This post was inspired by a recent comment from Jim Dandy, one of our defenders of the indefensible. He said that he wanted opinion in his journalism. I expressed my disappointment that he wanted “opinionated” journalism, and he objected to what he thought was my deliberate twisting of his words.
You do know what opinionated means don’t you? It does not mean the condition of having an opinion. Or perhaps you are deliberately twisting my words.
Impartiality allows for opinion to be expressed.
I was confused by this, and asked for an explanation, which I got:
Opinionated is a perjorative term suggesting the person unduly, aggressively and dogmatically holds by their opinions.
It might be different in the US.
Still confused, I tried a different tack, and asked Jim if he felt that the BBC’s North America editor, Mark Mardell was the embodiment of his definition, to which he said, simply, “No.”
This led me to compile this collection of Mardell’s journalism to provide evidence that he does, in fact, unduly, aggressively and dogmatically hold by his opinion. Specifically his opinion that the Tea Party movement and, essentially, all opposition to the President is based on racism.
Read the following, and decide for yourselves whether or not Mardell allows his personal opinion to inform his reporting, and whether or not he has dogmatically stuck to his guns in spite of the evidence before him.
September 15, 2009, when Mardell was barely a month into his new job:
Is race a factor in Obama protests?
So I am describing and inviting debate, not passing comment. The relationship between black and white has been such an important driving factor in American political history that it would be strange if it now mattered not a jot. The allegation is that many of those who are calling their president “un-American” mean he is not white.
Democratic propaganda, over-sensitivity or truth? Tell me…
He says he’s not passing comment, then gives his opinion anyway. This is after he gives you a link to only one point of view from the vaunted NY Times: yes, opposition to the President is based on racism. Mardell came to the US knowing for a fact that this is a racist country. Let’s see if he learns anything in the coming years.
Just a couple of weeks later, Mardell eagerly reported that Jimmy Carter said that opposition to the President was due to racism. He then went out to try and find people to support that, but came away with only the suggestion that the African-American community thinks it’s all down to racism. To Mardell, this is proof enough. The President Himself said that He doesn’t think that’s the case, but Mardell believes He’s lying.
Just outside his restaurant, I chat to some African-American women and mention what we are doing.
“Woah woah for Carter,” one says, raising her hands above her head. “He tells it like it is.”
She cannot peer into the soul of the protesters, any more than President Carter can.
But many African-Americans may feel as though a subterranean stream has burst above ground, even if the president would rather not get caught in the spray.
This woman may not be able to peer into people’s souls, but obviously Mardell can. And he does, over and over.
January 26, 2010:
Tea Party seek purity and victory
Mardell and the sub editor who wrote the title are actually referring to what they see as ideological purity regarding taxation and small government, but nobody with any intellectual honesty can claim that they don’t realize the not-so-subtle reference to the idea of racial purity espoused by actual white supremacists. Mardell chose the word very carefully. After talking about policy stuff, he said this near the end of the post:
There is no display of the visceral hatred that dripped from the cable networks last summer, and little of the sense that Obama’s government is some how illegitimate, rather than just plain wrong. There is a feeling that the president promised to govern from the centre and he hasn’t. But I have to ask, is this movement really of the people, or of largely white, largely well-off people?
They’re white, so there must be an underlying reason behind their objection to expanding government and raising taxes and increasing our debt and leading us to government-provided health care. Never mind what they say out loud: Mardell is looking into their souls. This is journalism?
Curiously, when reports came out about Sen. Harry Reid’s unfortunate statements about The Obamessiah back in 2008, Mardell defended him against charges of racism.
Indeed is what he said racist, or in any other way reprehensible? Liz Cheney thinks it is racist. The Kansas Star calls the remarks “stinking racist comments”. A left wing blogger Field Negro says it is “ignorant stereotyping”. Mr Reid himself refers to the comments as “improper”.
But what has irritated me about the flood of articles is that there has been a lot of nudging and winking but few have come out and said what they find offensive.
Imagine that. The man who has no trouble declaring racism without pointing to specifics which he finds offensive is irritated by what he sees as vague hints by other people.
So let’s have a look at what he actually said. The comments come from a book out this week, Game Changes .The authors say Reid “was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama – a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he later put it privately.”
