The morning after the night before. Feeling a bit shattered after our collective LIVEBLOG late last night, but it seemed to go well and betraying my OWN bias, I am of course happy to have seen the GOP/Tea Party deliver a stinging rebuke to BBC poster boy Obama. Thanks to all those hundreds who came along, I enjoyed your comments and company. However the BBC has not been prepared to take this lying down and I have received several irate emails from B-BBC readers showing outrageous examples of bias in their coverage last night and again this morning. There was a “debate” on Today around 8.45am with Andrew Sullivan and A.N.OTHER where the punchline was – unbelievably – that the defeat last nuight made Obama’s chances of re-election more likely. Yes, Obama won. This was the consensus view. I can’t find a link to it, for some reason it is missing from their audio archive, perhaps you too heard it? The BBC are gutted that Obama has lost nd so they are merrily revising the events of last evening to “prove” that the “great communicator” is on track for four more years come 2012.
Stephanie Flanders was also in good form, suggesting that the stimulus from the Fed to be announced later today is “more important” than the events of last night. She somehow missed the fact that the new brooms coming to see want to a reduction in spending – less, not more, stimulus. I presume this goes over her head, as she seemed in thrall to the wonders of the Fed’s latest economic madness. Whichever way you turn, this is a bad day for the BBC.
The fact that the BBC had Andrew Sullivan on specifically to discuss Sarah Palin – and didn’t mention his infamy regarding her – is a sign that the BBC has given up all pretense of impartiality and honesty.
The steady stream of JournoListas (including Sullivan) was also a giveaway. The diversity on the BBC was also sorely lacking.
In stark contrast to lovely Auntie Beeb, nasty Uncle Rupert’s News had several people of color on regularly, and had the far-Left Ellis Henican at the center of the table all night. Nor was anyone botoxed out, from what I could tell.
David
For those who don’t know – for month after month, Andrew Sullivan was asserting that Sarah Palin was lying in claiming young Trig as her son – he argued it was her daughter’s child. Even much of the left in the US despise him for this. But the BBC (including Webb) helped spread these filthy accusations.
If it was true it’s actually quite noble.
One significant outcome of yesterday’s election which is not going to be mentioned by the BBC at all: Republicans made historic gains in state legislatures, taking control of more than half the country.
That’s local, which is at least as important as national. More Republican Governors, and more Republican state legislatures than at any time in the last 75 years, I think. That’s all down to local Tea Party activists.
That includes Jan Brewer keeping her job in Arizona, even in the face of the President’s and the media’s attack on her for speaking out about His failure to protect the borders. That supposedly racist illegal-immigration law sure didn’t stop her from being elected properly as Governor (she stepped in when Democrat Janet Napolitano was elevated to head the Dept. of Homeland Security, where her immediate focus wasn’t illegal aliens or terrorists but Tea Party types instead).
Racialist Raul Grijalva (who called for a boycott of his own state because he wanted more people who looked like him to come in in the name of diversity) has probably won over rocket scientist Ruth McClung, but his lead is not greater than the margin of fraud. In his case, it should be a fairly wide margin. Don’t expect anyone to cry for a recount due to suspected racist activity, though.
State legislatures have real power in the US, and have at least as much of an effect on everyone’s lives as anything the Federal Government does. States have far less autonomy and control over their own destinies as they originally did or were intended to, but it’s still pretty solid in a lot of areas. The Tea Party concerns of fiscal responsibility and ending business as usual had the most effect on the local level. This is a big deal, but it won’t get the attention of the national races.
One positive thing about the BBC’s coverage last night: for once, nobody called me a racist.
You obviously didn’t listen to Radio 5 David!!
Thanks for the great reporting David!
The BBC in mourning and doing what they do best, making excuses and then moving right along and forget the past as if it never happened.
Is it rational to call this a stinging rebuke for Obama? He wasn’t running.
Would it be as rational to call this a victory for Sarah Palin? She wasn’t running, either.
From so many of the vox pop interviews I saw, it was very much a referendum on Obama’s policies.
deegee, yes and yes.
