Author Archives: David L Riddick - The Aged P

BBC’s Mark Mardell’s Piece On Palin’s 2012 Statement Lives Down To Expectations..

By | | , , ,
38 Comments

Mark Mardell, the BBC’s man in the USA, lets the mask slip in a rather unpleasant piece on Governor Palin’s decision not to enter the 2012 Presidential race.

Shriekily filled with venom against a president she branded a socialist and suggested was un-American, in love with guns, God and the unborn, apparently ignorant of the outside world, indeed not fully clued up on the lower 48 (the USA outside Alaska)

What a perfect example of well informed, deeply researched political analysis – paid for, I might add, by a poll tax on everyone who owns a TV set in Britain.

Holding true to the definitive snake oil salesman’s code of practice that the best way to present an untruth is to baldly state it as a fact, Mardell goes for broke.

Sarah Palin’s decision will have disappointed some.
Not the American people who clearly didn’t like her as John McCain’s running mate in 2008.

Excuse me? If that was the case why was it that the only time that the McCain ticket led Obama in the polls was in the first half of September after Palin joined it? After September 15th, of course, the ticket was dead in the water – not because of Palin but due to McCain’s deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the Lehman Brothers collapse.

Naturally Mardell ignores policy positions and goes for the personal…

As a result we have Michelle Bachmann in the race. Herman Cain in the race. Rick Perry in the race.
They are all more authentic, more intelligent, more acceptable than Palin

Hmmmm….Mr Mardell – are you saying Camille Paglia is is just some dumb broad?

No evidence to back this up, of course. Indeed what is fascinating is how Mardell is trying desperately to portray Palin as some sort of X Factor “celebrity” without any connection to the world of serious politics. No reference to her years of executive experience in Alaska as a successful city mayor or popular governor. No reference to her fight against corruption in her own party or her triumphant battles against the big oil companies.

But then why in the world would any rational person be at all surprised at this bucketful of poisonous bile?

It’s Mark Mardell..

For years he was paid by the BBC to pimp the EU as their man in Brussels. Then, when the they began to believe their own hope&change crapola about a totally unvetted Chicago Daley machine hack with zero executive experience, Mardell’s bosses decided to send him to Washington as a kind of court correspondent to wax lyrical about the new Camelot. He must have been delirious with joy, foreseeing an eight year stint pimping for Obama.

But it has all gone horribly wrong. The Obamacare shambles, the ever swelling deficit, the lobbyist rewarding stimulus that has failed to dent unemployment, the ATF guns scandal, the Democrats losing control of the house in 2010, the emergence of the tea party (which, characteristically, Mardell ignored for well over a year )…..

Mardell could even be characterised as the Comical Ali of the Obama regime

a cult figure thanks to his wild claims and colourful language

Obama is crumbling and there is precious little reward in pimping a failure. Hence the vitriolic attack on Palin. When the Brooks/Douthat/Frum axis of appeasement was advocating accomodation with Obama and Huntsman seemed the future Palin was the only leading light of the GOP who was calling him out. Her predictions have been vindicated. She was right about Obama – Mardell and his ilk were wrong – and how it must hurt to be outsmarted by someone “apparently ignorant of the outside world, indeed not fully clued up on the lower 48”

Here’s a suggestion for the BBC, supposedly in cost cutting mode. Why not save money by getting rid of Mardell and just giving White House spokesman Jay Carney a few dollars extra to blah blah blah about the Potemkin villages of Obamaland.

The song will be the same as Mardell’s but the price will be much lower…

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Bill Nighy Plays Himself And Gives Those Evil Americans/Israelis One In The Eye..

By | | ,
26 Comments

Bill Nighy, wooden, crinkled and oozing bus pass angst, meets up with earnest young woman (Rachel Weisz, born 1970!). Nighy, as per usual, autocues his lines in a monotone to nobody in particular, is hardly ever out of his overcoat and sacrifices his career and pension to flag up the evil Americans.

You’ve guessed it – “Page Eight” (BBC2 28/08/11) another glossy drama of beautiful people in NW1 (and weekend rural retreats) pumping out a subliminal version of the eternal and unchanging BBC philippic against capitalism, America (pre Obama, of course) and those vicious, conniving Je…whoops….Israelis.

Written by Richard Curtis David Hare, the storyline is as predictable as a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Public School/Oxbridge educated MI5 boss hands Public School/Oxbridge educated MI5 agent (Nighy) a file fingering UK PM as the The Evil One Covering Up US Rendition. Said agent discovers his next door neighbour had a boy friend killed by Israeli soldiers while innocently protecting defenceless Hamas protestors. This has also been covered up by the same UK PM.

