Benjamin Weinthal

Berlin
The German magazine Der Spiegel’s online edition today posted an obituary for George H.W. Bush. It was titled “The Better Bush.”  Here is a screenshot of the obituary headline and text:

In fact, George H.W. Bush is still alive.

The premature death notice was scrubbed without an explanation as to why the magazine’s New York correspondent Marc Pitzke got the story completely wrong. Here is the website announcing that Pitzke’s article can no long be found.

Pitzke and Spiegel used the false death notice to explain why Bush senior “was” a better Bush than his son, George W.

Der Spiegel has a peculiar obsession with America and the alleged decline of America.  One of its recent cover stories announced, “The American Patient: the downfall of a great nation,” with a picture of a hospitalized Uncle Sam.

It has not been a good week for Spiegel. The Simon Wiesenthal Center announced on Thursday that Spiegel’s left-wing online columnist Jakob Augstein made the 2012 list of the top 10 anti-Semites and haters of Israel. By way of background, Augstein is the son of Spiegel founder Rudolf Augstein and has blamed Israel and the U.S. Republicans for the violence in the Middle East. Augstein wrote in one column:

“The fire burns in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, in countries which are among the poorest on earth. But those who set the fires live elsewhere. Furious young people burn the American, and recently, the German flag. They, too, are victims, just like the dead at Benghazi and Sanaa. Whom does this all this violence benefit? Always the insane and unscrupulous. And this time it’s the U.S. Republicans and Israeli government.”

Benjamin Weinthal is a Berlin-based fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.