Charitably one could excuse the shallowness of the BBC take on the mid-terms if one assumed that the BBC had no representation in the US and had to tailor its view of world events completely by analogy with what happened last year in the UK. In case you’ve forgotten, Labour was turfed out but, whaddya know, the much vaunted and feared “cuts” have, in reality, morphed into an increase in aggregate public expenditure. Also, apart from dumping the proposed ID cards (when will they make a reappearance – I’ll give it 12 months) the proposed great repeal will have little effect on our system of “justice” and many of the most egregious quangos have ben absorbed into the departments from which they emerged and were, ostensibly, “independent”. In other words the political class continues in control and “business as usual” continues both locally and nationally.
The changes mooted by the Tea Party movement are wholly unlike this. The TP specifically rejects politics as usual and, AFAIAA, is sincere about this (we will see in the coming months). The BBC prefers the Westminster, Washington and Brussels statist farces where professional politicians and their stooges in the MSM play political games at the expense of – and in complete contempt for – their constituents. Not only is the BBC unhappy about the humiliation of Obama by the “extreme” right wing of the Republicans – or just the Republicans – it has no idea what the Tea Party is about and has no idea what is happening or why.
The BBC’s misreporting of US politics is – as with its coverage of the UK – the usual combination of highly remunerated bias and ignorance. The BBC’s US reporters have no idea of the importance of US politics at the state level – why would they? Despite Mardell undertaking a lightning and (unlike Mardell) analytically light-weight tour of the country, BBC reps are irredeemably attached to the East Coast and its liberal press from which most of their analysis is lifted wholesale. Furthermore they are based in Washington, a place whose main business is politics and is thus as divorced from the real world that most of the posters and commenters on this blog experience as it’s possible to be. Imagine reporting on Australian affairs based in Canberra or on Brazilian affairs based in Brasilia.
It is, of course, worse than that. The BBC doesn’t want to know and doesn’t want its listeners to know the reality of politics in the US. As David Preiser wrote a couple of days ago – and thanks to him BTW – we on B-BBC knew more and earlier than the BBC and its licence payers about the Tea Party. What happened yesterday – and has been happening over the last 12-18 months – has come as an unwelcome surprise to the BBC because their well-rewarded but incompetent journalists didn’t know and didn’t want to know about the anger out there in the deeply unfashionable sticks. Anyone whose knowledge of the US political scene is restricted to the reportage of the BBC will be stunned by the Democratic reversals of yesterday since it was only, what, a couple of months ago that the BBC started to take seriously the possibility that Obama might be in trouble.
The story has all but dissapeared from the BBC. Imagine if the left ( Obama) had done well it would full page news for days.
Fatty Mardell just can’t help himself can he?
Certainly two of their highest-profile, not to say eccentric, candidates did not succeed in Delaware and Nevada – perhaps costing the Republicans a couple of scalps, and perhaps undermining the woman who supported them, Sarah Palin.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2010/11/a_setback_for_obama.html
So because two tea party candidates lost it’s Palin who is the loser? What planet is this wanker on?
You beat me to it, Martin. Mardell’s faith in His power to save us all has been shattered. He still thinks that his beloved Obamessiah is brilliant and still believes in His Plan For Us, but this confession proves everything we’ve been saying here since before the last presidential election:
Mr Obama’s fall from grace has been hard and fast. He has been pulled to Earth by an electorate that is deeply divided, by a politics that has become tidal.
Fast? It began in January of 2009 with the rush to nationalize health care at an enormous cost in spite of our economic crisis (who’s not impulsive, then?) and we all saw this coming for ages and ages. Only the faithful who clung to their Scripture and holy relics were in denial.
Perhaps the president, and many of the rest of us, over-interpreted what his victory two years ago really meant.
For once, Mardell gets it right. Or nearly so, as it wasn’t so much an over-interpretation as it was a completely wrong interpretation, based on emotion and not reason.
Perhaps it was nothing but a ringing endorsement of a couple of abstract nouns, rather than of a man and his policies – a vote for the ideal of hope, the concept of change, a rejection of George W Bush and a wish to embrace someone who wasn’t for war and wasn’t impulsive.