Mardell then actually defends Reid by saying he’s just “old-fashioned”. Nothing to see here, move along. Why is this not racist, but someone who objects to wealth re-distribution, full stop, without a word about anyone’s dialect or skin color, is racist? Of course, Harry Reid is a Democrat. He holds approved thoughts, so cannot be racist. However, if one holds an unapproved thought about an economic or political issue, there must be something inherently wrong with one’s character, an underlying reason for disapproving of, say, the NHS. Reid gets a pass, but as we all saw recently with Mardell’s and the BBC’s coverage of Mitt Romney, a Republican is by definition flawed for making a much less dangerous gaffe (e.g. “binders of women”).
In closing, Mardell’s defense of Reid reached new heights of hilarity:
But the guts of what Reid was saying was that many American voters were still pretty racist but some wouldn’t see Obama as “really” black. He thought Obama was acceptable to the electorate because he was light-skinned and didn’t have a voice that identified him as black. That seems to be Reid’s attempt to describe a state of affairs that may be unpleasant, but may be true. He was explaining the lie of the land as he saw it, not endorsing the views he outlined. If you can’t do that you are no good as a strategist.
You read that right: Reid was making a racist statement to highlight the racism of other people. How clever of him. Mardell really does have a magical gift for peering into people’s souls, doesn’t he? Naturally, this supports his opinion that opposition to the President is based on racism.
Later that year, October 9, 2010:
So here there is a great paradox: a movement that boasts its theoretical love of America and democracy but which hates its real life institutions. It’s not their fairly mainstream economic theories I strain to understand, but the passion; a passion which means that political discourse has become increasingly uncivil, filled with vitriol and abuse.
It’s nice that Mardell admits his condescension, but this is where we depart the realm of journalism and enter the land of opinion. That’s the whole point of BBC editors, of course, which causes endless problems. Notice how remarkably different his reaction to the Tea Party movement was to his opinion of the Occupiers. He loved their passion. I wonder what the key difference is?
So why is the Tea Party boiling?
Some say it’s racism. Those I’ve met are not racist but I do wonder if for some there’s a sense of lost superiority. For all their lives there’s been a white man in the White House. It’s not just that Obama isn’t in this image, he does not fit any stereotype of a black person that they know. Cool, cosmopolitan, calm and aloof. There is a sense of disconnect for what ought to be their view of the natural order.
“Some say…” He says straight out he hasn’t met any racists yet, but refuses to let go of his suspicions. He’d been in the US for over a year by that point, gone to several Tea Party gatherings, spoken with lots of politicians. Yet it hadn’t changed his opinion one iota. Is he lying that he didn’t meet any racists? Or does he just think he hasn’t worked hard enough to find them under the bed? You can almost feel Mardell straining to justify his opinion in spite of what he sees in front of him.
A woman who told me that Obama was a socialist and her country was sliding into Marxism said when he was elected president she drew the curtains for three weeks and couldn’t answer the telephone. Only the Tea Party saved her.
America is changing fast and some in the Tea Party people don’t like the loss of the assumption that white, European, 1950s America is the norm, the benchmark.
He hasn’t met any racists, but is still confident enough to tell you that some in the Tea Party are concerned about race. Not only is no evidence provided to back this up, but he even says he’s never met any actual racists. How can he get away with this?
Just a couple weeks later, October 30, 2010:
The main speaker said: “Our name is being dragged through the mud, that we’re violent racists.” The all-white crowd cheer or just nod. I have never seen any overt racism at a Tea Party rally and don’t today.
No “overt racism”, eh? Then why bother pointing out the “all-white crowd”? A rhetorical question, I know. When people don’t hold approved thoughts, there must be something wrong with them. Having given up the struggle to justify his opinion that it’s based on racism in the face of no evidence, he’s moved on to qualifying his statements that he hasn’t found any evidence. He doesn’t have to provide any now.
Over the past year I have spoken to many supporters of the Tea Party and been to lots of rallies. I have spoken to people whose characterisation of Mr Obama and his aims seems to me way off beam, a cartoon enemy conjured from some 1950s nightmare. Some believe the constitution tightly constrains the sort of economy America must have, and that only they can define what is properly American.
Now he’s giving his opinion on Constitutional law and economics. This isn’t journalism at all. This is an op-ed piece. Like I said, this the inherent problem in the very concept of BBC (titled) editors.
There is a wide-eyed enthusiasm that is easy to mock.
Yes, very easy to mock. In fact, it’s so easy, that Mardell happily mocked one of them during an appearance at the BBC College of Journalism. First, of course, he has to give the disclaimer that he’s never seen any overt racism. The relevant bit begins at around 54:45 in, where a young Beeboid asks Mardell about the “visceral hatred” of the President.
