Guilty Pleasures

One of the joys of learning a foreign language is discovering how languages express ideas differently, or sometimes not at all. Because of its penchant for smashing two or more words together to make one large word, the language I'm currently studying, German, is filled with very useful words that express ideas we're all familiar with. In English, those ideas need to be expressed in several words instead of just one.

Here's a random sampling of three useful German words I pulled off the internet:

• Treppenwitz, in English, a "staircase joke", is a witty comeback that you come up with too late, such as when you're on the staircase heading for the door. With me, these brilliant comebackers usually come to me the next day. 
• Schnapsidee, literally in English "Liquor idea", is a crazy idea that one would only come up with while drunk.
• Backpfiefengesicht, or "a face in need of a slap", no explanation necessary.   

We've all been there and unfortunately the English language is woefully inadequate coming up with a word to describe these all too familiar occurrences.

Yet for all its expressive qualities, German doesn't seem to have an equivalent to this very useful English expression: "guilty pleasure". 

It comes close, "Heimliches Vergnugen" means "secret pleasure" while "Laster" means more or less a bad habit. But these two expressions skirt the idea of a guilty pleasure which is not necessarily as serious as a bad habit, like smoking cigarettes, but has more of an edge than a secret pleasure, which implies something harmless such as liking the movie Zoolander. (oops, guess that secret's out.)  

"Guilty pleasure" could cover both, and everything in between, proving once and for all that German is all about the details, while English is more about generalities. 

As is that last sentence, come to think of it.

So what do Germans say when they want to convey the general idea of a guilty pleasure? Like many English expressions used in contemporary idiomatic German, they just say "guilty pleasure".

But German does have a word for a particular kind of guilty pleasure. It's such a great word that the English language has flat out stolen it.

That word is schadenfreude. Schade translates to damage in English and freude, to joy. Together as one word they mean taking joy in someone else's misfortune. Schadenfreude is not one of the nobler features of human nature, although I think even the most equitable among us experience it from time to time, especially when the victim is someone in a position of power. 

Can you guess where I'm going with this?

Last week there was an incident that one could call the mother of all schadenfreude. It even briefly eclipsed a vastly more significant schadenfreude incident that has been dominating Americans' attention spans for far longer than the typical news cycle.

Yes, even the Epstein Files saga was put on the back burner, albeit briefly, to make way for the Kiss-Cam at the Coldplay concert scandal.

In case you've been living under the proverbial rock. an embracing couple was caught unawares on camera at a rock concert, their image broadcast to the 70,000 or so attendees on the stadium's Jumbotron monitor. The idea of the "Kiss-Cam", generally used during breaks at sporting events, is to have couples kiss each other when they discover they're on camera. I've witnessed several of these during the last twenty years or so, and they are typically fun little diversions with the on camera "talent" good naturedly playing along with the gag. 

But not this couple.  Once they discovered their image was broadcast throughout the stadium, the woman covered her eyes and turned her back to the camera while the man ducked out of sight. Naturally the fans in the stands had a blast with it. To make matters worse, the front man of the band, Chris Martin made the very unimaginative comment that the couple was either having an affair, or that they were very shy.

This being the era of cellphone videos and social media, the incident went viral. It quickly made its way to the realm of mass media, which used every resource available to reveal the identity of the "shy" couple.

It took them about a New York minute. The man turned out to be the CEO of an NYC based tech company and the woman, that company's director of personnel. They were married, but unfortunately not to each other. It seems the whole country, including me, got a chuckle out of the story. 

I think the appeal of stories like this is they make us feel better about ourselves. We're happy in the fact that we may have screwed up big time in our lives but never that big. Sometimes it's one of those "there but by the grace of God go I moments", where we are just thankful it wasn't us who got caught figuratively with our pants down. Something like that happened to our big boss recently who got caught up in an embarrassing (but not scandalous) incident involving a little bad judgement mixed up with a lot of bad timing. While I did get a chuckle out of the incident, the bottom line is I truly felt sorry for him and his humiliation. Yes indeed, that could have been me. That's where the guilt in guilty pleasure comes in.

But not so much in the case of the shy couple. For starters, cheating on my spouse is not exactly on my radar, not to mention being so brazen about it. This incident goes way beyond bad judgement and timing, No, I can honestly say that this would not happen to me. Something else yes, but not this.

It turned out the man and the woman both resigned their positions at the company because of the incident. I can only imagine things were even worse for them at home. They both got their comeuppance and quite honestly, they deserve it. Do I feel sorry for them? Well, not really but sort of. 

The guilt came for me big time when I thought of their spouses and the humiliation that this couple put them through. Then there are their children.  One can only imagine what's going through their heads and how this will affect their lives. 

So this something of a feel-good moment as we look down on a former corporate CEO and one of his chief executives, has a dark side. We shouldn't necessarily be ashamed of ourselves for our little amusing diversion, but it's time to let it go for everybody's sake.

Not so the other big shadenfreude episode which has taken on a life of its own. The other day, the President of the United States used another interesting English expression to describe a group of people he got angry with. He called them "the worst scum on Earth." In a related matter, he went on to describe his falling out with his former BFF, Jeffrey Epstein, the man who in most people's books, unquestionably qualifies for that moniker. The president said that Epstein crossed a line from which there was no turning back. And what was that line Mr. President, the sex trafficking of children? No, actually it was the fact that Epstein had the gall to "steal" employees from the president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. It doesn't get much lower than that in his mind, I guess.

There of course is no evidence that has been publicly revealed anyway, that implicates this president with any of the multitude of crimes committed by Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. There's only lots of clear, hard evidence that the three had close ties. Which would make one think that given all the obvious connections between the three, the president would come clean and reveal exactly what their relationship was, if that is, the relationship was on the up and up. And then he would take great pains to point out how utterly disgusting and criminal the whole Epstein/Maxwell enterprise was. Instead, he does what he always has done, deny, deny, deny, then distract by throwing unfounded accusations around like he threw rolls of paper towels at hurricane victims in Puerto Rico. Hard as it is to believe, he may not be guilty of anything in this matter, yet he's sure acting guilty. And that's good enough for me.

Truth be told, I'm getting a kick out of seeing this jackass squirm. I have no doubt that he will squirm like a rat out of this jam like he always does. But I sure am enjoying the squirming while it lasts. 

The best thing about this whole sordid episode is that it is schadenfreude at its finest, all of the pleasure without any of the guilt.