Nie (“No”) is a weekly current affairs magazine. Its editor is Jerzy Urban, the mouthpiece of communist Poland in the 1980s. The editorial line is firmly anti-Catholic church and the present, right wing government is not in favour either. Its journalists try sometimes a little too hard to defend the legacy of the People’s Republic of Poland.

The magazine is known for its unparliamentary language and its attacks on “good taste”: they insist on carrying ads for sex toys and the like. The language is one of its strongest points, though. Reading the main daily newspapers here can be a real struggle. The younger journalists are palatable enough but have nothing to say. Legible but unreadable, you might say. In Nie there is life in the lines. Here is Nie on the subject of PiS (Law and “Justice”)’s TV ad campaign, which resembles Ronald Reagan’s from many years ago:

Smiech tez wywoluje emitowana w telewizjach reklamowka PiSuaru. Zerznieta z zamierzhlej reklamy Reagana….
Pisuar’s ad on the TVs is also getting a few laughs. Ripped off from ancient Reagan ads….

That doesn’t do justice to the original. “W telewizjach” (on telly) is difficult to translate: it is a little like the way some write “the internets” when they want to satirise a politican’s limited knowledge of the technology. (“Telewizja” means “television” and is not supposed to be used in the plural as it is in this case.)
Now here is the more “serious” Gazeta Wyborcza on the same subject:

Oba materialy maja niemal identyczna konstrukcje. Odwoluja sie do pracy, rodziny, milosci. W obu mozna obejrzec zadowolone rodziny wracajace z zakupow, szczesliwe mlode malzenstwa, rolnika pracujacego na traktorze, a nawet ludzi niosacych dywan….
The material in both cases has an almost identical construction. They refer to work, the family and love. In both one can see happy families returning with the shopping, happy young couples, a farmer working in his tractor and even people carrying a carpet….

It’s worth noting that the high brow, serious, weighty etc. GW gives this trivial item far more space (including six photos) than the scurrilous, low brow, commie etc. Nie.

The irony of all this is that Jerzy Urban was spokesman for a communist regime which was famous for “dretwa mowa” (“numb talk”) or, in other words, newspeak.