Check out this BBC article about the Obama impersonator whose act at the Republican Leadership Conference was cut short. It’s basically an excuse for an unnamed anti-Republican BBC hack (ie any BBC journalist covering US affairs) to reproduce some jokes at the expense of the leadership contenders, but it’s also noteworthy for this piece of anti-Tea Party propaganda:
The ultra-conservative Tea Party wing of the Republican Party had questioned the legitimacy of Mr Obama’s presidency, claiming he had been born outside the US and was thus ineligible to hold the highest office in the land, as mandated under the constitution.
The, ahem, “ultra-conservative” Tea Party (Wiki offers the somewhat less loaded “conservative and libertarian“) is not a birther movement. Linking the two is a ploy by opponents (eg lame comedians, lefty hacks) to discredit the Tea Party – which is of course why the anonymous lazy biased idiot who wrote the piece included it. There are undoubtedly some birthers who would also call themselves Tea Party supporters but Obama’s citizenship is a fringe issue and has never been central to the small government movement. It’s worth remembering that the midwife of birtherism was the contest for the Democrat nomination between Barack and Hillary, but you won’t find a BBC article which makes sweeping birther generalisations about Clinton supporters. That’s because they’re Democrats – the good-guy Americans – and BBC journalists are only interested in making the American Right [cue scary music] look bad.
Of course the BBC is not reporting on the major speeches at the even. Instead they stoop to smears and lies.
Oh, fuck that, it’s a complete lie. The “movement” itself declared no such thing. There is no voice for the entire movement. A few fringe loons were birthers, sure, but that has nothing to do with the movement’s principles.
Get bent, BBC. Liars and propagandists, the lot of you.
And you’re all birthers of the twisted Sullivanite stripe, apparently. But that’s cool, eh?
Guess who the BBC’s newly-arrived Washington correspondent Adam Blenford linked to on Twitter for reaction to the CNN Republican debate last week? Andrew Sullivan, of course.
Apparently Blenford has some wacky people in his extended family – they watch Fox News and think the media is overly liberal. Nuts, I know! How very different from his Republican-hating colleagues at work.
DB,
A new Beeboid name for me. They breed like rabbits.
I wonder if the BBC know about his family ?
They know, Grant. They hired him because that’s enough for BBC management to think he counts as balance.
BBC College tweet: Obama to tweet personally to 8.6m followers – bad news for the media?
Oh shit – he’s doing his own propaganda. What’s the BBC supposed to write about him now?
That will make their jobs even easier, all they’ll have to do is cut and paste.
Tea Party aims. I. Fiscal responsibility. 2. Constitutionally limited government. 3. Free markets. You think they’d be able to remember that.
Oh, they remember it just fine. They just ignore it as it does not fit the narrative they wish to present.
And those three things are completely against the beliefs of the BBC TP.
The BBC is all for large government state, especially if its a large LABOUR government state. They are all for socialised health care and utterly and completely against the free market…which is not surprised given the red leftist tendency of a lot of the big wigs at the BBC.
Mailman
Most of Reggie Brown’s routine was aimed at making Obama to be masively out of his depth, vain, arrogant, useless, and portaying Biden as a course liability.
Strange that the article doesn’t mention any of that.
I was only half watching it when it was on on C-Span, but the way I saw it, they cut him off due to time constraints. But if indeed they cut him off because of how he was ribbing GOP candidates, then I really think the GOP needs to grow up. The left has got nothing ideologically. They’ll always attack with ad homs. We ought to be used to that by now.
Haven’t had a chance to look into the video of Reggie Brown, but regarding the humour of one particularly villified member of the GOP:
http://www.break.com/index/bushimposter52.html
Is it just my imagination, or do the BBC not allow comments on stories where they’ve told complete lies?
— Richard
They can get ‘creative’ when the comments are enabled or not.
Richard Black’s body of work engages interactivity like a dipping bird.
And he also has ‘watertight oversight’ in reserve.
Nick Robinson’s crew simply close for comments. These days they are open and shut before anyone save the site groupies have a chance.
