Started in September, my blog looks rather poor, only one post. Not what I imagined. Due to my master thesis which will be about Web 2.0 use of European Institutions and some other projects it is hard to keep on writing. If I post something these days it will be rather interesting links to social media and the EU or short posts.
Hope to find time to really start again soon.
I thought a lot about my first blog post: weighed different topics against each other: more personal and funny or focusing on local/global serious issues. What do readers want if I will have any at all:)?
.. started to scribble something down, erased it, in the search for the perfect topic.
Today I realized: There is none.
A good way of starting, I reckon, is just start doing it, as it is with sports or other projects and activities.
If your goal is a marathon, you have to start running, there is no perfect timing nor the „right“ route.
As I want to write in English as well as in German (my mother tongue) I know that there will be some kind of language barriers for the readers of one or the other article.
A very prominent example at the moment of how to overcome language barriers the best is the „giggle-speech“ of the Swiss Finance minister Hans-Rudolf Merz. He is stumbling across the convoluted sentence structures of bureaucracy. He is laughing because of the bureaucratic style of the speech he didn’t prepare himself.
Here you can see the video uploaded by many, but also in the YoutubeChannel of the German political magazine Der Spiegel.
With almost 300.000 hits on YouTube.com he became a star within the last days. It seems that the till now not very popular Swiss finance minister scored bigtime at the end of his political career.
Some users on Youtube wrote comments such as: Politics is human again. This is interesting and the concerned, educated, politically interested voter might utter critically: „But politics is about serious stuff. Judging a politician by its ability of making jokes – this is not helping at all. Poor uneducated masses. Poor democracy.“
Nevertheless, and this is a fact: Humor is persuading and directly encourages a feeling of sympathy! Of course politicians should be judged by their deeds and their political actions and not by their sense of humor. But a joke here and there can help to make politics human again as there is especially in the European Union a discussion going on about the dehumanification of politics and the distance between citizens and politicians.
Laughing in parliament served as a temporary solution to these issues and reconnected the citizen with politics.
What is very remarkable is that the video in German language was also very popular in the non-German speaking countries. Humor is attractive and laughing contagious:)
Here a quote from today’s blog post about the Swiss minister on the website of The Guardian.
The spectacle has been viewed by more than 300,000 people on YouTube and other websites since Monday, although most of them do not understand the language he is speaking. „I don’t understand anything, but it’s always funny,“ says a commentator.
The speech and this article made it to the World News section/Switzerland on The Guardian. Striking I think.
Not only the press, but also European organizations such as the Council of Europe promoted the speech of the Swiss Finance minister. The twitter account of the Council of Europe tweeted this:
Swiss finance minister Hans-Rudolf Merz ’s internet starring moment. http://bit.ly/dyTxqA
The bio of the Council on Europe on Twitter is very emotional and not organisation-like:
Excerpt: „[…] ensures that Europe is so much more than you think.“
Much more than you think? Yes , Europe is also about a good portion of humor! And humor is borderless! Thank god!
And so should be my blog!
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