Usual ending of any Nighy drama….he forces UK PM to publish the truth about the evil Israelis in return for remaining schtum about rendition. Nighy then heads off into the sunset until the next BBC drama.

Production values – AAA+
Characterisation – pure unadulterated cardboard
Message – BBC Goebbels TV at its most blatant

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Moral Panics? At The BBC It’s What We Do…..

By | | , ,
24 Comments

Obviously over the last few days the great and the good at the BBC have become rather unsettled as control over the urban mob violence and looting narrative began slipping through their fingers.

Shocked by the tsunami of contempt that hit them when they tried to frame the discussion in terms of “protestors”, poverty and/or race the Beeboids and their allies in the left wing media/academic cultural elite have been desperately searching for a way of regaining control of the issue by shifting the parameters of the debate.

The initial attempt was laughably unsubtle. Making much of a bevy of leading police officers, spearheaded by ACPOs big cheese Sir Hugh Orde, the aim was to portray the Cameron government as being out of touch. “Leave it to the boys in blue” became the watchword.

Unfortunately the evidence of a lack of leadership and control from the higher echelons at the Met over the first 2/3 days of mob rule in parts of London was so overwhelming that the utterances of Orde and Co. had a very hollow ring.

But, as David at noted yesterday, a new editorial line had been adopted by the BBC suits and programmed into the robotic Sarah Montague as she fed the appropriate cues to the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, over sentences handed out to looters. Naturally he came back with the appropriate response – “a collective loss of proportion” This triggered Sarah’s circuitry and produced the key phrase we shall be hearing over and over again at this weekend’s North London dinner parties.

Moral panic.

It’s all out of proportion, you see. There’s no real threat but a lot of opportunists have jumped on this bandwagon to further their own political agenda.

Moral panics allegedly arise when an event is perceived as a threat to society and its values. Those who foment the panic are said to be motivated by a fear of losing control. They therefore attempt to channel potentially disruptive energy by portraying another person or group – “folk devils” – as more of a danger than they actually are. So the Sarah Montague/BBC line appears to be that Cameron is using the riots as an opportunity to demonise the disenfranchised and divert attention from his austerity drive and, strangely enough, that was the angle recently taken by The New York Times…..surprise, surprise….

Heavy stuff, indeed…

But wait a minute – “no real threat but a bandwagon to further an agenda”……”folk devils”…..that seems to ring a bell….

Rupert Murdoch, Anders Breivik, bankers, EDL, AGW deniers, Israelis – now there is a collection of folk devils for you, always presented as the symbols of dark forces ever ready to take us back to some Thatcherite nightmare away from sweetness and light.

Moral panics? At the BBC it’s what we do…..

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Obama Signals Move Against Murdoch/Fox – BBC Playing Its Role Perfectly…

By | | , ,
Comments Off on Obama Signals Move Against Murdoch/Fox – BBC Playing Its Role Perfectly…

As David pointed out earlier the BBC’s Jonny Dymond has been sounding out some of the usual suspects from the US liberal left over their reaction to the News of the World phone hacking affair.

The top brass at the Beeb have obviously got the nod from their friends at the New York Times (“the Democratic Party at prayer”) that the Obama machine is very interested in the possibility of slipping a knife between Murdoch’s ribs and defenestrating Fox News. Dymond, therefore, was temporarily withdrawn from the Tea Party=militias=KKK =racism desk at AgitProp HQ and ordered to link up with the planners at Operation Fox Hunter.

Washington correspondent Jonny Dymond reports on whether any “bad habits have slipped over to the Atlantic”

Jonny isn’t talking about his own bad habits of slipping things across borders… Lithuanian customs officers still have him on file. Nor was he talking about CNN’s Piers Morgan’s habits because, so far, the BBC doesn’t appear to be too interested in a left wing tabloid not owned by Murdoch.

No – we are now reaching what I predicted was the most important item on the agenda…..the preparation of a full frontal attack on Fox News.

Others with noses closer to the DC beltway have also been sniffing the air, particularly the UK Telegraph’s Toby Harnden. He tried for ages to get a feel on the Murdoch/USA issue from Obama apparatchiks in Congress and the White House but kept on getting blanked.

They were all waiting for Valerie Jarrett to tell Obama what his decision would be.

It was a go.

Straight away Sen Jay Rockefeller had new batteries inserted and was wheeled out to transmit the official party line.

SEIU is almost certainly being fed more Soros money to add to it’s taxpayer funded coffers in order to organise “spontaneous” demonstrations of anger outside Fox properties. “Independent” op-ed scribblers at NYT and WaPo have received templates for their thoughtful “fairness” pieces.

