Sexism in Germany: A cloud over Rainer A DIRNDL is a traditional southern German or Austrian dress that flatters well-endowed women. It was poor taste for Rainer Brüderle, aged 67 and the lead candidate of Germany's Free Democratic Party (FDP) in this autumn's election, to suggest to a female journalist young enough to be his daughter that she "could fill out a dirndl well." But neither Mr Brüderle nor the journalist, Laura Himmelreich, could have guessed what her short account of the encounter in the magazine Stern would unleash. It began when a communications consultant, Anne Wizorek, coined a Twitter handle - #aufschrei ("outcry") - to collect responses. Within days, more than 60,000 Tweeters had given their views on sexual harassment. The newspapers promptly made it their topic of the week, as did three of the public-television talk shows. For days, it seemed as if the country could speak of little else. At first blush, this seems odd. The incident took place over a year ago, at a bar on the eve of an FDP gathering. Mr Brüderle comes across less as a predator than as an awkward dinosaur (he also asked for Ms Himmelreich's "dance card"). He and most others had imbibed, Ms Himmelreich had not. And she took a liberty asking him how "at such an advanced age he could carry the party's hopes," almost daring him to act virile. Sceptics wonder why Stern sat on the story, publishing it only days after Mr Brüderle became his party's leading candidate - and why a magazine that often spices its stories with naked women is leading the charge against sexism. Yet to many German women it is precisely the affair's banality that reminds them of daily harassment, in the office or the gym, on the bus or in bars. It also reveals complacency over sexual politics. Looking west, south and east, Germans gloat that chauvinist pigs such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Silvio Berlusconi or Vladimir Putin would never get ahead in German public life. Farther east, they see Indians protesting against attitudes to rape. Yet in the far west they find Americans killing spontaneity with excessive political correctness. Germany, they thought, had things about right. But now it turns out that they were wrong: the debate was merely overdue.