We’re not racist, he says, “At least not in a straight-forward sense”. Oh, really? He says that underlying the concern about government spending our money, it’s really about not wanting the government to “spend money on people not like them”. No real evidence, but he remains as convinced of it as he was the day he arrived. Even if we don’t come out and wear the pointy white hoods and carry our lynchin’ ropes around, we’re still racist under the skin. And he happily mocks a woman with a Southern accent. “You knew exactly what it was.” Oh, how they all laughed, eh? To Mardell, the Tea Party is driven by crypto-racism. This is what they really think of us, and it informs all BBC reporting on US issues.
(Full analysis of the BBC’s CoJ audience with Mardell can be read here.)
Right before the election last November, Mardell laid it all out:
A lot of time in my first two years was spent trying to understand what lay behind the anger that I had seen on TV.
As we’ve seen, he had a pre-conceived notion of what lay behind that anger: racism. So what has he learned in the intervening years?
Beyond a fairly conventional conservative concern about taxation and debt, there is an inchoate angst that their country is going in the wrong direction, that they need to “take it back”.
Some think this is code for “take it back from the black man in the White House”.
After all the evidence of his reporting on the subject, it’s quite clear that Mardell is using the standard hack trick of “Some say…” to present his own opinion. We know he’s being disingenuous here. He’s said quite openly a number of times that he thinks it’s all about race. Using this dodge is a big phony act.
It is not that simple. Nearly all of the people I met were white and most middle-aged or older. But few were racist in the conventional sense.
The only time I have seen that in the raw, I was off duty, at a dinner party. A woman growing increasingly passionate as the wine flowed called Obama a “monkey” and said “he’s trying to give OUR money to THEM”.
Not the poor, not the shiftless, “them”.
Since the woman Mardell mocked earlier was a crypto-racist and didn’t openly make any racist statements, we have to assume that this is now two clear incidents – to him – of racism, out of the hundreds of thousands or people Mardell’s seen at Tea Party rallies and whatever political gatherings he visits. Yet on the strength of this he still demonizes the entire movement, still convinced that tens of millions of people are driven by racism and not legitimate policy concerns.
“They” are part of a different America, with a different history who want a different path for their country.
A millionaire in a designer chair in his plush Chicago home, surrounded by modern art, makes the same point as the broken-toothed men perched on smashed-up office furniture outside a beat-up shotgun house in Texas.
Next to me in the pew of a Florida church, the man with a trim grey beard and a “veterans for Obama badge” tells me the same thing.
These very different people all had one thing in common. They’re black. And that means they share a history and often they also share a perception of the present.
Black Americans up and down this huge country tell me Mr Obama didn’t create this mess, and he needs time to clear it up.
They know all about patience. They know all about clearing up other people’s mess. They know about being shut out of this country’s narrative.
There’s a black history month. It rather implies that for the other 11 months, it is white history that will have its way. With Mr Obama they feel that has changed, just a little.
And with that, Mardell moves from demonizing the opposition for caring only about the color of a man’s skin to declaring that we must re-elect a President simply because of the color of the man’s skin. It means a lot to black people to see one of their own as President, so we must dismiss all other concerns. He was only recently pushing that Narrative, in September 2012. (Even then he was still declaring that opposition to the President’s policies is really only objecting to redistributing wealth “to people not like us.”) This is racialist thinking at its finest. Anyone who watched the full video of Mardell’s appearance at the BBC CoJ will also have seen him admit that the President actually isn’t quite up to the job. In other words, we must keep a poor performer on simply because of the color of his skin. He’s not that competent, but it’s okay cos He is black. The soft racism of lowered expectations lives on at the BBC.
In the end, Mardell has learned nothing. He came here with a pre-conceived opinion, and steadfastly refused to let the evidence before him change his mind. His personal opinion remains unchanged, and informs all of his reporting. Since he’s the “North America editor”, his opinion also informs other aspects of BBC reporting on US issues.
Next, we can have a debate about what it means to have opinion in journalism, and how impartiality allows for it.
Jim’s having a bad week.
Try this for ‘opinionated’ from Mardell….it’s all the Republican’s fault….and their ideas are all bad:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20880795
‘Then again, disgruntled Republicans in the House could send it crashing to the ground, with a sickening thump….They can, however, afford to grandstand a little longer….. The Republicans look passionate but rudderless, mistaking ardour for strategy.’
That’s opinion, the kind of thing Jim wants in his journalism. As always, it’s the danger of the BBC having high-profile editorialists, where their opinion is more important than reporting facts on the ground. My point is about his definition of “opinionated”, where the protagonist sticks to a position no matter what.
