A Subjective Comparison Of Germany And The United States

Mentalities
If I had to boil it down to a word or two, I'd say naive optimism characterizes the American mentality and deliberate, hesitant pessimism the German one. This is a crass simplification and does not mean that most or even many of the people share those characteristics; it just means that, assuming these mentalities, it is possible to explain many of the differences between the two countries, such as the much higher crime rate in the US, the higher need for security and lower degree of mobility in Germany, the much lower birth rate in Germany, and the higher level of friendliness in the US.

Violence and Aggression
From the outside, the USA look like a terribly violent and aggressive country. Virtually all you hear about the US has something to do with violence: extremely high crime rate, violent movies, death penalty, right to bear arms, bombing of selected third world countries...

Once one enters the country, a couple of items can be added to this list: the news coverage focuses a lot on violence, the violent horror movies in the video stores are openly visible to kids (they are not placed in the adult section together with porn movies as in Germany), extremely harsh punishing even of non-violent criminals (including the recently revived chain gangs in some states), and violent TV cartoons for small kids on Saturday mornings. Generally, Americans have a much higher tolerance for violence in the media (and a much lower tolerance for sex) than Germans. To me, this is perplexing, since America's violence problems seem to be much more severe than Germany's sex problems.

A peculiar type of violence, school kids shooting around in schools, is not that uncommon in the US and is very interesting mainly because it seems so puzzling to Americans. Every outside observer immediately concludes that media and video games glorifying violence together with easy availability of guns and adolescent's common psychological problems provide a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. Americans cannot reach this conclusion however because the right to bear arms and the right to free speech are considered sacred. So all they are left with is "these are bad kids", and you actually hear people say that.

Somewhat paradoxically, everyday life is a lot less aggressive in the US than it is in Germany. People are generally more polite and friendly. Phrases like "please", "thank you", "excuse me" and "you are welcome" are a lot more common in the US. It happens all the time that a nice girl that you have never met before smiles at you for no apparent reason. (In Germany, they do it only if they have a very good reason, which means that you're in business.) If you wait in line in an American supermarket, you don't have to constantly watch out for people who try to slip in in front of you.

Traffic is much more relaxed in the states, very unlike the all-out war going on on German streets and highways, with tail gating and drivers cutting you off. People in the US actually drive slowly and cautiously, even though virtually everyone can get a driver's license at age 16 after taking a trivial test. Germany requires months of expensive training and a difficult test, but people still don't understand the concept of defensive driving.

The higher friendliness in the US is often noticed by German travelers, who will typically then add "but people are terribly superficial". There may be some truth to that, but a lot of it is just a consequence of faulty translations. Words describing emotional states are generally used much more liberally in the US than in Germany and common dictionary translations are often wrong. People will call you a "friend" if you have had a nice 15 minute talk with them; the German "Freund" is only used for someone that you have known for a long time and are emotionally close to. Similarly for words like "hate" or "love".

The American friendliness is fragile however and is mixed with a strange moralistic streak: if somebody does something considered morally wrong, the normal sympathy and empathy is immediately and utterly withdrawn and exchanged with heart-felt condemnation.

Even though the overall crime rate is much higher in the US than in Germany, low-level "nuisance crimes" such as pick-pocketing, car vandalism and bicycle theft are much rarer. Americans are generally trusting and it is quite common that they leave their house entrance doors unlocked during the day, something Germans never do, except in the countryside. Germans like their front doors to be massive, while American doors normally can be broken in with modest force.

Like most things, crime is more evenly distributed in Germany than it is in the US. The higher American crime rate is mainly due to inner city pockets of gang violence; outside these pockets, life is just as safe as in Germany.

In Germany, there are violent clashes between opposing soccer fans and police almost every weekend. This does not happen in the US.

Maybe a more descriptive term than "impolite" for the typical German is "anal-retentive". If you're short a couple of pennies when paying at a supermarket checkout, they will make you search, with the line waiting behind you. Little "give a penny/ take a penny" baskets don't exist there, and the concept goes against everything a German believes in. Everything has to go by the book, and Germans like to be right. No doubt, Americans are more relaxed.

It seems that there is a lot of tension and aggression buried in the average German, maybe as a result of the much higher population density. The level of friendliness, relaxedness and unaggressiveness seems to be higher on the West coast of the states and lowest in the big "quasi-European" cities of the East.

