WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- European reaction to the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president-elect was tempered by racist remarks from some elected leaders and media, a review found.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi uttered one of the milder epithets when he praised Obama for being "young, handsome and even suntanned," The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
An Austrian television journalist said on camera he "wouldn't want the Western world to be directed by a black man," while a Polish lawmaker called Obama's election "the end of the white man's civilization," adding that the United States "will soon pay a high price for this quirk of democracy," the Post found.
Die Tageszeitung, a Berlin newspaper supporting socialist and leftist causes, predicted Obama's election in June when it published a front-page photo of the White House under the caption "Uncle Barack's Cabin," referencing "Uncle Tom's Cabim," an anti-slavery book written by 19th Century U.S. author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Rainer Metzger, a deputy editor, told the Post the headline was satirical and not a slur.
The Berlin chapter of a prominent Jewish group has condemned racist statements made by a German deputy from the far-right National Democratic Party against Obama, Deutsche Welle said Tuesday.
