. In typical Neverdock style he writes:
BBC ignoring huge US political scandal, because it involves a Democrat
MSM and the US blogsphere are on fire with Democrat John Kerry’s attack on our troops. The BBC, who report with out fail on any misstep by Bush, are silent on Kerry’s attack. The only mention I could find about the scandal engulfing the Democrats, wasn’t on the front page but, buried on the world page on the editors blog. Even then, the BBC tries to downplay the scandal.
As the president was telling the good people of Texas that the Democrats did not want to win in Iraq, his former rival was in California insulting the troops.
Or so Mr Bush and his spokesman would have us believe.
Well, moron, let’s let Flipper speak for himself.
There’s not much to add to that, other than to note that the Beeboid, Richard Greene, does go on to add:
And when you review Mr Kerry’s comment, it’s hard to argue.
So, Beeboids one and all, just why isn’t this huge Kerry gaffe being covered in your reports of the US mid-term election campaign?
It is being covered. I heard it on the Today programme this morning with both Kerry’s original remark and Bush’s response in full audio.
(I work for the BBC).
Thank you for your update Nick. I’ve been watching the intellectually vacuous BBC Breakfast show on BBC1 since about 7.30am until now, 9am, and it’s not been mentioned once, not even in the news headlines. If it was a Bush gaffe I’d happily bet that it’d have been shown several times every hour!
We shall see how much airtime it gets on the rest of the BBC today. Please report any more sightings…
Ah Nick, technically it is being covered but in effect the BBC have sidelined it.
I listened to much of the Today programme this morning but didn’t hear it, meaning that it was not a significant feature. Instead I heard much on Iraq (again). And Nick, you just know that if Bush had said something like this, it would be all over the Today programme.
Interestingly, on the Classic FM news it was in the headlines at 9am.
Why would it be on the front page? Sure the congressional elections overall are potentially a big story if the result effectively locks up the rest of Bush’s presidency, but US party politics is such a chimp’s tea party that I can’t see why the British public would be that interested in the minutae.
Was that Republican bloke who was hassling the work experience BBC front page news? If so then it does look biased. If not then it’s been aptly buried somewhere for the hardcore.
Has anyone, other than you, mentioned ‘front page’ Cockney?
The Kerry gaffe was just covered on BBC News Twenty-Bore – the original Kerry clip, followed by a Bush rejoinder, followed by Kerry refusing to apologise – so it seems there is hope yet for the rest of the BBC to do what BBC Breakfast didn’t and BBC News Online hasn’t (yet).
Cockney “Why would it be on the front page? “
As the blog entry states, up to the early hours of this morning the Kerry mis-speak did not even warrant a news report in the Americas page of BBC Online. That was many hours after the orginal story broke.
Come on, you are a fair minded fellow, admit that the BBC were downplaying the incident.
That was many hours after the orginal story broke.
Marc’s blog had the item yesterday afternoon
posted by Marc @ 3:58 PM
The story has now made second place on BBC News Online’s Americas page, where it is headlined Kerry under fire for Iraq ‘joke’.
Some joke! Interestingly, in the linked clip, James Westhead introduces it as “a terrible gaffe by Senator John Kerry”, and concludes with “Democrats have told us they wish that the Senator would just shut up, they said he lost us the last election, he seems to be trying to lose us this one too”, which is far from BBC News Online’s take on events.
Why should this be BBC front page news?
I’m convinced that John Kerry really meant what he said he meant that the Bush administration didn’t do enough homework before entering Iraq (NB John Kerry voted in favour at the time).
Anyone who speaks in public occasionally makes an ambiguous, inappropriate or tactless remark. After so many years I’m amazed that he didn’t know how to get out this gracefully e.g. I can see how my remark could unintentionally be seen as insulting US troops :o( (cue flag waving). In retrospect I can see how I should have phrased myself more carefully. Isn’t he important enough to have someone check his speeches for gaffes like that?
However to say that this was a BBC front page moment, nah. This blog has shown so many cases of BBC bias that picking examples is like shhooting fish in a barrel. Why bother baiting our hook and heading to the sea for this one?
Marc’s post reads “The only mention I could find about the scandal engulfing the Democrats, wasn’t on the front page but buried on the world page on the editors blog” which to my mind implies that he at least felt it should be??
As I said it should be reported in the same way as other ‘scandals’ to have befallen the Republicans, but if you ask me it’s all a crock of sh*t. Don’t Americans vote on the economy, policy and records of achievement in office??
degree However to say that this was a BBC front page moment,nah.
What’s all this front page nonsense? The point is that the BBC failed to post any news report on the subject for the best part of 24 hours.