Comparing the political debates in the two countries is rather illuminating. The speeches of German politicians are generally less controversial, more inclusive and often hint at compromises. (They are also more substantial.) By contrast, politicians in the US have no problem talking about an outright "cultural war" (between the left and the right) and regularly accuse their opponents of everything from stupidity to adultery. But when it comes to physical political violence, Germany is far ahead. If a leading politician gives a speech in the open, he can expect having foul eggs thrown at him. People will shout and whistle in order to disrupt the speech. None of that ever happens in the US. The president can actually give a speech at a university and everyone will be polite and listen -- a very strange concept for German students. This is even more astounding if one takes into account that the difference in viewpoints between the Left and the Right in Germany is much smaller than that between the Left and the Right in the US.

Political demonstrations, smaller and rarer in the US than in Germany, are also a lot less violent. Politically motivated riots, which happen regularly in Germany, are rare in America. This is probably because young people tend to be more political in Germany, and kicking the butt of a policeman is still the easiest way to fight the system.

The logical next step is then political terrorism, which in Germany exists both on the left and on the right but is (at least in its organized form) almost unheard of in the US. It fits the picture that the terrorism that the US sees either comes from foreign countries or is the deed of fringe individualists.

Annoying Customs and Miscellanea

A couple of things I find annoying in the two countries:


* In Germany, most public spaces, restaurants, and offices are full of smoke. People habitually throw cigarette butts on the ground.

* In German restaurants, asking for free water with your food is frowned upon and uncommon.

* In Germany, when you have eaten in a restaurant, taking the leftovers with you is typically frowned upon; they are thrown away. In the US, it is customary to ask for a box.

* US restaurants usually stop serving food at 10pm, some already at 9pm (except junk food joints). In Germany you can eat till midnight.

* In the US, when you enter a restaurant, you have to wait for a waiter to seat you; generally you cannot freely choose your table. In Germany, you just sit down wherever you want.

* In the US, foods are often served in a way which makes it impossible to eat them in a civilized manner, for instance tremendously huge hamburgers or too long French fries.

* Waiters in US restaurants have a habit of coming to your table while you are eating or while you are talking, interrupt you and ask "Is everything OK?". Sometimes they even try to start a fake conversation.

* Bottles with crown caps in the US can always be opened without a bottle opener, by simply turning the cap. In Germany, you need a bottle opener.

* In Germany, there are almost no motels, and there are very few cheap ways to spend a night, especially close to the highways.

* In Germany, TV shows start at varying, strange times. In the US, all shows on all channels always start on the full hour.

* The US uses absolutely brain-dead bank notes: all denominations have the same size, feel and color. Furthermore, the largest denomination is only $100.

* German dog owners almost never collect their dog's feces. In the US, most cities require this and most dog owners do it.
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In German cinemas, you have to endure a much longer barrage of commercials.

* German jelly donuts contain a lot less jelly than American ones.

* In the US, you can open beer bottles without a bottle opener, by turning the lid. Not possible in Germany.

* In the US, apartments or houses for rent or sale are commonly advertised with a large sign in front of the house. In Germany this isn't done: you have to find the address from ads in newspapers or from real estate agents, which is annoying.

* Most US bookstores have coffee shops and armchairs and are open till 11 pm, also on the weekends. Most German ones discourage browsing, don't offer coffee and close at 8 pm, and don't open at all on Sundays.

* Cheerleaders, high school girls cheering and dancing in short dresses for the boys' sport teams, actually do exist in the US. I had always thought they only exist on TV, just like the laughter in the background of soap operas. But no: girls actually do want to be cheerleaders. To Germans, the whole setup is ridiculous, sexist, and degrading.

* In the US, prices are always stated without sales tax, so you never know in advance how much you actually have to pay.

* Americans have a strange obsession with the points of the compass. Frequently inside a building you will find signs like "This elevator is out of order. Please use the one on the North side of the building." How am I supposed to know where North is? Why can't they just tell me where the elevator is?

* By contrast, German highway signs are unusable for foreigners (and many Germans) since they eschew points of the compass completely. In order to navigate on German Autobahnen, you need to know the relative locations of all cities in Germany. The signs won't say "B1 East" and "B1 West", but instead "B1 Richtung Bochum" and "B1 Richtung Unna" and you are supposed to know that Unna is East of Bochum.

