Lubach’s satire is a lot more effective than the dog whistles of Ongehoord Nieuws

On Tuesday afternoon, Vladimir Putin’s world view poured out of television like leaking cooling water from a worn-out nuclear power plant. Sandwiched between news broadcasts that were extended due to the Ukraine crisis, broadcaster Ongehoord Nederland made its debut on NPO1.

It talk show Unheard of news offered 45 minutes of savage analysis on a foundation of inconsistencies and half-truths. “Truth is the first to die in a war,” said Arnold Karskens wisely. Pepijn van Houwelingen of Forum for Democracy was completely understanding of the Russian actions. He described Ukraine as if it were part of the European Union and constantly threatened poor Putin. Karskens stated that US President Biden is “a puppet of certain powers.”

It’s a bizarre notion that the dog whistles of this introverted company are taxpayer-funded. Furthermore, the unheard of sound was mainly monotonous: the presenters Ahmed Aarad and Arlette Adriani made no effort whatsoever to arrive at a critical question. The unheard of broadcaster only wants to listen to itself. It could just have been a satire on the outdated Dutch broadcasting system; there was just nothing to laugh about.

There is also funny satire. Monday had The evening show with Arjen Lubach show how you can hurt the NOS more than with empty charges about fake news. Lubach – now on TV four times a week – made a razor-sharp item about the public broadcaster, where dearly paid broadcasting is subservient to the PR of dictatorial regimes that organize sporting events. See the Games in “Genochina”. For during the World Cup in Qatar, Lubach . predicted Studio Sandcastle“presented by Henry Schut with Sheikie, Hugo Borst’s comical dwarf camel”.

Smooth interview

This sounded familiar to the viewer of Sunday with Lubach, which was less true of a particularly smoothed interview with Kim van Kooten. That chatted along the (fine) series The Terrible Eightiesbut also to her daughter’s school musical, which had turned into a parade of celebrities. gosh. This was the kind of conversation you expect Lubach to poke fun at; not for nothing were in the course of the seasons Sunday with Lubach all guests deleted. Tuesday was Journalist of the Year Maarten Keulemans (De Volkskrant) the Kim van Kooten on duty. It resulted in a conversation of somewhat higher specific weight, in which Lubach pointed out his own inexperience as an interviewer.