That’s one reason I can think of for this BBCi headline.
BBC: Reagan had ‘evil sex’ angst
Compare this with ABC and Time.
ABC: The Reagan Letters
Time Magazine: The Real Reagan
Of course, it couldn’t be a commercial motive since the Beeb is “above it all” and the license fee keeps the larder well-stocked. Another less charitable possibility springs to mind: a visceral reaction to the man and what he stands for. So, in an article about a new Reagan book which features 1,000 of his handwritten letters, why does the BBC lead with such a stinky headline? My guess is that they do not wish to deal with the other substantive issues in the book which highlight something many leftist elites do not wish to acknowledge–that Ronald Reagan’s vision of freedom has been largely vindicated. And if they cannot discredit Reagan’s record, why not trivialize it?
ABC News is neither pro-Reagan nor non-commercial but it at least gives Reagan’s book a fair shake. BBC small-mindedness plummets lower by the day. Go ahead and compare what the BBC writes about the Reagan book with the ABC News article. As I look back over the BBC article, it’s really not all that bad, but the headline is very misleading. Here is the ABC News piece with the letter from which the Beeb plucked its verbal noogie. (Reagan’s words are italicized.)
Perhaps the most surprising letter in the collection is one that Reagan wrote in 1951 to Florence Yerly, an old friend from his hometown in Illinois. Florence had just been through a bitter divorce, and wrote to Reagan that she was giving up men ?— permanently. Reagan told her she was making a big mistake. He explained why it was important that she have a man in her life. And then he explained the importance of love and sex.
My personal belief is that God couldn’t create evil so the desires he planted in us are good and the physical relationship between a man and a woman is the highest form of companionship. If I can, I want to say all this to my daughter. I want her to know that nothing between her and the man she loves can be wrong or obscene, that desire in itself is normal and right. The world is full of lonely people — people capable of giving happiness and love is not a magic touch of cosmic dust that preordains two people and two people only for each other. Love can grow slowly out of warmth and companionship and none of us should be afraid to seek it.
As he closed the letter, Reagan admitted to feeling a bit queasy about giving such explicit advice:Now I’m going to seal this letter very quickly and mail it because if I read it over I won’t have the nerve to send it.
Have a look at the Time cover article here.
Yes; the BBC acts once again for ratings and the propaganda value which is what makes News gathering so rewarding. Ok, ABC are addressing Americans, while the BBC is trying to interest Brits in a former American President, but why not ‘Reagan Letters Published’?
Of course, it would be foolish to imagine that the message of such a story isn’t multi-facetted, targetting several audiences while covering its own tracks (I believe that’s how BBC journalists deal with the question of ‘impartiality’).
The main thrust of the story must I think be the first paragraph plus the middle two fifths. I imagine how this would play to the trendy-twenties (I am loosely one of that kind) and I think that quoted phrases like ‘kind old gentleman’ and the statement that ‘Mr Reagan advised one old friend in 1951 that sex was a natural function’ would raise a knowing look and a laugh- it’s prudish, narrow, simplistic, and, how close was the friend by the way? (Not my view, just a perception).
The really interesting part is made secondary: the relationship with Brezhnev, the negotiation with Gorbachev. Even there, Reagan is made to appear naive- that is the real message. For Reagan read Bush read Neo-Conservatism read non-Democrat/Green America. Politics, Politics, Politics- all the way with the imperial (sorry, I meant to say impartial) BBC.
To me this story links with others that have tried to portray Conservatism (small or big C) as a mindset with discernible characteristics that could be described as mental/pscycological aberrations. Stories that say things like… ‘Scientists declare Right-Wing views a product of’ X, Y or Z, from a lack parental contact to sexual disorders, while Left Wing polemicists like Michael Moore step in and follow up the mayhem. Now, of course, The BBC would never try to smear a man suffering from Alzheimer’s, just as they wouldn’t have wanted Alastair Campbell to seem derranged in his recent actions just because he had previously suffered clinical depression. Of course they wouldn’t.
I expect when Jessi Lynch’s biography comes out, the BBC will emphasise the parts of it which confirm their worldview.
I read this article on the morning it was published,and i can only say it severly scr***d up my early-morning bliss.Over the years i have become a great fan of the bbc,but all this sympathie has eveporated over the past couple of months.
Kill the license-fee and force them to comply to market-rules.
Evil? Are they kidding? They should be lucky to be nearly HALF as capable of having that kind of healthy intimacy!
They used that quote and came to the conclusion that they had in the deadline – my god! They aren’t just mendacious, but I doubt that the authors could ever actually be loved themselves!