* Worse, highway intersections in Germany use an utterly braindead and dangerous layout where the cars that are slowing down and leaving a highway have to share a stretch of road with those speeding up and joining the highway. I don't think that system is in use anywhere else.

Some miscellaneous differences:


* To get satellite TV in Germany, you buy an antenna and receiver and then you can watch for free; in the US, you sign a contract, get antenna, receiver and decoder for free, and pay a monthly fee for the content (which is encoded).

* To call a cell phone in Germany, you pay a high per-minute fee; in the US the callee pays.

* In the US, you pay income taxes to the federal government and separately to your home state; in Germany only the federal government collects income taxes.

* When you rent an apartment in the US, the stove and fridge is normally included; in Germany you typically have to bring your own.

* In the US, credit cards have a real credit line: you can pay back the balance at your own pace; in Germany, credit cards suck the full balance out of your bank account at the end of every month. German bank accounts come with a standard credit line: you can simply overdraw them; this is comparatively rare in the US.

* If a German is abducted in some foreign country, German diplomats will engage in negotiations and usually eventually pay some money to the kidnappers. The U.S. does not engage in such negotiations, clearly the correct strategy.

* Copyright in the U.S., for the most part, consists simply in the right to copy and/or modify a work. This right can be given up or sold off. Germany's Urheberrecht in addition gives several "moral" rights to the creator which cannot be sold or given up, for instance the right to just compensation for every copy and the right to veto changes to the work.

* Germans think that natural yellow egg yolk looks "unhealthy" and pale and prefer their egg yolk orange, which is why German farmers feed their chickens organge pigments.

* What is called "erste Etage" in Germany is called "second floor" in the US.

* Graffiti is of higher quality and more colorful in Germany, where it is sometimes viewed as approaching an art form; in the US it mostly consists of simple taggings and is almost always seen as a law enforcement problem.

* Soccer is seen as a men's sport in Germany and as a women's sport in the US.

* In Germany, if they see police, people often think something is wrong; in the U.S., if they see police, people usually feel safe.

Influence of Religion

In Germany, state and church are closely related, in a manner which must seem appalling to most Americans who believe in the complete separation of church and state. The "Konkordat", a contract entered into by Hitler and the Vatican in 1933 (Hitler offered it to have the church keep quiet about the Holocaust, and it worked out rather well), as well as "Kirchenvertraege" with the Evangelical Church mandate that churches get to teach religion in public schools, that the state collects church dues in the form of "church taxes", and that churches get access to public universities in order to train their clergy. Most of the German holidays are religious. Blasphemy, "if capable of jeopardizing public peace", is a punishable crime. The biggest German party is called "Christian-Democratic Union".

All this has surprisingly little effect though; the Christian churches have far less influence on public life in Germany than in the US and are rapidly losing members. (Only Catholicism in Bavaria is a holdout.) The main reason is that the overall degree of religiosity in the population is much lower. In the US, many people actually go to church every Sunday, something mostly reserved for lonely elderly women in Germany. The proportion of people believing in God is higher in the US than in any other industrialized country. In Germany, people will laugh at you if you tell them that you literally believe the fairy tales of the Bible; only some sort of "abstract religiosity" or better still "spirituality" is acceptable. A shocking eye-opener for me was when I overheard two young women, maybe 20 years old, at the next table in a coffee shop, eagerly discussing the subtleties of a Bible story! In the US, there are many people who believe what the Bible says word for word, and they are not ashamed to say so. This may be an instance of a more general fact: Germans are a lot more skeptical and critical than Americans. Four little examples:

* Many people in the US believe in UFO abductions.

* Americans will happily apply a chemical bug spray in their kitchen as long as it says "safe for humans" on the label.

* Americans believe that they have "saved" money if they buy something for $50 which has a crossed-out label of $100 attached to it.

* People actually send loads of money to Christian faith healers who stage the most ridiculous of TV shows.

