DEREK SCALLY in Berlin
Austrian public broadcaster ORF has distanced itself from a senior commentator who suggested Barack Obama and "all blacks are not as far advanced in the civilisation process".
Klaus Emmerich, a former US correspondent and one-time editor-in-chief of ORF news, said in a discussion programme: "I don't want to let myself and the western world be directed by a black man."
The 80 year old, an institution in Austrian news circles, continued: "When I say that, it's a racist remark, correct, no question." Mr Emmerich said he "still considers the Americans racists who must be going through a really bad period to elect a black man and a black, very good-looking woman, into the White House".
"That would be like if the next chancellor [in Austria] was a Turk. That'd be something," he said.
He went on to speculate about whether Mr Obama's election marked the "retreat" of "white America".
ORF has distanced itself from Mr Emmerich's remarks and "every kind of discrimination" but has declined to end the contract of the station's leading US pundit.
Later, Mr Emmerich took an even harder line in a newspaper interview, calling Mr Obama's victory "a highly disturbing development" because "blacks are not as far advanced in the civilisation process nor in their political progress". Mr Obama, he said, possessed a "a diabolic ability to present his politics so effectively".
Poland's foreign ministry, meanwhile, has criticised an MP from the opposition Law and Justice Party (PiS) for calling Mr Obama a "black crypto-communist" and claiming his election marked the "end of the civilisation of the white man".
Artur Gorski, a little-known backbencher, went on to describe Mr Obama as "naive" and the "black messiah of the new left", and that his victory "must delight al-Qaeda".
The remarks followed Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's reference to Mr Obama last week as "handsome, young and also sun-tanned". At the weekend, France's first lady, Carla Bruni, said remarks like that made her glad to have traded her Italian citizenship after marrying French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
"When I hear Silvio Berlusconi . . . joke about the fact that Obama is 'always tanned', it feels strange to me," she told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper in an interview. "Some people will no doubt put it down to humour, but I find that I am pleased to have become French."
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/1111/1226356725629.html
