Punch of the week

Expert on U-turns voglaurs in front of the press

Olga Voglauer made a fool of herself at the press conference.(Bild: SEPA.Media | Martin Juen)

Shortly after the Secretary General of the Greens attacks the SPÖ at a press conference on the Schilling case and compares their actions to the "Silberstein methods", she retracts her words shortly afterwards. This earns her the Punch of the Week. 

Now there really isn't much left to do and the word voglauern has to be added to the dictionary. The meaning is quickly defined: Voglauern - to make statements during a press conference due to temporary or even long-term insanity, which you have to publicly retract immediately afterwards, when the microphones are not even staked out - in order to make the cause that originally led to this press conference even worse in the end than it already was beforehand.

Voglauern is named after the back-rowing pioneer Olga Voglauer, who, in addition to her work as an expert on U-turns, is also Secretary General of the Green Party, mostly in private. Now she was once again allowed to appear in front of the press and voglauered away. In the Schilling case, she got carried away with a plea that has roughly the half-life of polonium-214 (0.000164 seconds).

Just moments after the press conference, she said: "Today I suggested that SPÖ top candidate Andreas Schieder had something to do with the publications on Lena Schilling. I made a mistake that should not have happened to me." And then: "I also regret that I spoke of Silberstein methods in this context. I should have been aware of the connotation." Voglauer voglauert - our Punch of the week.