The Teflon minister

摘要

He is married to a Bismarck, wears bespoke suits and pays photogenic visits to the troops in Afghanistan. He even held a doctorate. Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany's defence minister, is without doubt the country's coolest politician. But as of February 23rd he is a doctor no longer. He renounced the title days after the discovery that much of his 2006 doctoral thesis was copied from other sources without proper attribution. More than a fifth of the text was plagiarised, according to Gutten-Plag Wiki, a website dedicated to vetting it. The media have delighted in bestowing nicknames on the minister, such as "Baron Cut'n'paste" (a reference to his blue-bloodied origins) and "zu Googleberg".