Yes, and Mardell would still have been calling me a racist. But he does make one other key point, although he probably doesn’t realize it. For the several months leading up to the election, I kept saying that the Left and the BBC saw it as their final chance to defeat George Bush, even though he wasn’t running, even though he left no succsessor (VP to run as a quasi-continuation of his Administration), and McCain was about as far away from the conservative end of the Republican establishment as he could be and not be a Democrat. Mardell admits now that this is exactly what he and all the rest of them were thinking, and it shows just how misguided that was.
Mr Obama has indeed admitted: “I am like a Rorschach test,” referring to the inkblot technique used by psychologists. Voters saw their deepest hopes; now some see their darkest fears.
Now “some” see our darkest fears? Wrong. We saw it then and said it out loud. Only the BBC called us racists at the time, and denied there was any valid reason to oppose Him. Mardell is still doing it here.
He couldn’t have been clearer about the importance of healthcare reform, his belief the government had a role in improving peoples lives, and his warning it would all take time. But that, apparently, is not what a lot of people were buying.
It may be he is going against what a lot of Americans want for their country. For every Tea Party supporter who sees his mild social democracy as communism there are probably several more who don’t characterise it in extreme terms, but don’t like it any more for that.
Again, Mardell comes at this from the far Left. Only to someone on his extreme end of the spectrum views someone who stated that He wanted “to spread that wealth around”, bankrupt the coal industry, shift power in all industries to the unions, shift our money to the unions, and viewed investors as parasites, would qualify as “mild social democracy”. And Mardell still agrees with His policies, and defends them to the bitter end. Just look at the editorializing in the way he describes the President’s belief that government can improve people’s lives. That’s a biased interpretation, coming from a specific political perspective.
Finally, this proves something else we’ve all been saying for two years and more: the Beeboids made a huge emotional investment in Him. This clouded their judgment, colored their reporting, and caused them to time and time again break from any pretense of being impartial. Not to mention how it directed their hiring practices regarding the new recruits in the US.
Katty Kay’s hysterical performance last night is a testament to this, as are all the long Beeboids faces today. The bias at the BBC could not be more clear today.
I heard the comment this morning. Of course it means Obama will be re elected. What the Beeb understands and you don’t, is that when the US Electorate voted yesterday and brought about the largest transfer of members from the Governing party to the Opposition that the House of Representatives has experienced for 60 years, they were really saying ” Yes Obama, you are doing a great job , we are right behind you and further more we are going to make you look even better by showing the world just what you can do even as a ‘lame duck’.”
Can’t think of any other explanation apart from maybe the Beeb are so bias that all common sense and rational reporting has gone out the window.
John Bolton, in a speech viewable on PJTV, noted that Presidents who get hamstrung by Congressional elections tend to turn their attention from domestic gridlock to foreign policy. If there is anything more scary than the academic naif Obummer trying to create a USSA, it is him grandstanding his facile worldview on the world stage. The thugs would then really scent blood.
Has anyone ever heard Michael Barone being interviewed by the BBC ? He is one of the foremost political commentators in the US, an absolute treasure trove of info on elections and pollling.
Here is his general take on 2 November results. (And from his article it appears that Sky recognises he is a go-to guy.)
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/some-random-thoughts-on-the-2010-elections-106597638.html#ixzz14E2U8Ebs
If Obama can come out of nowhere to ruin America this man can come out of America to rescue it.
What annoyed me was the way the Beeb wiffle about John Boene the new speaker. Perpetually tanned, heavy smoker, etc etc. WTF has that got to do wth his new job as speaker?
Did you catch 5Live at 16:05?
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2010/11/not-good-result-more-bbc-bias.html
Peter Allen links to Aasmah Mir in Florida with the words “Not a good result”.
Not “not a good result for the Democrats” or “Not a good result for President Obama”, just “Not a good result”.
Surely it was a very good result for the Republicans so why “Not a good result”? Is the BBC so tied in with the Democratic party in the USA that “Not a good result” is acceptable language? Is the BBC officially allied with the Democrats in the USA as they are with the Labour party in the UK?
“Impartiality is in our genes”; really?
Does anybody know what percentage of eligible voters exercised their democratic right this time? How does this compare with previous elections?
A Facebook friend of mine made the comment (in much harsher terms) that Democratic voters could not bring themselves to vote Republican so they stayed away leaving the field to the Republicans. In other words, the Republicans didn’t increase their vote but the Democrats lost theirs.
Comments?