For at good few hours today this was the main news story on the BBC US & Canada page:
A Republican candidate for a very safe Democrat seat is a member of a re-enactment society and dressed up as, among other things, an SS officer. A bit embarrassing for a political candidate when the photos come out, but was it really the most important news item in North America? No, of course not, but the BBC wasn’t going to miss the chance to bash the Republicans. Added bonus – using “Republican” and “Nazi” in the same headline. “Republican” appeared in the blurb beneath, and in the opening sentence of the actual story, too. [Read More…]
How very different from the BBC’s treatment of stories embarrassing to Democrats where the party name is either not mentioned or buried so far down the page you’ll probably miss it. That’s when the BBC even covers such news items. Here are some recent stories the BBC hasn’t reported on, let alone given number one headline prominence:
Democrats run fake Tea Party candidate in Jersey congressional race.
Democrat aide calls female Republican candidate “a whore”.
Democrat Congresswoman’s phone message asking for lobbyist money.
Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr accused of trying to buy Obama’s old Senate seat.
The Nazi uniform story quotes “the BBC’s Ian Mackenzie in Washington” (note to BBC subs – it’s “Iain”). As Craig pointed out in the comments a few days ago, Mackenzie is another whose Twitter account is quite revealing. Here he is summing up Obama’s inauguration day:
And here’s what he thinks of Sarah Palin:
This comment about Fox News is a bit rich given the BBC’s huge preference for leftie guests (not to mention presenters and of course journalists). MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann only likes to have people whose views he shares on his show but you won’t find sneering comments about that from an Obama-lovin’ hipster Beeb journo like Mackenzie. The received wisdom is strong in him. A perfect addition to the BBC’s team of Right-hating US correspondents.
Full marks for this snippet of honest self-analysis, though:
Helen Boaden claimed that impartiality is in the BBC’s genes. She’s either a deluded idiot or a liar.
But surely we can all recall the BBC’s outraged coverage of that photo of Ed Balls dressed up in Nazi uniform? Er . . .
Well, no, I don’t recall that so I googled it – 5 pages and in not one of them does the bBC mention “Ed Balls Nazi uniform”. Any mentions found are in the comments and thus not from the bBC.
It might have been covered somewhere but “outraged coverage”? I don’t think so.
Sorry Disdain I just re-read your post; I missed the “Er …”!!
But anyway I proved your point!
They certainly didn’t make much of a fuss when Mark Garlasco of HRW was outed.
They’re rather sympathetic, I’d say.
Well if he writes for the Huffington Post is must be all right by the bBC.
Just in case the BBC couldn’t find the picture of NAZI ED, here it is. Now the BBC has no excuse for ‘not knowing about it’ which rather like dopey cow Suzanna Reid’ claim she didn’t know about the 10:10 scum murdering kids video is not an excuse.
How they love to throw the “Nazi” accusation, unless it’s someone in the right political party or special lobby group. It’s beneath contempt.
Yes the BBC didn’t seem to mind this did they?
http://www.redstate.com/curt_levey/files/2009/09/bush-nazi1.jpg
The BBC `not knowing about things’ – it’s what we do
Historical re-enactment of military stuff is not a big deal. I’ve done Civil War re-enactments dressed up as a Confederate rebel. That doesn’t make me a racist or want to own slaves.
This is yet another example of the BBC foscusing exclusively on a minor wrinkle, which becomes all the more influential when they ignore dozens of others. I don’t remember the BBC making a sound about Van Jones being a Truther, or Anne Dudley saying that Mao was her favorite philosopher.
Just wait until they read about the idiot Paladino in New York saying that the gay lifestyle is unacceptable and he doesn’t want kids brainwashed into thinking it is.
Remember kids: All those Muslim mass murderers do not represent Islam, but a handful of people absolutely do represent the entire Tea Party movement.
The BBC does tend to argue from the particular to the general when it suits them….and cites exceptionalism when it doesn’t. It’s that mind set again. That which can only be described as bias.
