Initiated in 1993 as a not so ambitious feature of the satirical pages of Feral Tribune, Greatest Shits have been transformed after four years of survival in the wastelands of media reality in a cult column, avidly read with equal attention by the traitors, hirelings of foreign powers, confused and ill-intentioned individuals, government spies and policemen, Zeljko Olujic and shitmakers. By becoming a sort of a reminder of depressing degradation of the responsibility for public word, arrogance of converts, and plain ordinary stupidity that pollutes, and destroys, the public space, Greatest Shits become a seminal chronicle of a time and a space. Of course, in Feral's satirical style.
By adding humorous headlines and awards with witty justifications to the selected quotations (for example, Don Anto Bakovic's statement from Globus that "Serbs won't be put down by Pope's message of peace and the Holy Gospels but by guns" received the award Feral's Golden Aspirin "for the results achieved in the correcting of a wrong Pope") the authors of Greatest Shits, following the well-tried recipe from Feral's satirical cuisine, put together an unusual jigsaw puzzle of "the best pages of Croatian literature". The ruling party and the opposition, top officials and political dwarves equally contribute to Greatest Shits. They are united in (s)hitoid embrace of equivocal public appearances, folk wisdom of "I said it, I denied it" sort, dialectics of political converts and deep conviction that the public is nothing but an unavoidable evil, an amorphous political mass molded and shaped only by His fingers.
Establishing, regardless of the original intentions, in addition of Srecko Jurdana's columns "Pillars of Society" and "Cruel Politics", the most impressive chronicle of Croatian years of war and immediate post-war period, Greatest Shits provide crucial documentation for the reconstruction of Tudman's era. True, some of talkative (and abundantly represented) participants in the Croatian public life have in the meantime slipped from the media limelight to their original posts of lower political beings, but their contributions to the (s)hitoid anthology are a precious contribution to the reconstruction of our recent past.
Being aware of the urge to revise and retouch unsuitable biographies and revealing bibliographies, selective amnesia of the gang from Pantovcak, and rewriting of history, the oeuvre preserved in Greatest Shits that covers four years is a truly precious documentary source. In the country where ancient folk myths live in a maudlin symbiosis with historical sciences, and the president's official biography is experiencing astonishing cuts and mysterious disappearances, there are very few more serious tasks!
The following is the authors subjective selection of (s)hits published in Feral Tribune between August 10 1993 and today
"HDZ sincerely wants to implement the Washington Agreement," at a press conference, 1994
"In the development of Yugoslav Socialist Self-Management there were significant political forces which, by abusing the democratic nature of our society, tried to impose their non-Marxist views on the role of the state. Basic tendencies of such views can be categorized in three groups: Stalinist-dogmatic (...), Anarchist-liberal (...), and Civic-democratic forces which are seeking restoration of civic democracy and multiparty system," in Socijalisticko Samoupravljanje [Socialist Self-management], 1981
"The demands that a status of a constituent nation be returned to Serbs in Croatia are equally unacceptable," in Vjesnik, September 1994
"The Croatian nationalism sought during the seventies that Croatia be established as a national state of Croats, instead of, as was achieved in the Socialist revolution and common struggle of the Croat and Serb peoples and set in constitutional terms by ZAVNOH, as a common state of the Croat and Serb peoples. It should be recalled that Serbs have been living in Croatia for centuries," in Federalizam po mjeri buducnosti [Federalism for the Future], 1989
"My political views haven't changed at all. I am proud of that," in an interview to Panorama, 1995
"Look here, Hitler used to sign on behalf of Germany, Pavelic on behalf of NDH, and Tito on behalf of Yugoslavia. Any criminal or an honest person can sign his own articles. That is a silly criterion!" somewhat later, in the same show of TV Parlament, 1995
"A man should smash a TV set and beat up his wife at least once a day. However, both would be too expensive. Consequently, it is better to turn them off and avoid them," in Studio, 1996
"I was ecstatic after hearing together with Mercep and several other zealous HDZ politicians Tudman's 'Address on the state of Croatia', because of what we heard from our teacher. He was the first one to instruct us on the real size of our state: he told us that we have to include the sea surface. What were all of us silly intellectuals doing all these years?" Dr. Hrvoje Sosic about Tudman's 'Address to the Nation" in an interview to Glasnik HDZ [HDZ Herald]
"Today some groups without reserves attack HDZ, so that one must wonder whether they advocate political dialogue or simply want to overthrow HDZ, and that would be a catastrophe for the Croatian state," in an interview to Vecernji List, 1995
"I think that there is no reason why Istria, the region I know very well, should not become soon another one of HDZ strongholds," in an interview to Danas, 1995.
