Society wank or: WTFBBQ, don't talk bad about my fat ass!!!11!
First post. No one cares, so moving on.

These last few months, Germany suffered from a lot of wankery indeed... but the newest affair truly takes the cake. To understand this you'll have to know that some citizens of East and West Germany don't really like each other - terms like "Ossi"/"Wessi", "Zoni" and "Besserwessi" (all derogative) are floating around; a lot of Easterners call the Westerners stuck-up and arrogant, in turn a lot of Westerners think the Easterners to be lazy idiots with one collective shared braincell, sucking out their money and living on welfare. Additionally, the upcoming elections in Saxony and Brandenburg seem to bring both a depressingly low turnout and a massive increase of votes for the left and right radicals - especially the right wing parties DVU and NPD, with up to 5-10% overall. To make it short: There's a lot of bad blood in the air.

Recently, Germany got a new Federal President. His name is Horst Koehler and he has a history of dealing with money and politics - while not being a politician per se.

Really, people should have seen it coming when his first speech to the nation contained hints about differences between East and West Germany as seen by him... but apparently they did not.

Cue to the Focus (a weekly magazine mostly known for its... hm... infotainment, let's put it this way. Not exactly Yellow Press, but not far from it). Focus wanted an interview with Koehler - and they surely got more than they bargained for, as you can see here (original interview here - I really couldn't find a decent source in english*). Summing the whole thing up: There are lasting differences between East and West Germany, differences you simply can't remove overnight.

Continue on to much asshattery - especially from the East, of course - about the fact that Koehler supposedly implicated that people from the East have no right to complain about recent political developments (especially Hartz IV - a source of much wrath among the people), seing they're "being lazy" and "not cooperative" about necessary reforms. What he *did* say is that everyone in the country - easteners as well as westerners - has to work for their success and people who don't go to elections don't really have ground to argue on.

Amusingly enough - and the real wankery in this whole affair -, the magazine was only published today, yet people complained about the interview all weekend, calling it the 'worst scandal this year' - without even having read it. Now that the magazine is published, people start to agree all of a sudden, OMGBBQ!!!!!1! Turns out Koehler didn't imply the things he was accused of, woah!

I couldn't find sources, period. WTF, German politics, do you truly have to suck so much no-one wants to talk about you?!