BBC correspondent Katty Kay has a good laugh at Arnie the Terminator, wacky Californian delis, joke candidates and so on. She probably thinks she’s being impartial because she freely admits the incumbent Democrat, Gray Davis, is likely to lose.
“Arnie appears to have been given something of a free pass precisely because he is a film star and not a politician.
“Which, in the end, may be precisely the reason that Californians elect him over their very experienced but rather wooden governor.
“Which takes me to Gray Davis.
“What is it about this slim, silver-haired politician that Californians hate so much? “
Let me see… could it be the financial, energy and sleaze crises that have marked his administration? Not according to Kay. It can only be because he is a wooden public speaker. No doubt there are many funny and foolish aspects to the California gubernatorial election – but I am surprised that Katty Kay cannot even manage one word about the substantial reasons that one million Californians might have had for petitioning to recall Gray Davis before Arnie’s candidature was ever heard of.
If this were a case of explaining the odd customs of an obscure tribe the BBC would make a creditable attempt to dig beneath the surface to make apparently strange behaviours comprehensible. However when it comes to the democratic process in the largest state of the world’s most powerful democracy the only motives Kay ascribes to those she reports on are frivolous ones.
So, Katty Kay actually is a BBC reporter. She regularly appears on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show here in the US, and her comments are so inane on the show that my wife and I have often questioned her credentials.
Pathetic jibe in tonight’s Six O’Clock News as well. Opening sequence shows the Austrian One meeting some surfer dudes, while the V/O comments that it’s ‘an unusual stop for a right-wing politician’.
Like, totally. Everyone knows Conservatives aren’t hip’n’kewl enough to surf.