Monday, December 18. 2006
Posted by Joerg Wolf in
Transatlantic Relations on Monday, December 18. 2006
The leading US video blog (vlog) Rocketboom encourages its viewers to translate the leading German vlog Ehrensenf. Now you can watch Ehrensenf episodes with English subtitles.
The two vlogs also cooperate in attempting to get a NY couple move to Texas, as Rocketboom explains here. The Dallas Morning News does not have a sense of humor and wrote the editorial "Sour Krauts: Germans laugh at Plano now, but not for long":
A New York City couple known only by the names Danny and Nina are running a contest on their Web site, dannyandnina.com, in which visitors vote on where the pair will live for a year. The two promise to relocate to the first American metropolis on their long list that gets a million votes. With nearly 600,000 votes, guess which town is leading the balloting? Plano. It's not a compliment. Plano rocketed to the top of the list after a German television program encouraged viewers to visit the Web site and punish the New Yorkers by sending them to live in Texas. As "Lyzia," a German commentator on the site's message board, put it, "The reason why we [Germans] want them to move to Texas is ... cruelty. Yes, that's right, the Dallas Morning News wrote an editorial about an episode in a German entertainment vlog. Besides, they got it wrong. a) A bit more is known about the couple. b) Ehrensenf is not a "television program", c) Ehrensenf did not encourage anybody to "punish" the couple by sending them to Texas. Rather than quoting one of tens of thousands of commentators, they should have quoted the Ehrensenf episode about this vote, which just points out that Texas would be recreational for a couple from NY. Ehrensenf does not have anything against Texas, but just wanted to satirically "play God" by encouraging its many viewers to vote for one particular city. If I wanted to imitate the humorless editorial writer, then I would quote one letter to the editors of the Dallas Morning News and then conclude: "Rednecks: Americans laugh at xyz." Imagine the outcry in the blogosphere, if a German newspaper had published an incorrect editorial with such a title. Many Germans might not like a certain politician from Texas, but that does not mean that they dislike everybody and everything else in Texas. In fact, earlier this year, Germans voted for the German country band Texas Lightning to present their country at the Eurovision Song Contest. Besides, some Germans, who used to be prisoners of war in Texas, return for reunions, as Cuppa Politics. UPDATE: dannyandnina.com is currently offline (probably could not handle the traffic from Rocketboom), but they have a blog.
|