Communists: they just refuse to die

German communist in hot water after dining out on lobster

This headline made me imagine an old dried-out Erich Honecker - type commie caught with his hand in a cookie jar (aren't they all?). However, the hand in a cookie jar belongs to a different commie this time, of a young and restless variety: one Sahra Wagenknecht.

By the time she had realised her mistake - that as one of Germany's top communists she should probably not be seen eating lobster - it was too late. There was no time to switch from the €22 (£16) "rich man's dish" to a more modest platter of kippers, because Sahra Wagenknecht had already been caught on camera in the act of betraying her own political ideals.

This story, more than anything else, tells me that pathetic hypocrisy of the old-style communists is as alive as ever. The usual false public modesty and the same old tired retorts:

"I don't do anything that I say others shouldn't do," she told the daily TAZ. "On the contrary, I'm fighting for a society in which everyone can afford to eat lobster."

Most probably she was concerned with freshness of that lobster and valiantly fell upon it to protect the proletariat from a possible seafood poisoning, which is, as we all know, one of the most dangerous of them all.

But this is just an appetizer (unlike that lobster), her postprandial activities are even more of a throwback:

Shows of wealth by politicians and reports of hefty bonuses for managers regularly make for negative headlines. Acutely aware of this, the day after the dinner Wagenknecht, 38, allegedly dispatched her parliamentary assistant to the office of Feleknas Uca, the photographer and fellow Left MEP who was one of six other Left members at the dinner. The assistant asked whether Uca would lend her her digital camera to "take photographs with an acquaintance". According to Uca, the photographs of Wagenknecht cracking into her lobster had been erased from the camera when it was returned to her the following day.

What can one say? Pathetic doesn't even start to describe this kind of behavior.

I wish, though, that this lobster were a bit off, you know. Make her barf a bit, like I wanted to after reading the story.