Passage for Analysis

"The performance of this song in the western media unleashed a debilitating debate within the SED and FDJ. As a result, the band was boycotted in the GDR media. In an attempt to break the silence, Pankow wrote an exculpatory letter to Erich Honecker (without response), and insisted that they were misquoted in the interview with Radio Bremen. But it was not the fine points of the dialog (regarding official GDR permissions, for example) that disturbed certain functionaries so mucht that the performance of that song was discussed at the meeting of the Central Committee in December 1988. The old men apparently knew who they were, even while the band foregrounded the polyvalence of its text." (245)