Hate President Bush ? Got a new record out ? The Today Programme can meet all your UK publicity requirements – just ask Patti Smith.
Presenter (RealAudio) – “Ry Cooder, I’ve never heard of you, but our editor listened to ‘Bop Till You Drop’ a lot back in 1980. Would you like five minutes to abuse President Bush ?”
Cooder – “Why, thank you … I don’t know anyone who doesn’t hate George Bush … two stolen elections … America is a junk-food diner and Bush is the head waiter …”
Presenter – “Thank you very much”
The above may not be a verbatim transcript. But it ‘illustrates a wider truth’.
UPDATE – commenter anonanon offers up some more of Today’s Greatest Hits:
“Which historical figures make President Bush look good by comparison ? The Ceasars, Hitler, Stalin – that’s, anyway, according to the composer Randy Newman whose latest song ‘A Few Words in Defence of Our Country’ has just been released on iTunes. He spoke to our reporter Sanchia Berg …”
“That was a Burt Bacharach song. The king of easy listening music has joined the ranks of musicians queuing up to write anti-George Bush songs …”
“But what makes a great protest song ? One man who should know is the singer-songwriter John Prine. He wrote one of America’s best-known anti-Vietnam war songs. 35 years on he’s turned his attention to Iraq. Mark Coles caught up with him on his British tour …”
Nice to see the BBC reflecting mainstream US opinion.
Putting a Bush critic on your radio show isn’t an act of bias, it’s what most Americans think.
Check out Bush’s disapproval ratings: they’re running at around 60%.
http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm
And it’s not as if Bush-lovers like David Frum never get invited on to British stations.
This was on Womans Hour last week
Still singing and still protesting
Forty years ago, she was protesting about the Vietnam War; nearly forty years on she performed outside George W Bush’s Texas ranch to protest against the war in Iraq. She’s just released a new album and she’s about to start a tour of the UK.
Legendary protest singer Joan Baez joins Martha to talk about her life, her politics and her music.
Anyone under 60 is probably saying “Joan Who?” and rightly so but not the BBC.
Listen to these two old ladies here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/01/2007_08_fri.shtml
A few more featured artists from the Today programme, all with a common theme –
“Which historical figures make President Bush look good by comparison? The Ceasars, Hitler, Stalin – that’s, anyway, according to the composer Randy Newman whose latest song “A Few Words in Defence of Our Country” has just been released on iTunes. He spoke to our reporter Sanchia Berg…”
“That was a Burt Bacharach song. The king of easy listening music has joined the ranks of musicians queuing up to write anti-George Bush songs…”
“But what makes a great protest song? One man who should know is the singer-songwriter John Prine. He wrote one of America’s best-known anti-Vietnam war songs. 35 years on he’s turned his attention to Iraq. Mark Coles caught up with him on his British tour…”
SiN and Anon:
But wait,according to Kirsten Brown of Demos, Helen Mirren getting her Oscar and the Bollywood darling winng BB,are small step along the road to world peace:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6403643.stm
Remembering Demo’s is an:
“Independent think tank and research institute, believed to influence the policies of Tony Blair’s government. Considered a centre of “Third Way” ideas”.
http://www.demos.co.uk/
Need I say more……
Dixiechick:
Ah, ok, the bbc is right to ‘reflect majority opinion’. Must just be pure coincidence that it only does so when ‘majority opinion’ conforms to their own in-house requirements. Dont hold yr breath waiting for them to reflect majority opinion on such things as: the death penalty, EU human rights law, what to do with foreign terrorist suspects, immigration…
dixiechick writes:
“And it’s not as if Bush-lovers like David Frum never get invited on to British stations.”
Oh, come off it! And who else besides Frum, eh?
And you can forget the specious ratings argument. The BBC was airing Bush-haters in a ratio of umptyzillion to one when Bush was in the process of winning elections.
Indeed, the decline in Bush’s popularity is, no doubt, at least in part, the result of the relentless drip, drip Chinese water torture effect applied by your media – much as attitudes here to Margaret Thatcher were absorbed by osmosis, when the mass ranked of luvviedom and the media decded to demonise her.
