More Important Things
Hans-Peter Friedrich was Germany’s interior minister, and when the NSA scandal broke, he basically said he had more important things to deal with. That was his actual response. I remember reading it and just sitting there, thinking: what could possibly be more important? And his answer, implicit in everything that followed, was cheese and folk music and whatever else. People found a Tumblr with screenshots of him eating, playing, living his life completely normally while the world’s entire communications system was being monitored.
What gets me is how flat it is. He’s not even defending himself, not making excuses. Just stating a fact: I was busy. Like that’s all there is to say. And in a way it is, because that simple statement tells you everything about what he thought actually mattered. Not the privacy of an entire country. Not the massive security failure. Just… other stuff.
I have no idea what happened to him after that. Some politicians say incredibly stupid things and just keep existing, keep their jobs, move on. The news cycles away and you forget. But that phrase stayed with me because it’s the perfect distillation of dismissal—not even a shrug, just a flat statement of fact. And somehow that’s worse.