the program toothache (NPO 3) pays attention to the municipal elections in a sarcastic manner. The usual feature is the “Category Spirit” section, where committee members have to guess which of the four people they see is the politician. Isma Kander, leader of the Utrecht party’s student and junior party (two seats in the council), was said to enjoy longboards, which led committee member Rutger Kastrekum to wonder aloud: Is this also possible with a headscarf?

Castricum was promptly reprimanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Diederik Ebbinge and committee members Paul de Leeuw and Dwight van de Vijver. “I was so shocked at the moment by the comment,” Kander says. To her surprise, she saw on TV that NTR decided to cut the incident from broadcasting. Kander: So it didn’t work either. People who do not meet certain criteria face this structurally. If there is no opposition, these kinds of incidents will continue.

NTR regrets the accident

Roy Stratman, editor in chief of Knowledge and Education at NTR, regrets the incident, but says the recordings will not be broadcast in full. About forty minutes are lost during editing. This is a satirical programme. It was immediately obvious what people believed in it, so we decided to remove the part.

According to Straatman, it would have been better to inform Kendir in advance of what will and will not be broadcast. He maintains that NTR in no way wanted to keep Castricum out of the wind.

“I don’t think it’s a shocking joke,” Castricum replies. But if she has experienced this as annoying, I find that annoying as well. This part of the program is risky. It has to do with people’s appearance and the prejudices that this raises. You are trying to play with that. I once said about a person who wears glasses that it shows her disability. There was a lot of laughter about it then.

According to Castricum “we shouldn’t look at it too much”. Sometimes it gets out of control. Good thing she said she didn’t like it. Call Kendir after the broadcast. You find it difficult now to put broadcasts together in a way that everyone seems to have progressive views. As if homing pigeons don’t play a role. Now the image and reality are at odds with each other.