Racist comments by Carinthian Governor
The Carinthian Governor Gerhard Dörfler was reported to have made racist comments during a press conference for the ORF programme “Wenn die Musi spielt”. The BZÖ politician received the crooner Robert Blanco by telling a racist joke. The incident was discussed in several media. The Carinthian SPÖ made public a few days later that Dörfler had also told Blanco to “wash his face now and again,” and demanded a public apology for these discriminatory comments. The BZÖ denied the second incident in a press release; an apology for the racist joke was not forthcoming. Dörfler himself dismissed the criticism as “artificially stirred up.” He had told the joke “in a spirit of fun” and it was not intended to be insulting. “Should we ban the children's book ‘Ten Little N...[*]’ in Carinthia?” he asked the Austrian Media Agency (APA). Blanco commented in a newspaper interview, calling it, “a harmless joke, that I don't find discriminatory.”
Sources: ORF, 2009-01-17, http://orf.at/ticker/314780.html, Date of access: 2011-10-30. Die Presse, 2009-01-17, http://diepresse.com/home/politik/innenpolitik/444720/Kaernten_Aufregung-um-Negerwitz-von-LH-Doerfler, Date of access: 2011-10-30. ZARA Report 2009, http://www.zara.or.at/_wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ZaraReport_09Engl.pdf, Date of access: 2011-10-30.
