"The end of white man civilization"

American leaders have long been subjects of grandiloquent insult from various adversarial parts of the world, for instance the Middle East and Eastern Europe. From the latter, it is a tradition that extends far back into the Cold War. More recently, there was this infamous line describing Condaleeza Rice in the Pravda editorial, Bush, Cheney and Rice; Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels :

She is a cheap, dimwitted guttersnipe, an apology for a lady and a human being and wholly unfit to hold the office and serve her country, both of which her very presence insults.

But now we have elected officials in Poland bringing the sport to new levels of outrage...

Barack Obama’s grandfather ate Polish missionary, ministers in Poland joke

A political scandal is gathering pace in Poland. Officials of the Polish administration are accused of releasing racist statements against US President-elect Barack Obama. Poland’s large opposition party Right and Justice said that the remarks had been voiced by the Polish Foreign Affairs Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, the Dziennik newspaper wrote.

“Why does Barack Obama have Polish roots? Because his grandfather ate a Polish missionary.” This is the joke that Sikorski supposedly distributed in his ministry. The minister, the newspaper wrote, explained afterwards that he had heard the joke from someone else. However, Witold Waszczykowski a spokesman for the National Security Bureau, confirmed that he had heard the joke from Sikorski and added that he would be ready to testify at court.

The head of another opposition party of Poland, The Union of Leftist Democrats, Wojciech Olejniczak, said that he had heard Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of Right and Justice, telling the same joke, Newsru.us says.

In addition, Artur Gurski, a spokesman for Right and Justice, stated last week at the Polish parliament that the election of Barack Obama would “mark the end of the white man civilization.” Spokespeople for the Social and Democratic Party of Poland filed a legal complaint in connection with Gurski’s racist remarks, which, as they said, dishonored the Polish administration. If convicted, the deputy can be sentenced to up to three years in prison.

It is worthy of note that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was also involved in a racist scandal connected with Obama. He described the former Illinois Senator as a handsome and tanned young man. Berlusconi was harshly criticized for those remarks, but he said that it was only a cute compliment that he made for Obama.

"Why are they taking it as something negative? If they have no sense of humour, worse for them," he said. Later, he told Sky TV-24 Ore that his comments were meant to be "cute" and bashed those who disagreed, saying they are "imbeciles, of which there are too many."