Old Rivals’ Tabloids Are in a World-Class Shoving Match
Things turned bitter after the chancellor’s bum appeared in the buff but quickly grew venomous with the opening of the World Cup.
There she was on Easter vacation, relaxing on the Italian coast, when strategically placed paparazzi zoomed in on German Chancellor Angela Merkel discreetly changing from her bathing suit. A fleeting flash of derriere found its way into the Sun, a British tabloid that, journalistically speaking, revels in snapping towels at the Germans.
The caption left a welt: “I’m big in Bumdestag,” a play on words referring to the German Parliament. Outraged, the German tabloid Bild, which runs plenty of naked breasts and behinds in its own pages, galloped to Merkel’s rescue: “Brits mock our chancellor. Where does this hatred come from?”
Two World Wars, to start with. The Brits refuse to let the Germans forget the past. The word “kraut” appears in tabloid stories along with headlines such as “Judgment at Nuremberg.”
With the soccer finals underway in Germany, the two nations’ newspapers are kicking, needling and shoving each other with barbs and breathless tirades. It is a raucous war of insults that would make the ink-stained ghosts of Fleet Street proud.
Nobody’s safe, not even David Beckham, the English soccer star married to former Spice Girl Victoria, a.k.a. Posh Spice. He’s classically handsome and can arc a ball like a rainbow. She hides behind sunglasses the size of satellite dishes and hoop earrings that lions, or at least small dogs, could jump through.
The other day, Bild found the couple’s weak spot by running family photos. Pictured in a pullover shirt, Beckham’s mother, Sandra, was described as having a “peasant smile.” There were inferences that two of Beckham’s sons looked like dwarfs and that Victoria was a “trophy wife.”
Beckham’s sister Joanne was extolled this way: “Oops, she is chubby. Arms, bust, bum, all very British. Joanne is the sort of girl who drinks sangria on the beach in Majorca. And after that, the first to dance on the table -- topless.”
British notebooks went aflutter; indignation rolled off the presses. “How dare the Germans attack Beck’s birds,” proclaimed the Sun. “Journalists at Bild produced their vile piece in an unsporting bid to unsettle England’s bid for World Cup glory.”
The Daily Star, fiddling with phonetics, ran the headline “Below Ze Belt.” Deciding the high road was fine in theory but not the right mettle for a journalistic fistfight, the Sun pulled out its own images. Dubbing her “The Beauty,” Victoria Beckham was pictured next to an unnamed portly Bavarian woman referred to by the paper as “Das Boot.”
The English are sensitive when it comes to soccer. Every World Cup defeat shrinks the soul -- a fate the Brits avoided Thursday with a 2-0 victory over Trinidad and Tobago. Any loss is particularly painful if Germany wins the tournament, which it has done three times compared with England’s single victory.
British fans traveling to the tournament were urged by their government not to make Nazi salutes, conjure up Winston Churchill or wax nostalgic about the Royal Air Force. No Hitler jokes. And, please, no fascist helmets.
“Well forgive me, but we did win two World Wars and halt the spread of Nazism,” went an opinion piece in the Sun. “I’m not a racist, but where is the harm in a few jokes about Germany’s disgraceful past?”
Writing in the Mirror, Brian Reade chastised his countrymen for overreacting and asked for a bit of levity: “So Beckham’s mum looks like a peasant.... Posh is a ‘trophy wife.’ ”
He added: “Our sense of superiority when it comes to the sport we invented may long ago have vanished, but let’s hang on to our sense of humor, eh?”
Times staff writer Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report.