I agree with degree that Kerry could have got himself out of this mess with a decrnt apology to the troops.
That he didn’t is typical of the pompous, arrogant man.
Those qualities of his were responsible for him to consider himself a potential nominee for president in ’08.
This incident should cause him to realise that he will get no support for that ambition & consequently that makes this story the more important.
deegee,
The BBC ‘reports’ Bush and other GOPer gaffes as news so why not Kerry’s?
George Bush’s so-called “admission” that there were parallels between the Tet Offensive and the situation in Iraq was all over the headlines in about ten seconds flat.
Hang on. How is Kerry attacking US troops? It’s clear he’s attacking George Bush. Basically implying that as someone who didn’t study hard he’s ended up bogging the country down in the Iraq Wat.
The “blogosphere” may be on fire, but lets remember the greatest achievement of the “5th Estate” to date.
SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!! OMG LMAO!!!!eleven
“Hang on. How is Kerry attacking US troops? It’s clear he’s attacking George Bush. Basically implying that as someone who didn’t study hard he’s ended up bogging the country down in the Iraq Wat”
I guess you hear what you want to hear.
It has made it to the Americas page – but only as second feature to somebody from Guatemala being extradited from Mexico, which is clearly of great import!
Actually I see the guy’s name is Portillo, so maybe this is why the headline is not so far away from being “Portillo to be extradited”.
NB no relation
Anon It’s clear he’s attacking George Bush.
Whist one can understand that Kerry was intending to make remarks about the Bush adminstration, it isn’t possible to claim that his remarks were “clear”. Even Kerry has about admitted that.
The clear lack of clarity has caused leading Democrat politicians to tell him to shut up (listen to the James Coomarasamy report on the BBC’s online page) & for MSM commentators on US network news to state that Kerry’s presidential ambitions are washed up.
Hang on. How is Kerry attacking US troops? It’s clear he’s attacking George Bush. Basically implying that as someone who didn’t study hard he’s ended up bogging the country down in the Iraq Wat.
Oh phooey. Not even that 8 foot streak of traitorous piss, John Kerry, would attack Bush by mistakenly making such an explicit attack on US troops. He shat on his comrades in Nam, he shat on them again after Nam, he shat on them yet again when he tried to become President and he’s still doing it now. He’s an East Coast Democrat, a man born to money who made even more money by marrying into it. He believes power is his by right simply because of who he is. In short, he’s a liberal who despises working class America.
Even if you were right with your second sentence you’d still be wrong. Bush earned a degree in history from Yale University in 1968, became a fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard and followed it up with an MBA from Harvard. Not bad for someone who “didn’t study hard enough”.
Pete_London “He’s an East Coast Democrat, a man born to money who made even more money by marrying into it”
Yes they do appear to be a breed apart, don’t they? Channel4’s Jon Snow appears generally contemptuous of the US, yet spends every summer on Cape Cod.
‘Hang on. How is Kerry attacking US troops? It’s clear he’s attacking George Bush. Basically implying that as someone who didn’t study hard he’s ended up bogging the country down in the Iraq Wat.’
He forgot the punchline to his ‘joke’ which is what turned it from an attack on the military to one on Bush.
‘The “blogosphere” may be on fire, but lets remember the greatest achievement of the “5th Estate” to date.
SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!! OMG LMAO!!!!eleven’
Did you miss Rathergate, fauxtography, and the Swiftboaters to name just a few?
“Or so Mr Bush and his spokesman would have us believe.”
This comment from the BBC’s article was completely out of place. To me this would suggest that Bush was lying, but when you listen to Kerry’s comment you will notice that Bush is entirely right.
If Kerry wants to make a joke about Bush, he should know better than to make a joke that can be related to our troops since Kerry doesn’t specify who he is talking about.
Isen’t Kerry “well educated” according to his own speech, so maybe he should use his so called “knowledge” to make better speeches that are more clear and that do not insult our troops.
Sure he specified at another speech that he was talking about Bush, but that could be because he knew that insulting our troops would not help his party, so in reality we will never know for sure who was Kerry talking about in his speech.
Just a reminder that Kerry went to Paris and had secret meetings with the Viet Cong while he was still a US Naval Officer during a time of war, so on that note I wouldn’t doubt that he was more than willing to insult our troops, since his actions have proven that he is more than willing to take sides with the enemy of the US.
who’d a thinked it…
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/kerry_iq_lower.htm
And Bush got better grades than Kerry at university too!
“Hang on. How is Kerry attacking US troops? It’s clear he’s attacking George Bush. Basically implying that as someone who didn’t study hard he’s ended up bogging the country down in the Iraq Wat.”
