Reports Suggest "Comedian" Politician is Actually Not Funny

As we've just said, we love funny, and are grown-up and cynical enough to know that the true essence of humor is the callous ridiculing of other people's pain and suffering, with a bit of irony tossed in for good measure. So when we heard that a youthful leftist parliamentarian had been caught on tape making a Holocaust joke while attending one of last week's anti-Nazi demonstrations, we thought: this guy has got to be pretty funny. Unfortunately, after doing a little research on the joke and joker in question, we're still trying to figure out the punch line.

The boner in question was popped by one János Zuschlag, a 27-year-old Socialist who was elected to parliament from Bács-Kiskun county in 2002. Standing out in the cold during last Tuesday's gathering commemorating Jewish victims of WWII - the warm-up to Friday's big anti-Nazi rally - Zuschlag was having a private conversation with Gergely Arató, another young member of the Young Left (Fiatal Baloldal). Or at least Zushlag thought it was a private conversation. Instead, a cameraman from Duna TV was rolling tape. And when Arató commented on how chilly it was, and how difficult it would have been for the Jewish deportees just to deal with the cold, Zuschlag cracked up and pointed out that, on the contrary, it wasn't cold for them anymore.

The media and the country's right-thinking politicians, pundits and NGO-types immediately grabbed onto Zuschlag's ugly boner, with even members of the right-wing opposition, not totally unfamiliar with a bit of Jew-baiting themselves, taking turns giving it a yank. The high tone of the debate was underscored by the insistence of Fidesz hack Péter Harrach that joking at the expense of Holocaust victims was something that simply could not just be let go. (Not like scoring a cheap political point at the expense of someone caught making a joke at the expense of Holocaust victims.) In the end, the young boy wonder was forced to resign his seat, and forego all severance pay.

While Hungary's chattering classes have already moved on to the next scandal-of-the-minute (and Zuschlag gets busy planning his return in the 2006 elections) we are still trying to makes heads or tails of the gag in question. Á, nekik már nem volt hideg does literally mean "on the contrary, they are not cold anymore." But is this because they are dead, or in hell, or what? Put it this way: what kind of person takes the risk of making a Holocaust joke at a Holocaust memorial (and with a name as German as "Zuschlag") and doesn't even bother to make it funny?

The answer seems to be an unoriginal, bland apparatchik. Which, now that we think of it, is exactly what Zuschlag struck us as when we briefly met him a few years ago. But don't take our word for it. In nominating Zuschlag for their list of the 50 Most Irritating Hungarians, the wags at Index remarked that "everyone had a schoolmate who could never draw attention to himself, no matter how hard he tried." Well you finally have, János, and we can only imagine how cold it feels.