In Germany, the Catholic Church is generally considered to be more conservative than the protestant churches in social and political issues; the situation in the US is opposite. People on the "religious right", a large and influential movement populated mostly by white protestants, are vehemently opposed to abortion (several abortion doctors have been killed by people on the fringes), believe in the literal truth of the Bible to the extend of opposing Darwinism (these people are called "creationists", a word that doesn't even exist in German nor would it be needed), oppose premarital sex, and call homosexuality a sinful choice. These same people also enthusiastically embrace the death penalty, private ownership of guns, military spending and lower taxes, without even noticing a contradiction to the Christian message of "Don't judge, live poor, love your enemies".

A number of US states still have laws on the books prohibiting atheists from holding public office. (These laws are not enforced.)

The bigot Christian influence can be felt throughout American life: no swearing on radio or TV is allowed (it is rather ironic to hear a beep whenever someone tried to say "fuck", especially in a country which prides itself in strong opposition to censorship), no nudity whatsoever on TV either, and no substantial sex education in the schools (resulting in the highest teen pregnancy rate of the developed world). The media discuss the whole topic of sex only in the context of crime or disease: there is a huge obsession with child molestation, rape, sexual harassment, AIDS etc.; Hollywood rarely shows sex in love movies but almost exclusively in "erotic thrillers", films which intimately link sex to some crime. Crimes involving sex generally carry higher penalties than non-sexual crimes. Many states publish name, offense, photo and address of past sex offenders on the internet; these laws do not apply to murderers or other violent criminals. The advertised cure for AIDS is abstinence; ads favoring condom use cannot be shown on national broadcast TV and a broad condom promotion billboard campaign by the government as in Germany is unthinkable. It is also more difficult to buy condoms in the US; they are not available in most public restrooms as in Germany. Even in swinger clubs, condom use is not consistent in the US. Public nudity at nudist beaches or in co-ed saunas (as in every medium sized German town) is extremely rare; even in saunas Americans are typically not nude. Women are not allowed to go topless at public beaches. Life sex acts cannot be shown in sex theaters. Anal or oral sex, even between married adults, are illegal in several US states; while these laws are almost never enforced, no lawmaker would dare to attempt to change them (the Supreme Court finally struck down all these laws in 2003). Some southern states in the US even prohibit the sale of vibrators. Topics like legalization of prostitution are utterly unmentionable.

The word "rape" is used in a much broader sense than the common German dictionary translation "Vergewaltigung". The latter means "using physical force to achieve intercourse", while "rape" is nowadays often used in America in the sense of "an unpleasant sexual experience that was later regretted by one party".

Still, the matter is not completely black-and-white; the American puritanism often only covers the surface. While it is legal in the US to display hard core pornography on Internet web sites open to all, this is not allowed in Germany. Similarly, sex magazines that can be bought at regular newsstands are harder in the US than in Germany; in the US, satellite hard core porn channels can be ordered and this is not possible in Germany. There is no radio program in Germany as graphic as Howard Stern. There are certainly more strip clubs in the US than in Germany (a consequence of the higher taboo surrounding public nudity). The sexual revolution began in America, America initiated the mainstreaming of pornography, and today the US porn industry feeds the whole world and is comparable in size to Hollywood. Abortion regulations are more liberal in the US than in Germany. Many of these freedoms come courtesy of the Supreme Court, which is very powerful and quite liberal on some topics. Indeed, throughout history, lots of progressive changes in US legislation can be traced back to Supreme Court decisions; legislatures are often too scared for bold moves.

It is also my impression that the atmosphere at US colleges is more sexually charged (clothing, flirting, partying etc.) than that at German universities. This however could have something to do with the fact that American students are on average a couple of years younger than German ones.

In Germany, there's a general ban on working on Sundays and holidays, with a number of specific exceptions. This ban is supported by the churches: after all, it's the content of the third (or fourth, depending on who you ask) of the Ten Commandments. The Verfassungsgericht upheld the ban, pointing to the important spiritual content of Sundays. In the US, Sunday work is legal and very common, and Christians don't make an issue of it. God's Commandments are seemingly less important if we're talking business.

Another strange contradiction given the strong religious base is the enthusiastic embrace of exotic reproduction techniques and genetic modification in the US. Research on human embryos and human cloning is legal in the US (but not funded by the federal government) and illegal in Germany, as are rent-a-womb arrangements where a woman carries the fetus of another couple. Sperm banks which sell sperm based on the donor's features also don't exist in Germany.

