Better than a sex scandal? If the German defense minister had slept with someone inappropriate, say a party girl who was also having an affair with someone at the Russian embassy and we were in the middle of the Cold War, that would have made for fast news. As it turns out, he just forged his dissertation. Seems awfully pedantic
But wait....
Sex scandals have become blasé, Europeans have gone out of their way to demonstrate that they will tolerate most adult screwing around, so long as it is not linked to nuclear war, even indirectly.
German newspapers do not want to let this scandal slide. They are doing a far better job at hammering Guttenberg than the SPD, Greens, or the rest of the left. You sense that journalists are a touchy lot when comes to plagiarism, that perhaps they do not appreciate having their labor stolen. They can criticize Guttenberg unrelentingly about academic cheating in a way that they never would have if he had been caught in bed with someone other than his wife. For romance or just plain sex, you have to display worldly understanding. But for systematically copying other people's intellectual labor, there is no limit to how much you can criticize. Stupidity, especially in the powerful, is fair game; much more so than mere lust.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung complains that Guttenberg's off-handed dismissal of his own misdeeds displays a new disdain for academia.
Yet on the other hand, up until a very short while ago, Guttenberg felt the need to add the DR. title to his name, for in Germany PhDs have long been considered a necessary attribute in order to be taken seriously in public. Those long winded round-table discussions about politics on German TV have a gravity unseen here. Guttenberg wanted to be accepted as a heavy, as an expert in political history, someone who could make pronouncements on the future of Europe.
So if anything, the urge to plagiarize demonstrates the perceived need to look educated. Only after the ruse has failed, do Guttenberg's defenders pretend that university degrees really are not so important for getting things done in politics. You could say that American conservatives have long had a such disregard for education, their own and society's.
I hadn't heard about this, Dan, but think you are correct to point out that, for Americans, having a PhD just means being an egg-head and not having an advanced degree is almost a badge of honor: it means you were never tainted by association with the super-elitist tenured radicals.
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