David, why try to argue against people like Mr Dandy. They are not on this site to seek enlightenment. They are here specifically to engage you in interminable semantic obscuranticism. Tell the truth as you understand it and leave the people of the dark side to come to terms with their own destiny. Mr Dandy may not even know that he is on the wrong side; that’s his problem. He can’t say he didn’t know, when it comes to the final reckoning. And quite frankly, though I probably should, I couldn’t care less. I just hope I don’t have to encounter him in hell.
They are here specifically to engage you in interminable semantic obscuranticism.
Spot on John.
‘Jim’s having a bad week’
Make that an annus horribilus, at least so far.
I’m not even sure it’s him.
I don’t mean the odd alter ego that tries to poison an already pretty sour well pointlessly, but the style is all ‘off’.
It’s almost like a new year has installed a new shift, or at least upgrade to the Turing Machine in the Matrix, but v.2013.01 is well glitchy.
And few others from the flying circus circling as yet, bar one who has covered himself in… well… not glory.
It’s almost like budgets have not just been cut, but run out.
It will be interesting to see if any more activity ensues, at least of some decent calibre, to coincide with most of the BBC ‘news’ depts. (and certainly the entire senior editorial staff) getting back from the slopes to get their little Tarquins packed off the boarding school next week.
I was going to suggest they may not be happy with what the work experience kids did while they were away, but as there has been precious little change to the BBC ‘news’ output while they have been off, even with newsworthy events still happening, it rather makes one wonder what they do add once they get back… for the money.
‘Analysis’ that the new TUC Jolie-esque head vixen & Vordmanesque intellect is trotting out what Labour and the BBC need to be saying really only needs a copy typist. Which I guess is Nick ‘Sources Say’ Robinson’s level, so OK.
A long and detailed post for what David? We know that (a) Mardell is opinionated and it is clear, every week in his articles, no need to look further; (b) it is undeniable making Jim’s job impossible (if he tries to deny it).
As you say time and time again, he isn’t a North America editor, he is Obama/bash-Republicans editor. Nothing else gets a look in. As is evidenced by a large majority of the comments on his articles the readers haven’t got a clue what is going on…I guess this is what the BBC wants.
‘A long and detailed post for what David? ‘
Taking the point that the Red Boreon is now in spotlight heaven, when blowing the doors off his Tripe-plane really should not be the purview of site authors, I have to say that long and detailed post is pretty useful still to any dealing with CECUTT drones who kick off with ‘we are comfortable in our smug belief in the BBC-professed professional integrity of BBC Editors as being good enough in face of actual facts to dismiss any criticism’.
So still well worth it for some.
Don’t get me wrong, I do agree, just seems easier to tell JD to open his fucking eyes! 😉
John in Cheshire (above) hits the nail on the head
There are other Jim Dandy’s in the world who might need to see this collection of bias. Still, Jim claims to work in media at some level, and has recently not only approved of the BBC lying to the public in order to perpetuate an editorial policy with which he agrees, but also approved of what he perceived as Evan Davis being biased in favor of UKIP. Since he’s now said that he wants opinion in his journalism, but tried to make a distinction between that and – if I understood correctly – people who put opinion in the journalism but don’t change their mind in the face of evidence, it’s time to take this debate to the next stage. I’m not entirely sure I understand the difference he’s claiming.
It’s a discussion worth having, because it hits at the heart of the whole concept of BBC bias.
Is it not true that around 90% of blacks voted for Obama?
Why would that be?
Because they always vote for Democrats. The real test is how many of them voted for Him in the primaries over the old white lady. That’s where your racial voting evidence is.
Yes, blacks overwhelmingly vote for the Democrat hand-outs rather than the Republican hand-ups. But Gallup’s figures show
1992 (Clinton) 88% of black votes
1996 (Clinton) 96% of black votes
2000 (Gore) 95% of black votes
2004 (Kerry) 93% of black votes
2008 (Obama) 99% of black votes
Obviously something happened in 2008 to make black voters especially impressed by the policies of the Democrat candidate.
And just to contrast that with the votes of white people, Gallup’s figures for ‘non-Hispanic white’, a category they started using only in 1996:
1996 (Clinton) 44% of non-Hispanic white votes
2000 (Gore) 43% of non-Hispanic white votes
2004 (Kerry) 42% of non-Hispanic white votes
2008 (Obama) 44% of non-Hispanic white votes
Remember that these are the people who Mardell says are racists, with a slightly higher proportion of them voting for Obama than for the previous Democrat candidates!