CORRECTION: It’s Anita Dunn who said Mao was her favorite political philosopher. Anne Dudley is a composer, of course. My bad. Long weekend.
lets all send the nazi ed picture to the bbc then they will know
Nice work on the other stuff, DB. Is there even a single Beeboid working in the US who is not a far-Left Democrat supporter?
“Helen Boaden claimed that impartiality is in the BBC’s genes. She’s either a deluded idiot or a liar.”
Or both?
Right on cue, here’s a new piece from JournoList-groupie Katie Connolly, telling you all not to give up hope as there are still plenty of Leftoid activists working hard to fight against the nasty Tea Party extremists.
Has the American Left fizzled out?
She sent one of the Obamessiah campaign activists she hired this year down to a New York City bar to interview the founder of some Leftoid social club called “Drinking Liberally”. He says not to give up hope. Apparently there are just as many hard-working activists on the Left as on the Right, only the ones on the Left don’t act out in extreme ways and so aren’t noticed as much.
Connolly admits that plenty of His believers on the far Left are disappointed, and even the Drinking guy says as much. But notice how nobody will actually state openly even one issue on which He has failed them. The Drinking guy will only allow that it’s too bad the President has to govern from a place where pragmatism collides with progressiveness.
Nobody will dare say that their beloved Obamessiah has ramped up the drone attacks, has extended the evil Bush plan of rendition, increased use of wiretapping, and has targeted US citizens for assassination without due process.
But notice also that there is no negative slant to this article at all. All the people on the Left are well-meaning, decent sorts, merely eager to fight the good fight and save the country from the horrible Tea Party extremists. Connolly does remember the whole “war criminal” nonsense, but doesn’t mention anything about BusHitler signs or violent protests during Republican conventions. The fact that Connolly sees nothing particularly over the top in the top photo of some Leftoid throwing something at a mock-Bush shows just how far off center her views are. This is an expression of violent anger that just doesn’t happen at Tea Party events. This kind of violent anger comes from the Left, not the right. But Connolly just doesn’t want to see it.
Only those on the right act badly, according to Katie Connolly. This is, of course, the same message coordinated in discussions back when the JournoList was in full swing.
There’s still hope, true believers. We can still do our best to spread His Word.
SMEAR ALERT?
Its all very neat and tidy isnt it? case closed and guilty as charged M’Lud.
The only problem with this stroy is that its not a story but simply another smear by the leftist hufpo/democreep style smear merchants.
Get the smear out and get the journolist scum to pimp it and its job done and on to the next smear.
Its what the US democrats learned in the 70s and passed on to labour in the 80s, smear politics work to unermine democracy and that is the aim.
The BBC is always keen to print lies and smears if they assist and help their ideological fellow travellers, they know they are untouchable and they know that the essence of the smear is simply to throw mud. Even if they are forced to issue a retraction six months from it does no good and a cuople of lines of fake sorrow tucked away in a website cupboard is not going to wipe away the actual smear is it?
The BBC are trying to influence the outcome of a foreign election and assist a political party to win by smears, if that aint illegal it bloody well should be.
The good news is that the smear is so desperate and pathetic that anyone can see it for what it is. The democreeps are desperate and they know they are in for a royal kicking at the midterms. Dead duck Jimmy(the peanut)Carter is looking like a giant compared to Obumbla.
Iain MacKenzie (whose own name the BBC article amusingly misspells as ‘Ian’) can’t even get his smears right.
After reminding us that Christine O’Donnell (unnamed) “confessed to dabbling in witchcraft” (when she was a teenager, which he forgets to add) he goes on to say she “suggested scientists were implanting full human brains into mice.”
That would be an utterly mad thing to suggest. Thankfully, she didn’t say any such thing. Iain shouldn’t believe everything he hears on MSNBC, and from the JournOListosphere. He should check his facts before passing on slanders.
She actually said “American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains”.
She has been pilloried by the sort of people the BBC listens to for saying so.
What she does say sounds ridiculous, but it’s nowhere near as bad as saying that scientists are “implanting full human brains into animals”.
But even worse for Iain, what she actually said may sound ridiculous but (amazingly) it turns out to be not that far from the truth – as a BBC reporter could have easily discovered (if so minded):
Washington Post
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
By injecting human embryonic stem cells into the brains of fetal mice inside the womb, scientists in California have created living mice with working human brain cells inside their skulls.
