Eideard

He does the tears as well as anyone in Congress

Christian von Boetticher, 40, the successful state legislator at the top of the Christian Democratic Union’s ticket in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, resigned as head of the party there during a tearful news conference on Sunday. He admitted to the affair with a 16-year-old girl, which was legal under German law, and to making a misjudgment, but insisted that he had nothing to be ashamed of because it was “a very unusual love.”

It is also an unusual scandal — not only because of the girl’s age, which was at the border of permissible and punishable, but also because of the role played by the social networking site.

In some ways, the fact of her youth was less strange to conservative voters and colleagues “than that a grown man with more important things to do would spend so much time playing around on this network with nothing better to do than trade messages with a young girl,” said Rudolf Kötter, director of the Center for Advanced Ethics and Science Communications at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Long before news of the affair became public, colleagues expressed concerns that Mr. Boetticher dallied on the site too much, sharing information about his social life in status updates the party might have preferred remained private.

He posted about polo parties and expensive bottles of Brunello di Montalcino wine he had just opened. Der Spiegel magazine reported that he had skipped a political discussion to watch a lunar eclipse, then posted about it on his wall…

According to Mr. Boetticher, the girl’s parents as well as his friends knew about the relationship. The girl, now 17, who has not been named, defended her former lover in newspaper interviews…But she probably also embarrassed him as she described the hundreds of Facebook and text messages he sent her before that first meeting, not to mention the fact that they spent two straight days in the Steigenberger Hotel in Düsseldorf, having sex the first time they met face to face…

In the Berliner Zeitung, the columnist Jutta Kramm expressed surprise that Mr. Boetticher thought it necessary to step down over the affair, which she described as a very American phenomenon. American morals are often viewed with indulgent condescension here in Germany, where nude sunbathing and explicit sexual scenes on public television are widely considered normal.

“Extramarital affairs, illegitimate children, first and second wives or husbands, libidinous escapades or particular sexual preferences indeed may provide fodder for rumors and offer excellent material for gossip and scandal but they have almost never been a reason to resign,” Ms. Kramm wrote.

Perhaps Christian conservatives in Germany are making ready to imitate their distant cousins in the United States. Would you be surprised if our conservatives’ holier-than-thou hypocrisy became an export commodity?

Green Party supporters celebrate in Bremen
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Angela Merkel has been dealt another blow after support for her Christian Democratic Union party plunged once again – this time at regional elections in Bremen.

For the first time in state elections, the Green party won more votes than the CDU, capturing almost 23% of the vote on Sunday, according to an exit poll from German state television ARD. The Green surge, if confirmed by final results, means the party will continue to rule in coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), who have been in charge of the north German city for 66 years.

While the Greens’ victory in the smallest of Germany’s 16 states will not directly affect the chancellor’s hold on the federal government, it is another symbolic black eye for Merkel and her party.

In Baden-Württemberg’s state election in March, the Christian Democrats were voted out of power for the first time in five decades. The anti-nuclear Greens became the strongest party there amid concerns over Germany’s atomic future following the Fukushima plant accident in Japan. The win will mean that Germany will have its first Green governor…

Sunday’s vote in Bremen marked the first time in German history that people between 16 and 18 were allowed to vote for their state legislature. Despite that effort to boost the vote, ARD estimated a turnout of 54%, down from 57% four years earlier.

I’m not close enough the streets of Germany to hazard an educated guess on how much of the vote embraced Green ideology and platform and how much was simple rejection of what the Conservative Christians have failed to achieve, have substituted for progress. But, given the diminishing turnout, I’d tend towards the latter sociology – rather than a mandate for eco victory. Yet.