It can happen to anyone who does it on purpose

Annoying German journalist imposter dude Günter Wallraff recently chose some of the coldest winter days during one of the coldest German winters on record to pretend he was a homeless person in Frankfurt in order to prove that this is an unpleasant thing to be, much less do.

 

 It's cold out there in the winter, too.

 

Among other things, Wallraff discovered that 1) many of those living on the street today had not always been living on the street before 2) that if one doesn’t have an apartment or a house with a real address, nobody can mail you anything and 3) that many of the homeless look almost like those who have homes, only their hair is often uncombed and their clothing is sometimes somewhat dirtier. This is also called investigative journalism over here, by the way. Only in German, of course.

 

“Sure,” said a freshly destitute and homeless Frankfurt financial banker when asked about Wallraff’s latest shocking undercover coup. “Anybody who doesn’t have to can come out here and freeze his ass off with the rest of us real street folks if he wants to, I just can’t figure out why on earth anybody would.”

 

„Ich hatte früher selbst Vorurteile und habe öfter einen Bogen gemacht um jüngere Leute, die auf der Straße lagerten und mir ihren Becher hinhielten.“

One response

  1. Do you ever watch KiKa? If Willi Will’s Wissen can do it, so can Wallraff.

    Instead of regurgitating press releases or cribbing blatantly false reports and passing them off as news – see today’s bildblog.de for British house-trashing party story – at least Zeit Online is actually showing initiative.

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