Don’t matter..the BBC is being increasingly ignored around the world….it is seen as stale, and of “Empire”.
People don’t like being told what to think by the British Empire anymore. Hence, people are turning away from the Beebs bleatings in record numbers.
Why, only 30% of people have bothered to renew their licence fees since the Beeb stoped doing it through the post office……..they are running scared. lol. Panic has set in……hence, they get ever more desperate with their propaganda screeching.
60%? Historically that’s quite high for a supposedly lame duck president in the last half of his second term. I remmeber when it dropped all the way to 40% a couple of years ago. In fact, every time there’s a percentage drop in his approval ratings the media trumpets it like it’s a disaster for Bush, but then it starts going up again and they go quiet.
What was Clinton’s rating at this point in his presidency? I recall something about it being about 30%…
And John Reith had the gall to argue here last week that BBC News doesn’t portray G W Bush as a hateful clownish figure.
Archonix – that’s 60+% disapproval.
The Beeb’s problem is that in the last couple of years most reasonably impartial observers would agree that the Bush administration’s performance has degenerated into inadequacy, but it’s impossible to tell the difference in the coverage because this was always portrayed as the case. A case of crying wolf.
Bush’s administration has indeed been poor over the last year or two – but the media criticism has been entirely of his foreign policy. I would say that his failed policies on immigration and his penchant for central government are both valid criticisms, but we only ever hear about Iraq. On this subject Bush has had an almost impossible task with opposition from his own party, an opposition determined to act against the national interest and a hostile press. Bush is one of the few people who understand the issues in the Middle East, and together with John Howard, the only major leader willing to stand up to Ahmadinejad and radical Islamism. It is a shame he does not have enough power or credibility to act on it. The world will suffer as a result.
Robbiekeane:
Archonix – that’s 60+% disapproval.
Oh boy, is my face red. Or blue.
Of course, it does depend on how you massage the figures, and it’s a given that at least a portion of that 60% might not bde disaproval so much as merely not caring, but on the face of it that’s still probably 40% approval. Probably.
nope
approve 34%
disapprove 60%
unsure 2%
True enough, but ‘disapproval’ doesn’t imply approval of any particular policy. Plenty of folks on the Right are disgusted by Bush’s weakness on immigration, spending and the war, to name but three topics. There’s no evidence at all that mainstream opinion in the US supports cutting and running in Iraq, for example. Anything but, in fact, to judge by how the Democrats have backed away from their rhetoric of a month ago.
The irony is that so many of these leftist singer-songwriters still regard themselves as anti-establishment, when in reality they have no problem accessing the MSM to promote their views. Compare this with a band like Stuck Mojo and their song ‘Open Season’ which unapologetically defies Islamic terrorism. Over 200,000 people have watched the versions currently available on YouTube, and it can be downloaded for free on the band’s website. Now THAT’S a protest song – but not one we’ll ever hear Naughtie, Stourton, Humphrys or Montaquinn introducing on Today.
Hmmmm…
I’m afraid that it is just the Beeb that have a panache for creating a clown like figure:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/03/01/do0101.xml
Right wing in the UK?
Where?
While I’m no great fan of GW, it’s curious that if he was the leader of the Labour party, his approval ratings (extended party wide) would be enough for him to win a majority in parliament – Labour won only 35% of the votes cast during th last election, yet formed a majority government.
As somebody who lives outside the UK, I think GWB has become a “Goldstien” figure to represtent “your” hatred of America.
The conservative KKK “backward” America.
Evil warmongering, child killing America
Hateful
Instead embrace the Harvard,mainly white,rich,New England and Hollywood “middle America”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6401865.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6391891.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6194840.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/6403595.stm
Can you spot the odd one out? I can’t really….
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
INGSOC
RobbieKean
A lot of people would disagree with you on the Bush economic policy. The US is doing rather well on that.
David S:
Bush’s 2.5% margin over Kerry according to the BBC was ‘close’, Blair’s 3% margin over Howard wasn’t.
Also contrast the BBC’s reporting of how the system won Bush his first election but not how 35% of the vote got Labour 55% of the seats.