Their racism must be really ‘crypto’.
You’re talking about a small percentage difference, really, not enough to convince the right-on thinkers.
The thing is, while people like Jim Dandy and the departed Nicked emus and Dez and the rest of them will scream bloody murder until the cows come home that you’re a racist for suggesting that blacks voted for The Obamessiah purely for racial reasons, it’s perfectly okay with them for Mark Mardell to say on more than one occasion that having Him as President is a positive signal to black people.
They do like to have it both ways.
The silence from the usual suspects is deafening.
David Preiser;
“September 15, 2009, when Mardell was barely a month into his new job:
‘Is race a factor in Obama protests?…’
He says he’s not passing comment, then gives his opinion anyway.”
The only opinion Mardell expresses is that given the history; “it would be strange if [race] now mattered not a jot”.
I seem to remember you saying you supported Cain because he would attract some of the ‘black’ vote. So you do actually agree that race is an issue?
“This is after he gives you a link to only one point of view from the vaunted NY Times: yes, opposition to the President is based on racism.”
He gives a link to the NY Times article (that ‘some’ opposition to Obama is based on race) but nowhere does he say he agrees with it.
“Yes, opposition to the President is based on racism”, is nothing more than your own invention.
“Just a couple of weeks later, Mardell eagerly reported that Jimmy Carter said that opposition to the President was due to racism. He then went out to try and find people to support that [supposition], but came away with only the suggestion that the African-American community thinks it’s all down to racism.”
You mean he finds one (white) person who calls President Carter’s allegation “arrogant” whilst asking; “how the president can peer inside his head.” (described as a “rather good point”)?
And another (black) person who thinks Carter was correct, although; “She cannot peer into the soul of the protesters, any more than President Carter can.”?
You say; “The President Himself said that He doesn’t think that’s the case, but Mardell believes He’s lying.”
Again, Mardell said nothing at all even resembling your assertion.
” ‘Tea Party seek purity and victory’… Mardell and the sub editor who wrote the title are actually referring to what they see as ideological purity regarding taxation and small government, but nobody with any intellectual honesty can claim that they don’t realize the not-so-subtle reference to the idea of racial purity espoused by actual white supremacists.”
“…but nobody with any intellectual honesty can claim…”
And this really is the end point of your argument; “I’m right because I’m right”.
Forgive me for not ploughing through the rest of your conspiracy grade nonsence… but when you are reduced to repeatedly arguing that when Mardell says he honestly doesn’t think the Tea Party is racist; what he ‘actually means’ is that the Tea Party is racist…
Then you have completely lost the plot.
Dez, you’ve already been discredited for your dishonesty on Mardell and racism. Let’s remind everyone of how you dishonestly elided his statement about it from that BBC CoJ video and twisted reality, shall we? And you’ve still never addressed the fact that you don’t understand the meaning of “crypto-racism”.
You similarly declared my post unworthy of reading in its entirety and ran off satisfied with yourself without doing so or dealing with any of the rest of my points. I’m not sure why I should even bother addressing your comment now, but here goes anyway.
I said that Mardell wrote that he wasn’t passing comment, but then passed comment anyway, and you said:
The only opinion Mardell expresses is that given the history; “it would be strange if [race] now mattered not a jot”.
Which is what I said he did: give his opinion. Whether or not you agree with his opinion isn’t the point. Don’t you get that? My point was that Mardell claimed he wasn’t giving an opinion, but then gave an opinion. Yet you think you’ve proven me wrong by pointing out that Mardell gave an opinion?
I seem to remember you saying you supported Cain because he would attract some of the ‘black’ vote. So you do actually agree that race is an issue?
Yes, it is an issue – to people like Mardell and the Left-wing media who like to claim that all opposition to the President is because of His skin color. Don’t you get it? Having Herman Cain as the candidate would have removed that weapon from their arsenal. His rise to the top of the polls before that alleged affair hit the news and his candidacy was torpedoed was evidence that the Tea Party was not as racist as advertised, and it’s a shame that someone with a clue about business and wasn’t a religion-first-and-only guy had to drop out.
Now, If he hadn’t been a rocket scientist (mathematician?) for the Navy, a successful businessman, and had experience on the Federal Reserve Board of Kansas, I wouldn’t have supported him. I certainly wouldn’t want an incompetent as President simply because he was a minority and wasn’t it about time we had…, etc. I’ll leave that mistake for the Democrats. But it’s perfectly reasonable – and honest – to say that Herman Cain’s race would have been the icing on the cake of his candidacy. It was not, nor should it have been, anything close to the primary reason for supporting him.
