Last year, a book about the President came out in which it was revealed that His White House was a hostile workplace for women. Even the lapdog US media had to talk about it, although they quickly moved on. The BBC censored all news of it, because it made the President look bad. Now another one is coming out, and the mainstream US media is all over it. Once again, the BBC is censoring the story, so you don’t get to learn anything which might make Him look bad.
The one book involving the President which the BBC did find time to briefly mention was “Obama’s Wars” by Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame). That didn’t make Him look too bad at all, so it was okay to tell you about its existence. At the time, Matt Frei, while realizing that the book showed Him as “thoughtful and serious”, had a concern:
But will the nuance of his finely-tuned brain be lost amongst the bold print of the headlines?
Of course, the BBC did find time to mention three different books about George Bush which came out during his time in office. One was about insider stuff from his Administration, one was an attempt to paint a portrait of the man from interviews with six people close to him, and one was by a psychiatrist who wondered if Bush was disabled. They even thought it was worth telling you about a biography of his wife. I’m not sure a regular biography of Bush was published while he was President. I can’t find one online anywhere. I wonder if that has to do with the fact that we knew all about him by the time he ran for office, while The Obamessiah’s background was shrouded in mystery or simply covered up, any negatives dismissed as racism or falsehoods.
So now that a second book about Him has come out, one has to wonder why the BBC refuses to acknowledge its existence. It may have something to do with the biggest story about it so far:
The Choom Gang: President Obama’s pot-smoking high school days detailed in Maraniss book
The Internet is buzzing after the Washingtonian published a review of Washington Post associate editor David Maraniss’s forthcoming book “Barack Obama: The Story,” including an excerpt about President Obama’s high school clique and their favorite pastime.
Let’s just say jobs weren’t the president’s first green initiative. The group of friends smoked marijuana frequently enough to nickname themselves the “Choom Gang.”
And it’s not just the internet buzzing. The mainstream media has been talking about it as well, plenty of links in the above WaPo post, and of course the rightosphere is bursting with amusing bits from the book. The following, though is from left-leaning Time:
Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted, “Intercepted!,” and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.
The boy is the father of the man.
Just do an internet search for “Choom” (mooch spelled backwards – so apt) and you’ll see just how much the BBC is out of step with the rest of the media on this one. It’s just another reason why their usual excuse for doing something because the rest of the media is doing it rings so hollow.
The BBC found plenty of time to remind you of George Bush’s youthful indiscretions, including here, here, and here. After he was inaugurated in 2001, Gavin Hewitt thought it important enough to grill Bush’s former pastor about it for a Panorama special. Even the late Alistair Cooke mentioned it once. So why does the BBC censor such stories about the current President?
The thing is, I don’t think this is going to hurt Him much at all. Perhaps it whittles away a little more at His shining image in the mainstream press, but anybody turned off by this revelation wasn’t going to vote for Him anyway, and anyone still dedicated to His cause certainly isn’t going to be dissuaded by this silliness. I doubt this will cost the President a single vote. But it makes Him look less than the supreme intellectual, smartest man in the room, superstar destined for greatness we’ve been hearing about from the BBC for the last four years. It’s also more evidence that the media failed in their jobs and refused to look too deep into His past in 2008, something else the BBC would hate to admit.
It would be great if there was a way of getting all this dishonesty and bias of the BBC into the mainstream. Great as this blog is there needs to be an awakening of the public in general to what is going on but how that can be done, I don’t know. We definitely need a counter balance to the BBC/Guardian etc along the lines of Fox news with a staffing ethos more to the centre right. Pipe dream, I know.
Did Matt Frei actually use the term ‘finely-tuned brain’? That’ll be all the chooming he did. I wonder if that’s why the man still smokes; still chooming. Haha. What a joke they all are.
He did. It’s the last line in post I linked to in the “had a concern” hyperlink right before I quote him. Frei Boy was always one for over-the-top prose.
Good post, DP. American politics, when squeezed through the BBC filter, have little in common with the raw undiluted form one finds elsewhere.
“We definitely need a counter balance to the BBC/Guardian etc along the lines of Fox news with a staffing ethos more to the centre right…”
I wrote to no less than Melanie Philips on this very subject as long as 10 years ago. She assured me that it was legally impossible to set up such a centre-right station in the UK along the lines of Fox News. Given her impeccable legal connections, I’m tempted to think she’s probably right.
There would be no legal barrier to internet radio.
I guess this book about Mr President has never been considered worth mentioning by any BBC journo?
Imagine if anything like that came out about Bush!
Good post, David.
I sent copies of the book “The Amateur” by Ed Klein to some friends in England but they seems reluctant to accept anything that is not backed by the imprimatur of the BBC which they still believe is the Rosetta Stone of News. It’s desperately depressing. I see no hope of telling folks in the UK about the real state of play here in the US.