No discussion of the Today programme and James Naughtie would be complete without the traditional link to:
[audio src="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/observer/archives/JamesNaughtieWinningtheElec.mp3" /]
Re. IngSoc is doublethink | 01.03.07 – 4:49 pm
From Matt Frei’s profile of Al Gore:
The writer Gore Vidal, who says he is related to the former vice-president, once told me that the young Al was funny, sensitive and had a passion – and talent – for painting.
Are there any Democrat notables Vidal doesn’t claim as family?
The photo-caption accompanying the piece: “Is post-Katrina America more inclined to think about global warming?”
No hurricanes made landfall in the US in 2006 – a fact airbrushed from history already, it would seem.
And here we go with the polls again, I expect that the polls for the next two years until election will be manipulated greatly and reflect exactly what the MSM favors, the left.
As for President Bush’s approval or disapproval, I think it had to do with the fact that the war on Iraq should be more agressive on the Allied part. It is not that Americans disagree with the Iraq war, it is that we expected it to be much more agressive against terrorism, like for example with much more air strikes and air support for our troops. But of course, we can’t expect much of that with the bashing and hate-speech of the MSM, and now even less with the Dems trying to cut funding.
The economy of the US is going quite well, and the unemployment rate has significantly lowered when compared to post 9/11.
As for immigration, I still remember how Bush proposed a workers’ program more than a year ago, but the Dems in Congress didn’t support it. Of course, the MSM forgot all about this for the Congress elections in 2006, but I remember quite well that after Katrina, Bush gave a televised speech in New Orleans and he talked about the workers’ program for immigrants.
Honestly, even though I would have liked for the War on Terror to be much more agressive, I think President Bush was the best choice and he has done a quite effective job. I would have liked Ronald Reagan (RIP) but that would not be possible.
I can tell you this though, we would be in a lot of trouble had Al Gore or Kerry been elected, and we will be in a lot of trouble if Hillary Clinton or Obama get elected. She is no Margaret Thatcher, and she can’t even reach the shoe sole of Condoleeza Rice, and he, please ha ha ha, don’t get me started.
A case study in todays biased article:
http://jeffnation.blogspot.com/
Diana | 01.03.07 – 5:47 pm |
Perhaps you know this. Did they ever find out who killed that journalist, found dead on a White House lawn, during the Clinton administration. The one who was investigating Hillary’s finances.
Just found this site . Can’t be true surely?
Sorry OT but never aired on the Beeb?
The Fat Contractor
the White Water scandal rings many bells, but it was silenced by the Lewinsky scandal, which in my opinion was just a cover-up of the Clintons so that they wouldn’t get caught money laundering which they could be sent to jail for.
Sadly for me I was in Cuba back then, so I don’t have much reference on it. I never liked Clinton when I was in Cuba, he lied just like Castro and the communists lie.
Clinton had the chance to make a South Cuba like South Korea with the cuban balseros in 1994, but instead he made the stupid Wet Foot/Dry foot policy, so the cuban rafters that are able to escape Cuba get deported back to Cuba (probably to face imprisionment there) if they are found at sea rather than on US soil.
Imagine skyscrappers coming from the US Guantanamo base, built by cubans and Americans in a system of economic and political freedom, surely the communist regime wouldn’t be able to hide that from the cuban population.
and the BBC keep calling Castro president, president of what, he’s never held free elections and there is only one political party in Cuba, everything else is banned. Dictator and tyrant is more like it, but that’s too much for Al-Beeb.
TJ
“The US meeting with Syria and Iran may be the lifeboat that gets the US out of Iraq with some success and some moral gains. ”
“It is late. Washington has resisted a regional solution to the debacle the US created in Iraq for far too long, but better now than never.”
“Western media highlighted Iranian agreement to attend the conference in an attempt to include it on the list of US achievements. The reality differs from what the Americans would like the world to believe. ”
“They also hope Tehran and Washington can reach a comprehensive agreement. ”
Maybe that isn’t ‘caution’ in your book, but it isn’t “slander” in anyone’s.
“Putting a Bush critic on your radio show isn’t an act of bias, it’s what most Americans think.
Check out Bush’s disapproval ratings: they’re running at around 60%.”
