LN: Klaus under fire in media

Prague, Oct 2 (CTK) - The media attacks on Czech President Vaclav Klaus are much worse than those to which his predecessor Vaclav Havel was exposed, Daniel Kaiser writes in the daily Lidove noviny yesterday.

On Friday, a man, aged 26, hit Klaus with an airsoft gun during his visit to Chrastava, north Bohemia, but only caused him a slight surface injury to his right arm.

Klaus then blamed "hate-mongers" for the attack.

"The way some hacks play with my person, not only with Vaclav Klaus, but with the president, is something unseen in the civilised world," Klaus said after the attack.

When a popular paper asked several successful men of letters to react to Klaus's 70th birthday last year, they only sent offensive nursery rhymes to it, Kaiser writes.

This is the way old people are congratulated on in this country, he adds sarcastically.

Besides, a theatre in Brno is performing a drama on Klaus's funeral, Kaiser writes.

According to some writers, Klaus is just a "Russian fascist queer," he adds.

Literary historian Martin Putna has labelled Klaus a fascist. However, when Klaus speaks for himself, one cannot find any signs of nationalism, racism, let alone fascistoid thinking, he adds.

Klaus has never advocated any "right of the blood" and he has based his criticism of the European Union on the natural law which relates to everyone irrespective of ethnic origin, Kaiser writes.

He turns attention to the latest bestseller Frost Coming from the Castle, a satirical novel mainly targetting Klaus, by Michael Viewegh, one of the most successful Czech writers.

Viewegh's book works with the hypothesis that Klaus is a Russian agent, Kaiser writes.

Viewegh only took up, in the literary fashion, the deliberations disseminated among political pseudo-intellectuals for some time, he adds.

Czech pop star David Koller recently alluded to Klaus's career under the Communist regime with the mysterious mention that "various files from the Communist StB secret service were lost," Kaiser writes.

Here, the trace can be tracked down to the Respekt weekly that commonly interprets Klaus's criticism of the EU as something playing into the Kremlin's hands, it adds.

Two years ago, Respekt even came up with the hypothesis that Klaus was saved from being arrested over organising illegal economic seminars under the Communist regime by being recruited by the KGB in the mid-1980s, Kaiser writes.

Finally, Viewegh writes about Klaus's homosexuality. Although he claims that this is nothing but a metaphor, as he has no evidence for the label, it is a slander, he adds.

There is no direct link between the airsoft attack on Klaus and the intellectual world of Viewegh and his peers, Kaiser writes.

The shooter from Chrastava adheres to Communists and when shooting at the head of state, he symbolically executed the whole system installed after 1989, he adds.

When it comes to the people of Viewegh's type, one can see the obsession with one specific evil guy, which is nourished by the feeling that he "stole" us the 1989 Velvet Revolution, Kaiser writes.

It is a warning example of what uniform views can appear even in the artistic environment and what happens if intellectuals assure one another of their prejudices, he adds.

The attempts at dehumanising the rival one dislikes or who has defeated someone's political favourites have stooped to the bottom of the Czech public political discourse, Kaiser writes.

If one can find some solace in Klaus's being replaced perhaps with [presidential candidate] Jan Fischer early next year, it is only the hope that the show businesspeople may lose a reason to keep publicly poking out the eyes of their voodoo doll in an obsessive manner, he concludes.