There have been several in as many days that kicked off after 9am and closed before hometime.
That… is not serving the UK, licence-fee paying public.
Mardell’s readers are mostly too partisan to know the difference. They believe his propaganda.
Given how they’ve barely acknowledged the existence of some of the declared Republican candidates for 2012, it’s intriguing that the ‘breaking news’ on the BBC News home page at the moment still includes
LATEST: Former governor Jon Huntsman launches Republican 2012 run for US presidency
There’s a length article about him and a separate profile too. There must be something that the BBC likes about him, or at least finds it worth reporting.
Doubtless it’s because he’s the only Republican in the field who says he “respects” President Obama (under whom he served for two years). He’s also implicitly criticized the other Republican candidates for “running down” Obama’s “reputation” – something the BBC article dwells on and even highlights through the use of block-quotes.
The article iself implies that the other candidates are extreme by saying, “Mr Huntsman opens his campaign with a markedly more moderate tone than those of his rivals, some of whom have questioned Mr Obama’s patriotism and loyalty to American ideals.”
The profile quotes an approving David Plouffe (Obama’s campaign manager) saying that “Mr Huntsman was “the one person in that party who might be a potential presidential candidate”‘. So the Democrats like him and so, it seems, does the BBC.
The Potential 2012 Republican candidates piece has also been updated to include Mr Huntsman, and gives him one of the longest entries. This article features some familiar BBC rhetoric about “the angry, stridently anti-government Tea Party movement” and trots out something I bet Mark Mardell will also be trotting out very soon –
“Some analysts have suggested Mr Huntsman aims to be the adult in the race, rejecting his rivals’ crowd-pleasing attacks on Mr Obama while counselling the US must make hard choices to reign in the national debt.”
Another narrative is clearly developing here.
They know Huntsman worked with the President to sell us out to China (a betrayal of the country, not merely of the Republican Party, you dopey Beeboids) and direct huge amounts of business to GE (whose boss now – what a shock – works for the Obamessiah Administration). So the way Mardell and Co. see it, either he’ll be yet another divisive force to fracture the challenge to Him, or will be the eventual candidate who won’t run a strong enough campaign to beat Him.
The Beeboids see this as win-win.
Katty Kay is giving us her opinions again, here describing the Republican candidates for 2012 as “let’s be frank…(a) lacklustre field.” Later she writes of “the weakness of the Republican field.”
Just as Mark Mardell was parroting the “seven dwarfs” line straight from the White House, so the business partner of the wife of the White House spokesman seems here to be doing her bit for exactly the same narrative (under the pretext of a piece about a Republican she can say nice things about, because he’s not running!)
It’s not a sign of the weak field of current candidates that Jeb’s name is mentioned. He was mentioned in the last election for the exact same positives Katty lays out here, but no way would a Bush have run at the time. But never mind that, as Katty has a story to tell.
Political dynasties happen due more to accumulated power and connections than because we secretly like family dynasties ruling over us. (Of course we know the BBC has a fondness for family dynasties….) Never mind all the recent evidence that the public mood is definitely not favoring the old guard or anything resembling the Republican establishment.
But I think the sub-text of this piece is that George Bush was so awful that even a “good” Republican can’t run because of him.
I just realized that this daughter of the elite is a faux-populist who doesn’t know what “meritocracy” means. She spends the whole piece telling us how Jeb is qualified to be a good candidate, but then tells us that people are asking him to run because we secretly long to continue a family political dynasty.
Note to biased Katty and all the rest of them: “Meritocracy” means just what it says on the tin. If your achievements merit promotion, it doesn’t matter what family you come from. Yes, BBC, even if one comes from an elite family like Katty Kay, one ought to be allowed to rise to the top based on one’s merit.
David P,
But does she approve of the “Bush dynasty” ?
Craig,
I love the “lets be frank” bit. Makes a change from Beeboids’ normal coyness and impartiality. I mean, come on Beeboids, why don’t you come out in the open and tell us what you really think ? We value your opinions above all others !