What a joke, the BBC was hating George Bush when he had an 80% approval rating. Good luck to you BBC lovers but why do I have to pay for your trashy station.
A nice stoking of Muslim paranoia by the BBC in this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6408925.stm
‘Prejudice warning’ for bomb jury.
Nice – the implication is that the ol’ whitey jury has to be warned against ‘prejudice’ against the defendants, who all happen to be of a certain religion.
Only at the absolute end of the article do we read the full quote from the judge:
“Do not leave your common sense and experience and knowledge of the world behind you when you make your decision. However do not let it prejudice your thoughts,” he warned.
So, THAT was what he meant by prejudice. Oh well, hardly anyone read that far down the article anyway.
“Do not leave your common sense and experience and knowledge of the world behind you when you make your decision. However do not let it prejudice your thoughts,” he warned.
I’m sure that is what a judge would say in summing up every trial.
Anonanon – Gore Vidal is related to Al Gore, some sort sort of cousin. Its not just a loopy claim as the worthless Frei implies.
Comrades!
Hail the hero’s of IngSoc!!!
Rejoy on how the the stupid capitalists were were out foxed by the hero’s of IngSoc!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6407793.stm
Vent your hatred at the rich:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6409757.stm
Fascisim is war:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6409757.stm
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
INGSOC
IngSoc is doublethink,
Your third link is a repetition of your second link.
I like this sentence from the first link:
Despite his apparent about-turn, when interviewed by Italian police at the end of June Auden went back to his original story that Spender had not mentioned the call.
Maybe in today’s world, paralysed by PC, he would have been interviewed. Then, I’ve no doubt, he would have been questioned or interrogated.
PC-speak even has to refer to the past??
Err stand corrected Bryan….
feel free tho to replace with any other item tho 🙂
Try this
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6407295.stm
Fat Controller.
I’m not sure about “mass murder” at Waco (trigger happy cultist and police me thinks) and the other hyperbole but there are three things in my mind that stand out:
Somalia : Withdrawing on the advice of TV exec’s hasonly strengthen the resolve of the Jihadist….
Embassy bombings: Took ol’ Bill two years to nominate the lead agency to investigate Bin Laden.
Bosnia: US in-activity allowed a vacumn to be created,so the Muslims turned to “donar” countries and “charities” to send weapons and men to “defend” the enclaves.These men have gone on to serve the “Muslim” cause in Chechenya,Iraq,Afghanistan,the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,North and Sub Saharan Africa.
and not forgetting Rwanda.
Great in front of the TV tho’
With 200,000 views on youtube of their latest video, I wonder if the BBC will give some airtime to messrs Aborn and Nelson from ‘Stuck Mojo’, a black hip hop band from the States.
Just to balance Ry Whoeder, Randy Oldman and singer-songwriter John Prine.
Here’s a clip of their non-pc lyrics.
Although the strings were arranged by Eric Frampton, it’s (musically) not my cuppa.
——————-
I speak peace when peace is spoken, But I speak war when your hate is provoking, The season is open 24-7-365, Man up yo time to ride, No need to hide behind slogans of deceit, Claiming that you’re a religion of peace, We just don’t believe you, We can clearly see through, The madness that you’re feeding your people, Jihad the cry of your unholy war, Using the willing, the weak and poor, From birth drowning in propaganda, rhetoric and slander, All we can say is damn ya
My forefathers fought and died for this here
I’m stronger than your war of fear
Are we clear?
If you step in my hood
It’s understood
It’s open season
‘And it’s not as if Bush-lovers like David Frum never get invited on to British stations.’
It all depends on how you treat ‘Bush-lovers’. If you attack them while giving Democrat supporters an easy time you are biased.
Re: Stuck Mojo
Here’s their site, with a link to the vid on EweTube:
http://www.stuckmojomedia.com/
Re stuck mojo.
I suppose I should have called them metsl/hip-hop, but I’m very old.
Would they be arrested under current laws in the UK, and if not, will the BBC get them on the today prog?
