Thomas Gottschalk is and remains the grand master of cringe

I have to ask for your indulgence, I’m not back on the dam yet – I was badly hit at the weekend, but it’s my own fault. I know that things like this always hit me in the face. The lady of the house has a certain weakness for old-fashioned TV event shows, it’s probably an escapism/nostalgia thing, but of course things like that backfire mercilessly today.

Recently, out of an old connection – which I actually feel for Thomas Gottschalk since I was a die-hard fan of his “radio show” in the 80s and learned parts of my pop music and humorous socialization from him – for the last “Wetten Dass” again Linear television turned on. And Gottschalk was already the grand master of cringe, when the word probably didn’t even exist in English, but did one have to be prepared for such carnage?

Instead of him playing it safe with Peter Maffay and, what do I know, Francis Rossi sitting on the couch, it has to be a small war with Shirin David! And in the end it’s the Woken’s fault that he doesn’t want to moderate anymore. Oh Lordy! I didn’t follow the public television thing from the beginning, but this “farewell speech” must have been one of its lowest points, including the black and white era.

Nothing is impossible in the dream factory of television

Then you naively think that it couldn’t be more embarrassing… And now at the weekend – just take a look at the beginning! – the “A Heart for Children” gala, moderated by Johannes B. Kerner, who is actually still alive and right at the beginning greets the “prominent” guests who will then be on the donation phone. I was just standing in the kitchen when my son came running: “Markus Söder and Christian Lindner just came in!”

Dude, you wretch, you’re about to get a slap in the face for frightening dad like that! But of course it’s true. Nothing is impossible in the dream factory of television, and so not only is a “lousy little guy” (Harald Schmidt) like Oliver Pocher artificially kept alive in the media, but Markus Söder (!) and Christian Lindner (!!) are allowed on the glittering Saturday evening On ZDF they feign a “heart for children” and collect 17 Mark 80 on the phone “to make the world a little better” (Kerner), before they continue to agitate against the increase in citizens’ money as a black-yellow shadow coalition at work on Monday . “Save” a few billion more on basic child benefits.

As Wolfgang Ambros once sang: “If you don’t feel sick today, you can be okay.” And look S: I even got sick about it, even though we switched off the mess after 20 minutes and watched a few more episodes of “The Munsters” to calm my brain. have looked.

PS: By the way, my son is also against the debt brake since he heard that fewer new chip factories are being built in Germany because of it.