in the spot, and was only meant to entertain.
German and American Election Coverage 
I was very-very surprised at Vera Lengsfeld’s poster. I enterpret it as an attempt at femininity in German politics, challenging the patriarchal traditions of the CDU. But the German women I talked to about this poster—did not share my opinion. 🙂