Anonanon and Lurker: Gore Vidal is as blueblooded as it gets, part and parce of the Southern aristocracy, exactly like Gore. He comes from the kind of background that looks down onn the Kennedys as nouveaux riches. And his evident twisted hatred of all things decent and American has to do with the impact on this aristocrat at birth of the realization that he was homosexual – a realization that he allowed to sour him and drive him pretty nearly insane. He is absolutely the craziest moonbat alive – I mean, there are gradations, and a Chomsky is a model of intellectual rigour and responsibility as compared with a Vidal.
I once was speaking with a fairly lefty, but balanced, friend, and we got on the subject. (Beware: long anecdote coming.) I told him of the experience that had convinced me that Vidal was certifiable. In 1984, he wrote a typical we-‘re-all-doomed piece of trash in which he reported that someone supposedly close to President Reagan had informed him that Reagan was some sort of extreme fundamentalist who believed that Armageddon was coming and intended to take part in it by bombing the Soviet Union. That was bad enough, but one year later Reagan made his famous trip to Moscow and proved to the world that he was not out to destroy anyone or start anything. Any man with any sense – I told my friend – would have discreetly buried his 1984 essay. So what did Gore Vidal do? Reprint it with pride of place in a collection of his best essays?
Can you beat that? – I asked my friend.
Now, normally the rhetorical question “can you beat that?” is answered by silence or laughter. Not this time. Instead my friend staggered me by saying: “Yes, I think I can.” I can still hear the unexpected response in my mind. And he went on to tell me that Vidal had published and reprinted an essay in which he traduced Harry Truman in every possible way, making him a monster of militaristic turpitude and the man who transformed the innocent and holy United States of FDR into the Evil Empire – with not so much as a single reference to Joe Stalin, speaking absolutely as if there were no Communists in the world.
My friend was right: that does beat everything. Only a man altogether without shame or sense of reality could possibly write, let alone reprint, something like that. And that is Gore Vidal. And unbelievably, there are people in continental Europe who are so benighted as to take him seriously.
Oops, should have read metal/hip hop, not metsl.
They also have a good response (on their forum) to complaints made by CAIR about their lyrics.
Fabio – “And unbelievably, there are people in continental Europe who are so benighted as to take him seriously.”
Not just continental Europe. The Today programme digs him too:
22 Dec 2003. 0830 Hear why Gore Vidal thinks America has spiralled into a ‘despotic’ nation
In fact, they take him so seriously he was the star turn on the fifth anniversary of 9/11:
11 Sept 2006 0830 Gore Vidal explains how he feels the United States has changed in the five years since the attacks in New York.
(Hey, we’re almost back on topic)
dixiechick:
Nice to see the BBC reflecting mainstream US opinion.
Putting a Bush critic on your radio show isn’t an act of bias, it’s what most Americans think.
Check out Bush’s disapproval ratings: they’re running at around 60%.
Are you suggesting the BBC has some sort of obligation to reflect mainstream US opinion? Does that apply to every country? Should the BBC reflect mainstream Jewish opinion in Israel simply because it’s mainstream? How about Venezuela?
Are you suggesting that the BBC should change its approach by reference to opinion polls? Which ones? What happens when opinion polls are non existent or doubtful? Should the BBC be commissioning opinion polls?
It all seems a very dubious way of broadcasting from an authority legally obliged to be neutral.
Fabio, on Gore Vidal you are absolutly right.
Gore Vidal is also related to Constance Gore-Booth, who was a cranky Irish Fenian terrorist-supporter, and whom Vidal has warmly endorsed.
Patti Smith was on Jonathon Ross this morning, complaining about Bush.
And Ross basically implied that Bush’s elections weren’t won fairly.
Bloody hells bloody bells!
Incidentally, I’m not a big fan of GWB. I just hate this lie that Bush stole 2 elections.
2000 was close, but in the end, the counting rules were followed as they were. 2004 was a narrow defeat and nothing more.
It’s pathetic. They can’t deal with Bush winning, so therefore it must have been stolen. But that’s the BBC all over. US culture beats French culture because of “cultural oppression”, not because France makes lousy movies, McDonalds sales beat Duchy Original sales because of “indoctrination”, not value for money.
They should investigate NuLabours election win – only 25% of the population voted for them but they get a hefty majority. That puts Bush’s narrow victory into some perspective.