“This is after he gives you a link to only one point of view from the vaunted NY Times: yes, opposition to the President is based on racism.”
He gives a link to the NY Times article (that ‘some’ opposition to Obama is based on race) but nowhere does he say he agrees with it.
He doesn’t have to say he agrees with it. Mardell already expressed his opinion, then appealed to Maureen Dowd to support it. He never links to an op-ed piece saying the opposite, does he? Only one side of the argument is offered.
“Yes, opposition to the President is based on racism”, is nothing more than your own invention.
No, it’s Mardell’s claim, not mine. Mardell always seems to qualify the Tea Party position against wealth redistribution by saying they really mean wealth distribution “to people not like them”. He’s established a pattern, which I’ve laid out in my post. Since you continue to refuse to read things, you don’t really have a right to pass judgment.
“Just a couple of weeks later, Mardell eagerly reported that Jimmy Carter said that opposition to the President was due to racism. He then went out to try and find people to support that [supposition], but came away with only the suggestion that the African-American community thinks it’s all down to racism.”
You mean he finds one (white) person who calls President Carter’s allegation “arrogant” whilst asking; “how the president can peer inside his head.” (described as a “rather good point”)?
And another (black) person who thinks Carter was correct, although; “She cannot peer into the soul of the protesters, any more than President Carter can.”?
You say; “The President Himself said that He doesn’t think that’s the case, but Mardell believes He’s lying.”
Again, Mardell said nothing at all even resembling your assertion.
Yes, he did. Mardell declared that the President “would rather not get caught in the spray” of the whole argument about opposition to His policies being due to racism. As I pointed out, the President has said that He doesn’t think that’s the case. Mardell’s choice of words suggests that he doesn’t believe the President and thinks He’s just (wisely, I guess) staying out of that argument. Mardell is reading His mind there, right after saying that others aren’t able to do that.
Then I give other examples of Mardell peering into people souls. Which you admit you didn’t bother reading. Your argument is one of someone who skimmed through only the first chapter of a book and then threw it down declaring the ending to be just as bad.
You seem to have abandoned your efforts at the bit about “purity”. It’s clear from your past performance and your blinkered ramblings here that you are intellectually dishonest and now can’t even address my point about Mardell’s deliberate choice of that word.
Time for you to give up on this blog, Dez. You’re thoroughly discredited. You won’t read the evidence before you, and you either twist it or misrepresent it when you deign to spend a moment on lesser beings like myself. I know you come here for the laughs and to feel superior to us, but really, doesn’t that say more about you than it does us? Aren’t there other sites that would benefit from your wisdom and keen insights?
I don’t know what 2013 has done to the Flokk, but across the board it like they have been ravaged by the mange and can barely muster a decent attempt on any basis, cherry or straw, much less actual factual counter which, as you have rather eloquently fisked as far as the attempt went, is more often than not a non-starter (or at least fail-to-completer) anyway.
I have long wondered what the motivations for coming to this blog are for these guys.
Ignoring professional vs. personal, if it were to correct error or even to posit sincerely held alternative views they would be more than welcome, as it’s only by being tested that anything can improve.
But 99% default contrarianism is simply facile.
And if laughs are gained by getting pwned over and over then that suggests masochism erring on mental issues that need help.
Hypocritical, logic-lite ‘nonsence’ still, but to be pitied more than anything. However I doubt in some quarters deemed anything like enough to give up; look at the precedent the BBC sets all the way to the very top.
The first sentence must be a contender for a 2013 plain English award.
http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/awards/golden-bull-awards/golden-bull-winners-2012.html
That this is all you can muster in response certainly scores another for irony failure. Your first outing here for the New Year and it’s as a grammar Nazi. Have to love the need to post the URL, too.
I made the mistake of starting to look at this site again after a few months away. No change — as appallingly fruitless and meaningless as ever! Instead of overly long mostly crappy observations of people like Mardell, and interminable “semantic” arguments leading nowhere, why don’t you all start lobbying your MP’s to get the bbc out of the news game?
‘I made the mistake of starting to look at this site again after a few months away. No change’
Welcome BK!
Beg to differ on the lack of change.
If I am not mistaken you appear to have moved from looking to commenting (if rather fecal for a first effort) which as a reward for lack of fruit or meaning is novel in progression.