The Times
Science Notebook by Anjana Ahuja, September 4, 2006
But others are determined to inject human cells into animals. The most controversial projects have been those to implant human brain cells (neurons) into the brains of other animals, such as vervet monkeys or mice. One headline dubbed the mouse-human chimera, produced by Irving Weissman, of Stanford University, as the “Stuart Little” mouse, referring to the film about a mouse who talks and has human parents. The great fear is that chimeric experimentation will lead to a human brain being trapped inside a mouse’s body.
Reason
The ethics of human/animal chimeras
Ronald Bailey, November 24, 2004
Weissman has said that he would like to inject human stem cells into the developing brains of fetal mice, with the goal of producing mouse brains composed chiefly of human brain cells. Such mice might be useful for testing drugs to cure or prevent various human brain diseases.
Nation Geographic
Maryann Mott
January 25, 2005
Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice.
Before being born, the mice would be killed and dissected to see if the architecture of a human brain had formed. If it did, he’d look for traces of human cognitive behavior.
Weissman said he’s not a mad scientist trying to create a human in an animal body. He hopes the experiment leads to a better understanding of how the brain works, which would be useful in treating diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.
So Christine O’Donnell was rather better informed than her critics, including smirking Iain MacKenzie. Maybe all that witchcraft helped open her mind a bit.
(See also: Scientific American)
Palins remark is nothing compared to the things Harrabin and Black put forward as “science”.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
I thought this would be bigger news for the BBC.
“Democratic Senate hopeful Gov. Joe Manchin takes up a rifle in a TV ad to show voters in his coal-mining state how much he opposes his own party’s climate change legislation.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iBgTcq8DlCGqMKQ_3woY_d8FvsMAD9IPK74O2?docId=D9IPK74O2
That would have been perfect for the BBC if Manchin had been a Republican, or, better still, a Tea Party candidate. But he’s a Democrat and so the BBC will not be using it.
Civil War reenactments, in Britain or the United States, do not necessarily carry the overtones of their historical positions. I cannot believe that most reenacters wish to kill the present Queen, or to reenslave African-Americans. These events are far enough away from us that we can have some distance.
There can be no excuse for dressing up as a Nazi, especially a member of the SS, while there are still those of us who have to live with the Holocaust every day. There is no distance, no historicity, which can excuse this. Prince Harry was wrong, and this creep is wrong. It is not excusable because you don’t like the fact that he is a Republican and got caught.
And why the SS? Because they were the glamourous murderers? Are you kidding me? He made some excuse about being the “other side” in reenactment battle. You notice he wasn’t a regular Wehrmacht grunt. He had the “cool” uniform. How many people died in terrifying agony, their last sight on this earth being the sight of that uniform?
Whether or not he has Nazi leanings himself doesn’t matter. His judgment has been proven to be so bad that he doesn’t belong in any office, of any kind. I am beyond disgusted.
Well said, Barbara, spot on.
“It is not excusable because you don’t like the fact that he is a Republican and got caught.”
You make a fair argument re SS uniforms and suitability for office but my point concerns the prominence given to this story by the BBC solely because he is a Republican candidate. The BBC hammers home his party affiliation in a way it simply doesn’t do when reporting on scandals and embarrassments involving Democrats – much higher profile ones than Richard Lott, too.
For example, here’s three news stories about the scandal involving Democrat mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick, who had been tipped for the big time. Only the final article mentions the party, and even then it’s buried in the 12th of 14 paragraphs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7219101.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7313516.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7548528.stm
An unknown Democrat candidate in a safe Republican seat involved in something similar to Lott would have been ignored by the BBC. As has been pointed out above, it wasn’t even interested when a photo of a prominent of Labour politician in Nazi garb emerged.
I meant “Iott”, not “Lott”.
I do not disagree, at all, that the BBC is biased and if, for example, a liberal Democrat had been found doing the same thing that they would have tried to bury the story, and made excuses for him. But the fact that the BBC is a disgrace does not excuse the people making light of this Iott’s extremely poor decisions.