A Subjective Comparison Of Germany And The United States

Influence of Religion

In Germany, state and church are closely related, in a manner which must seem appalling to most Americans who believe in the complete separation of church and state. The "Konkordat", a contract entered into by Hitler and the Vatican in 1933 (Hitler offered it to have the church keep quiet about the Holocaust, and it worked out rather well), as well as "Kirchenvertraege" with the Evangelical Church mandate that churches get to teach religion in public schools, that the state collects church dues in the form of "church taxes", and that churches get access to public universities in order to train their clergy. Most of the German holidays are religious. Blasphemy, "if capable of jeopardizing public peace", is a punishable crime. The biggest German party is called "Christian-Democratic Union".

All this has surprisingly little effect though; the Christian churches have far less influence on public life in Germany than in the US and are rapidly losing members. (Only Catholicism in Bavaria is a holdout.) The main reason is that the overall degree of religiosity in the population is much lower. In the US, many people actually go to church every Sunday, something mostly reserved for lonely elderly women in Germany. The proportion of people believing in God is higher in the US than in any other industrialized country. In Germany, people will laugh at you if you tell them that you literally believe the fairy tales of the Bible; only some sort of "abstract religiosity" or better still "spirituality" is acceptable. A shocking eye-opener for me was when I overheard two young women, maybe 20 years old, at the next table in a coffee shop, eagerly discussing the subtleties of a Bible story! In the US, there are many people who believe what the Bible says word for word, and they are not ashamed to say so. This may be an instance of a more general fact: Germans are a lot more skeptical and critical than Americans. Four little examples:

* Many people in the US believe in UFO abductions.

* Americans will happily apply a chemical bug spray in their kitchen as long as it says "safe for humans" on the label.

* Americans believe that they have "saved" money if they buy something for $50 which has a crossed-out label of $100 attached to it.

* People actually send loads of money to Christian faith healers who stage the most ridiculous of TV shows.

In Germany, the Catholic Church is generally considered to be more conservative than the protestant churches in social and political issues; the situation in the US is opposite. People on the "religious right", a large and influential movement populated mostly by white protestants, are vehemently opposed to abortion (several abortion doctors have been killed by people on the fringes), believe in the literal truth of the Bible to the extend of opposing Darwinism (these people are called "creationists", a word that doesn't even exist in German nor would it be needed), oppose premarital sex, and call homosexuality a sinful choice. These same people also enthusiastically embrace the death penalty, private ownership of guns, military spending and lower taxes, without even noticing a contradiction to the Christian message of "Don't judge, live poor, love your enemies".

A number of US states still have laws on the books prohibiting atheists from holding public office. (These laws are not enforced.)

The bigot Christian influence can be felt throughout American life: no swearing on radio or TV is allowed (it is rather ironic to hear a beep whenever someone tried to say "fuck", especially in a country which prides itself in strong opposition to censorship), no nudity whatsoever on TV either, and no substantial sex education in the schools (resulting in the highest teen pregnancy rate of the developed world). The media discuss the whole topic of sex only in the context of crime or disease: there is a huge obsession with child molestation, rape, sexual harassment, AIDS etc.; Hollywood rarely shows sex in love movies but almost exclusively in "erotic thrillers", films which intimately link sex to some crime. Crimes involving sex generally carry higher penalties than non-sexual crimes. Many states publish name, offense, photo and address of past sex offenders on the internet; these laws do not apply to murderers or other violent criminals. The advertised cure for AIDS is abstinence; ads favoring condom use cannot be shown on national broadcast TV and a broad condom promotion billboard campaign by the government as in Germany is unthinkable. It is also more difficult to buy condoms in the US; they are not available in most public restrooms as in Germany. Even in swinger clubs, condom use is not consistent in the US. Public nudity at nudist beaches or in co-ed saunas (as in every medium sized German town) is extremely rare; even in saunas Americans are typically not nude. Women are not allowed to go topless at public beaches. Life sex acts cannot be shown in sex theaters. Anal or oral sex, even between married adults, are illegal in several US states; while these laws are almost never enforced, no lawmaker would dare to attempt to change them (the Supreme Court finally struck down all these laws in 2003). Some southern states in the US even prohibit the sale of vibrators. Topics like legalization of prostitution are utterly unmentionable.

