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Comment by loevborg | Hacker News Reader

> “For our fairytale castles, a fairytale comes true,” says Markus Soeder, a German politician representing Bavaria, in a statement shared with Reuters.

Ah yes, a German politician representing Bavaria. Just like Gavin Nüsom is an American politician representing Kalifornien.

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Want to elaborate? That would be a totally fine way of describing Gavin Newsom other than the weird spelling.

Governors perform an executive function, and it's odd to describe "politician role" rather than just naming the role itself; governor for California, Minister or Minister-President for Bavaria.

"Representing" to an American ear sounds more like a legislative role, and from what I can find of Bavaria, that is also wrong, with Minister-President being an executive and head of state figure.

FWIW I am an American but I didn’t assume it was a member of a legislative body. The guy is giving a quote so it seems clear that he’s “representing” the region just in some general sense as a public official.

> "Representing" to an American ear sounds more like a legislative role

That's weird though, executive charges are elected representatives as well for the whole jurisdiction. Legislative charges are representatives of specific sub jurisdictions (counties at state level, states at the federal level)

I think they were for some reason complaining about Reuters not saying that he's Markus Söder, of Bayern.

"Representing" is right, as head of the Bavarian state (not just the executive) he also represents Bavaria in the Bundesrat, which is the second chamber of the German parliament, and to the federal government and the other states ("Länder").

Markus Söder is from Franconia and not from Bavaria in the narrower sense. The comment still doesn't really make much sense.

Also, why did he omit the Umlaut from Söder if he used it for Nüsom?

I think the point is to criticize the press for using the English rendering on the names by referring to an American politician using a German rendering of the name.

This has all been too meta for my tiny brain.

Maybe it's that German humor I hear about

It's no laughing matter

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