Interesting interview here with Man Booker Prize nominee Peter Carey in which the author gets to mock “stupid people like George W Bush and Sarah Palin” Even in their Arts section, the BBC meme is always being advanced.
STUPID PEOPLE
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Perhaps this is the place to nominate our favourite Dumb BBC moment.
Mine was during the aftermath of the Icelandic ash cloud. Jeremy Vine was interviewing that nice Prof Philip Stott (no, he really is nice, I’ve shared a conference platform with him) who was pointing out how significant the Jet Stream was in carrying the ash our way.
Vine says: And that’s what keeps the British Isles relatively warm, isn’t it?
Er, no, says Stottie, patiently, as if to a seven-year-old. You’re thinking of the Gulf Stream.
I’ve been waiting months for the Vine Show to get back onto Global Warming (and start lecturing us as if they’re the experts) so I can ring in with this observation!
Don’t you just hate value judgements, Mr Carey. I mean, blanket assertion revealing stereotypical thinking. After all, Mr Carey you are sooooo bright and have done soooo well winning the Booker Prize (and not just once). No ex-cathedra prouncements from a literary brain that has been mentioned as the possible first Australian literary Nobel laureate are possible.
Don’t you just hate bourgeois pettiness, Mr Carey. You know, abusive and dismissive.
You wouldn’t stoop to that level. And even if you did, we at the Beeb would applaud you. Because we think like you do because we are intellectuals and massively cool and edgy….
No, we haven’t read your books yet but one of our mates says he knows someone who started reading ‘Oscar and Lucinda’ in 1991 but couldn’t say whether he had finished it.
The myth of Bush and Palin dumbness has been so assiduously and consistently promoted by the MSM one wonders if there was a JOURNOLIST recommendation about it.
Every Republican leader since Gerald Ford has been accused of being “dumb”. They would love to have called Ford as being as dodgy as Nixon, but the Republicans were wise enough to ensure that the VP (Ford) was cleaner than white after the Nixon shennanigins.
They thought, “There’s no dirty washing on Ford sa we’ll make him out to be stupid because he was once a football player.” Every slip he made was played and replayed ad infinitum until the general impression was that he was stupid.
Next came Reagan, the Democrats being too unintelligent themselves to think of a new angle repeated the “Stupid” assertions, this time putting it down to his age. They used the same dirty tactics on him as on Ford and people started to believe it. Many here reading will believe it too as it was thrust down our throats enough.
Bush senior was damned by association with Reagan but the Democrats were licking their wounds after their third defeat in a row, but they did try to call him stupid until the recession of the early 90s wher they turned it round to dishonest and incompetent.
Next was Bush jr. and they used their tried and trusted angle yet again. We know again how they kept making him out to be stupid and many will believe it as they have heard the story from the left so often. However, Obama’s slips are very well hushed up e.g. the 58 States (amazing from THE President of the United States), reading someone else’s autocue where he ended up thanking himself. There was also something during his election where he insulted a special needs person.
Now of course, the lack of intelligent ideas in the Democrat side has made them resort to the same old, same old….
57 states. This was Candidate Obamessiah, supposedly smarter than everyone else in the room. Early evidence that when there’s no teleprompter, the brain becomes more nuanced (as Matt Frei would have it).
How can he bear to live in America, considering these stupid Presidents and would-be presidents, what with him coming from Australia an’ all?
What about dumb beeboids and other leftists?
Nicki Campbell, Richard Bacon, Vicki Pollard, Robert Peston, Sheena Easton, Stephanie Flanders, Toenails, Michael Prick, Toilets Maguire, Fat Polly.
All as thick as they come.
I would really like Howard Jacobson to win the Man Booker prize this year. Has he had much publicity on the BBC?
Quite agree with you. I suspect the BBC hate him because he is not left-wing and he is Jewish.
He is left-wing but he’s not an intellectual kapo for the Marxist Left.
Just wondering whether the BBC would allow someone referring to John Prescott as `stupid’ to be broadcast unchallenged ? Or Gordon Brown ?
I remember Gavin Esler once asking a 3rd party on Newsnight `Is George Bush thick ?’ Would he have asked the same question about Ahmedinejad or Chavez ?
The BBC’s intricate political agenda and sensitivities mean it dislikes using `judgmental’ terms such as terrorist even to apply to people who freely admit intent to attack our national interest.
But of course the BBC is perfectly comfortable with judgmental terms such as `stupid’ being broadcast unchallenged in interviews etc to apply selectively to people the BBC doesn’t want you to like — Boooosh, Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin etc etc
They are so particular about the use of the t word, that they will even misquote people who have used it. So they will relate to us that the person or people quoted actually said militant. Not so particular there, then.
I hate the word militant, Millie Tant.
Heh. Maybe I should change my moniker. I took it as a sort of joke about the Beeboid love of the m word euphemism.
If GWB and Sarah Palin are both examples of a “popular, stupid person” what does that make Barack Obama, I wonder? An unpopular genius?
That wonder of the BBC arts programmes Mark Lawson rarely missed an opportunity to get a derogatory remark into Front Row about GWB when he was in office.
President Bush should’ve gone to some polytechnic and earned himself a BA in Sociology or English or Media Studies, instead of going to Harvard and earning himself an MBA. Then he wouldn’t be stupid.
Also Bush went to Yale, Obama, Columbia University, New York.
Who gives a damn what some arty-farty luvvie who writes boring books thinks about anything ?