"Where I come from, it is a custom for women to get up if a man enters the room. I still do that unconsciously," in the same interview to Gloria
"Krleza devalued everything, starting with God," in the same interview to Glorija
"This year is 'the Year of the Family'. Therefore, the association of Croatian Women has tried to organize on several occasions debates about family. We were not successful. On the other hand, you can listen every day to rock music, watch murders and violence on TV..." in an interview to the magazine of the Catholic youth Mi, 1995
"I treated the invitation to become a Minister the same way I would treat a conscription notice calling me to the front line," in Vecernji List "I always say that we live in democracy. Since we do not live under a regime, there are no 'pro-regime' writers," in an interview to Panorama, 1995
"We shall be hired murderers, comrades liberals, as long as you do not initiate a showdown with us," in Hrvatsko Slovo, 1996
"The autonomous unit of Herceg-Bosna was established in order to preserve the unity of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Those who do not realize that are either ill-intentioned, or have hidden intentions, or are stupid," in Slobodna Dalmacija, 1994
"What would happen if private capital took control of television? In that case the program would be determined by the interest of the viewers, and we would not be able to intervene any more," as the director of the Croatian television, in the TV show U Krupnom Planu [Close Up], 1994
"All that united foreign and domestic traitorous propaganda about the alleged aggression of Croatia on its neighbor, about war crimes committed by Croats, lack of freedom of press etc. had only one goal: to destabilize Croatia and force it to enter some new confederation. For now with Muslims and tomorrow, who knows?" in Nedjeljna Dalmacija, 1993
"Both Budisa and Gotovac are nothing but opium for the masses. They are used and manipulated by the people from Masonic Lodges, internationalists, individualists, democrats, regionalists..." in Slobodna Dalmacija, 1993
"Antifascists are shouting, making noise, howling, threatening, provoking and unsheathing their swords.(...) On behalf of that antifascism they are shouting against this horrible totalitarian unbearable authority that has destroyed their legend," in Slobodna Dalmacija, 1994
"I give to the Antifascist Council of the Popular Liberation of Yugoslavia best chances simply because it has unshakable social-historical, as some would say, class and national logic," in Vjesnik, 1989
"Mr. Jovic could never be classified as a political convert...," in an appeal to the sentence of the Municipal Court in Zagreb which rejected his suit against Feral, 1994
"Rock musicians are more dangerous than Chetniks," in Glasnik HDZ-a, 1994
"We are witnessing how defeated (yugo)communists and (in the free part of Croatia remaining) chetniks are quickly regrouping, uniting and crossing over to the ranks of old rock musicians...", in Glasnik HDZ-a, 1994
"I get sick when I start writing about image. Look, even Oliver Dragojevic has stuck an earring in his ear. That makes me sick. I don't understand why people willingly mutilate their bodies. I don't even wear my wedding band, because it bothers me!" in Globus, 1994
"It does not matter whether Michael Jackson really raped that child. What matter is that he looks like someone who could do something like that," in Globus, 1994
"I regret that Mr. Gotovac is not here, but I have to tell him that to squash [smozditi] someone is worse than to kill someone because to squash means to squeeze someone's head in such a way that the scull bursts and the brain spills out! Ha,ha,ha,ha [laughter]...," as a chairman of a session of the lower house of the Parliament, replying to Gotovac's statement that "HDZ has squashed the middle class".
"Excuse me, but I have the right to express myself like a poet and lyricist," at a session of the Parliament
"We must approach Europe selectively," at the Third Congress of Croatian teachers in Osijek, 1994
"Europe, by preaching anti-nationalism is practicing its own imperialist nationalism," in Osijek, 1994
"It cannot be denied that Dr. Tudman is the father of the Croatian State. He created our state!" in an interview to Nedjeljna Dalmacija, 1995