Our Intellectual and Moral Superiors!

The Germans, of course - David Medienkritik tells us a tale, entitled:

German Diplomat Describes Civil Rights in the USA as "on a par with those of North Korea"

We at Davids Medienkritik are not easily impressed by bad behavior from German elites. After all, we've seen and reported on a lot in the past. But we were simply blown-away by what we read in a recent Wall Street Journal piece by Bret Stephens:

The article, entitled, "The German Chair: A tale of torture at the hands of an America-hating diplomat", details Mr. Stephens harrowing conversation with a relatively prominent official from the German Consulate General in New York during a recent social call to his Manhattan apartment. The remarks of the German diplomat were so outrageous and over-the-top that it is difficult to understand how he received his position in the first place, even by German standards.

"....the diplomat had no patience for my small talk. Apropos of nothing, he said he had recently made a study of U.S. tax laws and concluded that practices here were inferior to those in Germany. Given recent rates of German economic growth, I found this comment odd. But I offered no rejoinder. I was, after all, a guest in his home.

The diplomat, however, was just getting started. Bad as U.S. economic policy was, it was as nothing next to our human-rights record. Had I read the recent Amnesty International report on Guantanamo? "You mean the one that compared it to the Soviet gulag?" Yes, that one. My host disagreed with it: The gulag was better than Gitmo, since at least the Stalinist system offered its victims a trial of sorts.

Nor was that all. Civil rights in the U.S., he said, were on a par with those of North Korea and rather behind what they had been in Europe in the Middle Ages. When I offered that, as a journalist, I had encountered no restrictions on press freedom, he cut me off. "That's because The Wall Street Journal takes its orders from the government."

Link here: http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/2005/06/the_german_dipl.html
Lots of ways to let the Germans know what you think of their diplomats...and them.