Obama Fingers

Der Spiegel:

“We noticed that Amer­i­can prod­ucts and the Amer­i­can way of eat­ing are trendy at the moment,” Judith Wit­ting, sales man­ager for Sprehe, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “Amer­i­cans are more relaxed. Not like us stiff Ger­mans, like (Chan­cel­lor Angela) Merkel.”

The idea, she claimed, was to get in on the Obama-mania which is con­tin­u­ing to grip Ger­many. The word “fin­gers” in the name refers to the fact that it is a fin­ger food. “It’s like hot­dogs,” Wit­ting said. “No one would ever think they are actu­ally from dogs.”

For Amer­i­cans in Ger­many, though, there is a risk that the prod­uct might be seen as racially insen­si­tive. Fried chicken has long been asso­ci­ated with African-Americans in the US — nam­ing strips of fried chicken after the first black pres­i­dent could cause some fur­row­ing of brows.

Wit­ting told SPIEGEL ONLINE the con­nec­tion never even occurred to her. “It was sup­posed to be an homage to the Amer­i­can lifestyle and the new US pres­i­dent,” she said.