But he’d have to be pretty stupid to do that, since Bush made higher grades at Yale than Kerry did.
“…US party politics is such a chimp’s tea party…”
I suppose it takes one to recognize this.
US troops in Iraq have a message for Kerry:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=23178_A_Message_to_John_Kerry_from_Iraq&only
You can always rely on the soldiers on the ground to show up the so called elite who think they are so superior…. ! Well done the troops!
It’s clear he’s attacking George Bush.
I believe he was attacking Bush, since that’s the number one arrow in the Democrat quiver (HA HA! BUSH IS DUM!!1!). But he muffed it.
Perhaps what many of you don’t know is rather than clarifying and apologizing right away, he issued a humdinger of a statement referring to “assorted right-wing nut jobs”, “despicable Republican attacks”, “doughy Rush Limbaugh”, “Katrina foreign policy” (er, huh?) etc. That’s what turned this from mere righty-blog fodder to national news.
I, for one, would like to see more of this sort of thing. I want to see one from the Republican side. It’d be the best election in years!
While we’re on the subject of Iraq, this story just broke on AP:
Gunmen abducted a top Iraqi basketball official and a blind athletic coach, both Sunnis, on Wednesday, a day after U.S. and Iraqi forces lifted a blockade on Baghdad’s Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City.The attack took place at a youth club on relatively prosperous Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad near the Sadr City district, which is controlled by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
These two were the only Sunnis in the building and the blind athletic coach was training seven blind Shia athletes at the time. Mindless!
God knows how bad it might get if the MSM ever gets it’s way and manages to get us and the US to abandon the country.
Cape Cod in summer — Provincetown especially — is well known for its promiscuous gay “lifestyle”.
Jon Snow is a stew of warring pathologies, guilt-ridden nearly beyond parody. Are his Cape Cod jaunts part of the reason?
What nobody here seems to have said yet is that it is typical of the American hard left – what these days are called the Kossacks – to treat the Army as the employer of last resort, for people who could not make it anywhere else. I heard it long ago from the (brilliant, but virulently left-wing) singer Michelle Shocked. It is a widespread prejudice, and quite false – you need a high school diploma even to enlist. So, everyone, what Kerry was doing was appealing to a nasty little prejudice. It was like making jokes about “hook-nosed Jewish financiers” or “rednecks marrying their sisters” or “lazy niggers”. And he knew perfectly well what he was doing. The small and uncertain burst of laughter from his audience – when he was clearly counting on them hooting – also shows that they were aware of how objectionable, mindless and false his gag was. As for his intending it for George W.-Bush – not even John Kerry is so bad a public speaker. He meant it for the Army. And he was heard.
Whichever way he meant it, it’s good to know that he can make jokes about Iraq. I mean, the war has only cost over 655,000 lives so far, right!
😉
Because BIllquiz Bush would NEVER joke about Iraq would he?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3570845.stm
Actually most of the soldiers etc over there joke ALL the time as it is the only way to chill ….and the example given was aimed as a joke, AND accepted as a joke by the White House Press pack (most of whom are anti Bush anyway). Only the BBC seems to find it tasteless in the cold light of day.
Big difference twixt Kerry slagging off the Forces as he has been doing for decades now. Still wondering how he wangled 3 Purple Hearts to get out of Nam especially when he volunteered for Swift Boats on the understanding that he WOULDN’T be deployed to Nam and when the Navy changed their minds and sent them look how fast he wangled his exit ticket. Kerry then lead the Winter Soldiers who claimed the Army was raping killing and acting like Ghengis Khan. Funny how most of the Winter Soldiers turned out not to have either served or even BEEN in Nam….
Thunk yew Jon Carry for yer support…just don’t question his patriotism!
dave t… “Thunk yew Jon Carry for yer support…just don’t question his patriotism!”
I don’t question his patriotism… I question his intelligence ;).
I wonder which is worse? cocking-up a joke. Or cocking-up a war?
I think cooking up a dictator like Saddam is much better 🙂
not all intended jokes are funny, especially if they come from someone who has called the veterans baby killers and who had secret meetings with the Viet Kong in Paris while he was still a US Naval officer.
It’s just not funny when someone who has taken sides with the anti-war cause that helped the enemy (the Viet Kong) to achieve victory, comes around trying to make jokes, who are just not funny.
Have a giggle if you will Anon, but be sure that John Kerry is not willing to defend your freedom, instead he is willing to make fun of those who do defend your freedom and the democracy you enjoy (and that refers to the troops or the President).