Rutger Castricum’s NTR Cut Joke About Hijab From “Toothache”

The idea behind the program toothache It is the interest in the elections in a cynical way. The usual feature is the “Category Spirit” section, where panelists from four different people have to guess who the politician is. Isma Kander, leader of the local student and junior party in Utrecht (two city council seats), is said to love longboards. To which member of the Committee Rutger Castricum asked aloud: Is this also possible with the veil?

Castricum was promptly reprimanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Diederik Ebbinge and committee members Paul de Leeuw and Dwight van de Vijver. On Monday, she said, Kander was “deeply shocked at the moment by the comment.” To her surprise, she saw on TV last night that NTR decided not to include the incident in the broadcast. 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 states that about forty minutes of recording are lost during editing

Roy Stratman, who was directly involved in the program as editor-in-chief of NTR’s knowledge and education division, said by phone that he regretted the incident, but the recordings would not be broadcast in full. About forty minutes are lost during editing. This is a satirical programme. It was immediately obvious what people thought about it, so we decided to remove the part.

In retrospect, according to Stratman, 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 on Monday. 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. Then people laughed.

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. Monday morning, he called Kinder. 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. I have a problem with that. Now the image and reality are at odds with each other.