The word "rape" is used in a much broader sense than the common German dictionary translation "Vergewaltigung". The latter means "using physical force to achieve intercourse", while "rape" is nowadays often used in America in the sense of "an unpleasant sexual experience that was later regretted by one party".

Still, the matter is not completely black-and-white; the American puritanism often only covers the surface. While it is legal in the US to display hard core pornography on Internet web sites open to all, this is not allowed in Germany. Similarly, sex magazines that can be bought at regular newsstands are harder in the US than in Germany; in the US, satellite hard core porn channels can be ordered and this is not possible in Germany. There is no radio program in Germany as graphic as Howard Stern. There are certainly more strip clubs in the US than in Germany (a consequence of the higher taboo surrounding public nudity). The sexual revolution began in America, America initiated the mainstreaming of pornography, and today the US porn industry feeds the whole world and is comparable in size to Hollywood. Abortion regulations are more liberal in the US than in Germany. Many of these freedoms come courtesy of the Supreme Court, which is very powerful and quite liberal on some topics. Indeed, throughout history, lots of progressive changes in US legislation can be traced back to Supreme Court decisions; legislatures are often too scared for bold moves.

It is also my impression that the atmosphere at US colleges is more sexually charged (clothing, flirting, partying etc.) than that at German universities. This however could have something to do with the fact that American students are on average a couple of years younger than German ones.

In Germany, there's a general ban on working on Sundays and holidays, with a number of specific exceptions. This ban is supported by the churches: after all, it's the content of the third (or fourth, depending on who you ask) of the Ten Commandments. The Verfassungsgericht upheld the ban, pointing to the important spiritual content of Sundays. In the US, Sunday work is legal and very common, and Christians don't make an issue of it. God's Commandments are seemingly less important if we're talking business.

Another strange contradiction given the strong religious base is the enthusiastic embrace of exotic reproduction techniques and genetic modification in the US. Research on human embryos and human cloning is legal in the US (but not funded by the federal government) and illegal in Germany, as are rent-a-womb arrangements where a woman carries the fetus of another couple. Sperm banks which sell sperm based on the donor's features also don't exist in Germany.

I am swearing at the German politicians and their lackeys from the German industry (Siemens etc.)
These people are extremely annoying to me and they deserve punishment.

RED ARMY FRACTION

Red Army Fraction Insignia - a Red Star and a Heckler & Koch MP5


The Red Army Faction (or Red Army Fraction; also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group [or Gang]; in German: Rote Armee Fraktion or simply RAF), was postwar West Germany's most active and prominent left-wing terrorist organization; it described itself as a communist "urban guerrilla" group. The RAF was formally founded in 1970 by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, Ulrike Meinhof, Irmgard Möller and others.

The Red Army Faction operated from the 1970s to 1998, committing numerous crimes, especially in the autumn of 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as "German Autumn". It was responsible for 34 murders—including many secondary targets such as chauffeurs and bodyguards– and many injuries in its almost 30 years of existence.

Background

The origins of the group can be traced back to the West German student protest movement in the late 1960s. Peaceful protests turned into riots on June 2, 1967, when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Persia, visited West Berlin. After a day of violent protests by exiled Persians, a group widely supported by German students, the Shah visited the Berlin Opera, where a crowd of student protesters gathered. During the opera house demonstrations, a German student Benno Ohnesorg—who was attending his first protest—was fatally shot by the West German police.

Along with perceptions of state and police brutality, and widespread opposition to the Vietnam War, Ohnesorg's death galvanized many young Germans, and became a rallying point for the West German New Left. It influenced the creation of the Movement 2 June, a militant-Anarchist group which took its name from the date of Ohnesorg's death. It also brought Thorwald Proll, Horst Söhnlein, Gudrun Ensslin, and Andreas Baader together, in a loose group which decided to set fire to several German department stores as a protest against the Vietnam war. They were arrested in Frankfurt on April 2, 1968; while the four defendants were on trial, the journalist Ulrike Meinhof published several sympathetic articles in the political magazine konkret.

Meanwhile, on April 11, 1968, Rudi Dutschke, the leading intellect and spokesman for the student protests, was shot in the head. Although badly injured, he was able to return to political activism until his death in 1979, a late consequence of his injuries. The attacker was Josef Bachmann, an unskilled worker.

The student New Left considered the tabloid new