Lathering and grooming. About personal matters in public persons. Armin Thurnher

This column is a kind of diary. So don’t be surprised if I tell you I have to type that sentence at least twice because my new Word document, for which I’m now paying a subscription fee, isn’t as ready to be recorded as I am to start the ghost experiment: someone is typing, but the typewriter isn’t ready yet. Where do you write there? in the clouds? Not even, because the cloud was also empty. Word has a cloud storage function that makes it playable on all devices, so that I can continue writing what I started on my cell phone on the computer if I remember something about it at the supermarket.

For example, you notice in front of the milk shelf that you, as an author, react poorly to criticism. Yesterday the Kleine Zeitung published a review that was not kind to my book “Abstandslos”, which Cloud would like to turn into “Abstandslos” (I’ll take it in the next book); She introduced me personally as “Madame of the Palace” and then built her argument on the fact that I would ruin my halfway decent approaches by attacking the personal qualities of politicians.

First of all, I wonder if one, as an author, should not simply accept criticism in silence, which is undoubtedly elegant, but also borders on a humble gesture. Comments have an unjustified bad reputation. You should be happy if the books are still being reviewed at all. Art criticism – this is where I began to practice it, should I continue – endangered in the pages of the arts. that’s unfortunate. So, first of all, I am happy with said review.

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No one should attack something whose existence one feels primarily as a blessing. I don’t either, enough that I replied on Twitter. It immediately dawned on me again that almost everything that is done there has a demagogic overtone, it forms small general groups, creates factions, seems to beg for approval, or does.

I don’t follow this path either. I’m just addressing one question raised in this review: whether it’s legal to criticize people for their appearance. Of course, this wouldn’t be the case if the goal was to make fun of them for their flaws, handicaps, or disabilities.

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However, one should be able to talk about physical and psychological problems, especially those experienced by people who work in public, albeit in as fair a manner as possible. Should we not speak of Hans-Peter Doskozil’s speech being hampered by a disease of the larynx, when the voice is an indispensable tool for a political speaker? He will always judge the leader of a political party by his ability to speak publicly. One could point to the ruthless, courageous, and self-pitying anguish in which Doskozil defends himself against his illness. And they are also qualities for which an unsecured audience can give him credit, because, unlike a damaged voice and a penchant for intrigue, they in turn qualify him as commander in chief.

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It’s not easy. Speech bans don’t help. In no way did I let myself into my book when I agreed to include the personal traits of Sebastian Kurtz and Wolfgang Sobotka in the critical description. There are hardly two people, each in their own devious way, who have made an already exalted personal ego a part of their public personas as these two. Kurtz’s hairstyle, pointed out by the reviewer, was not a character trait, like that of a boy who could not be styled pretty or neat enough and was thus bullied by his fierce classmates. It was an emblem for his son-in-law, painstakingly designed and photographed according to precise instructions. The process was called “grooming” in short circuits and cost time and money.

We don’t encounter natural events when we look at government agencies. The word “state representative” originally denoted a civil servant, became an honorific word under the Nazis and changed again after 1945. As far as I know, Karl-Heinz Bohrer and other authors of Merkur put a new spin on it, writing about the aesthetics of the state (which they bemoaned In Cole’s era) and emphasized that politicians need acting skills, and that they are also part of their job. The same applies to the mask and costume.

From my early theatrical years I could say that the nature of theatrical people does not consist in the art of disguise. Rather, they can only express something if they themselves represent (or represent, one might say) something.

Personally, I preferred not to be discreet except when writing my book.

Anyone who has been fooled by Kurz & So for years can (and still is) feel some anger (!) and make it felt in literature, I guess. I slacked off, I thought the others found it exuberant.

Keep calm like me!

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By the way, I am of the opinion that the government should save the Wiener Zeitung.

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Incidentally, I’ve paraphrased my enduring epidemiological conclusion in the sense of mask condition (native speakers from all countries, work it out!):

Distance preferred, hands when possible, masks when needed, always think! Your Armin Thrunher

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