Happy families

How can such very appealing footage evoking 'family values' so well be in any way controversial?

In a wonderfully wacky way. Germany is in the midst of election campaigning, with television spots an important component of the parties' communications strategy. There are, fortunately, major policy differences, contrasting shades of political couleur characterizing the various parties.

The FDP is a centrist liberal party with a long tradition.

The NPD is a far-right party seen as ominously xenophobic and even neo-Nazi in its sympathies.

The current hilarity has been occasioned by the fact that there are television spots for both of these very different parties using identical portions of this 'happy families' video to get their very different arguments across.

This is the risk advertisers run when they license material from stock archives, rather than investing in original material which they would own exclusively!.

It is even more ironic for the NPD, the party which is not exactly friendly to foreigners, that the footage was produced by a Slovenian company. Those devious East Europeans!