I called this Dan Rather’s revenge not because it was Fox that pulled that neat little trick. Fox is too timid to operate behind enemy lines like the right blogosphere. Fox’s importance is to act, like the UK’s Mail and Sun, as a counter balance to the distortion of the news as it is passed through the left wing filters of the establishment media. The right blogosphere’s role is to dig up the evidence for the lies, corruption and hypocrisy of the left’s mouthpieces in New York, Hollywood and elsewhere.

Unlike Chappaquidick and the NYT/Guardian Wikileaks campaign nobody has been killed as a result of News of the World phone hacking. Yes it was unsavoury and seedy – but that is the nature of journalism. It’s a competitive dog eat dog world where you are only as good as your last story – just like Hollywood, politics and drug dealing. So the key to fighting the forthcoming onslaught is not to excuse the activities that took place several years ago under the Blair/Brown Labour government that refused to take action because at the time they were supported by the Murdoch press.

The line to take is to condemn all dirty tricks then follow up with just a representative sample of nefarious activities undertaken by the Democrats and their surrogates over the last ten years….you’ll be spoiled for choice.

Then, as was once suggested by a certain Chicago Light Bringer, get in their faces.

The big question is – what will the GOP political/media”leadership” do over this? Surely it won’t bolt for cover and hide under the table with its thumb in its mouth while the mob is baying outside the door….will it?

Surely there will be someone who will run to the fight – with a smile and a rapier….

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Murdoch v The Media Elite Lynch Mob = Dan Rather’s Revenge?

By | | , , , ,
15 Comments

In the old Soviet Union one tool Kremlinologists used to forecast shifts in the political climate was to peruse the inside pages of Pravda and spot the apparently insignificant article that they could identify as a marker for any forthcoming reconfiguration.

The articles were placed as signposts for mid level Communist Party members to prepare for changes in direction in their party “work” which, for the CPSU, as with any other totalitarian party, was almost exclusively agitprop –agitation and propaganda.

The BBC in very many ways can be seen as an agitprop arm of the British liberal/left cultural elite, a group which usually manages to direct the UK’s political and social agenda even though much of it (EU membership, unrestricted immigration, political correctness etc etc)is deeply unpopular with the majority of the population.

Moreover, with the globalisation of information media ,the lack of any patriotic affinity in the mindset of this elite allows it to integrate seamlessly with its equivalents in the USA and elsewhere

So the appearance of this article by Tom Geoghegan on the BBC website “Rupert Murdoch:Could his US empire be affected?” should be ringing alarm bells for conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. For this is not really about the rather shady ethics of a few phone hacking tabloid journalists. Indeed, while the story only appeared to involve celebrities and politicians it never really gained traction. Moreover, because the hacking took place several years ago under a Blair/Brown Labour government that at the time was very cosy with Rupert Murdoch and his tabloids meant that it remained low key with Milliband, Balls and co. Besides News of the World staff had been jailed and the editor at the time had resigned so heads had rolled.

But what has given it legs in New York and London is the revelation that the paper’s staff had hacked into a murder victim’s mobile phone. This has, quite rightly, created immense public anger – and given the liberal/left media elite, so often out of tune with popular opinion, a golden opportunity to spearhead a lynch mob.

It’s not about Murdoch and his papers – after all the dead tree press as a vehicle for news is a dinosaur on its way to extinction. The real target is Murdoch the TV baron with Fox News in the USA and Sky News in Britain. Note how Geoghan slips “right wing” into the mix. It’s a standard adjective that is permanently attached to any comment about Fox News in the UK and, it must be admitted, a brilliant example of the effectiveness of well organised agitprop. The fact that every other US network/cable news platform is imbued as deeply as the BBC in the liberal/left metro mindset is always studiously ignored.

It is no accident that the long buried phone hacking story was disinterred by the New York Times last autumn and quickly picked up in Britain by the Guardian and the BBC just as Murdoch’s bid for the whole of Sky. the BBC’s only meaningful TV competitor was about to go under public scrutiny. All three have a keen interest in undermining Murdoch and emasculating Fox because they know that Murdoch is the only player in the game who threatens the dominant position of the liberal/left cultural elite in the UK and the USA.

A perceptive piece in The Commentator reads the runes with chilling accuracy. This is not about journalistic ethics. It’s a fight to protect the authority of the great and the good against the upstarts of the new media – and, at the moment, the right wing establishment is doing what it does best….running for cover.

It’s the revenge of Dan Rather.

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

BBC Ignores Cruel And Crass Tweets From Left Wing Writer

By | | , , ,
Comments Off on BBC Ignores Cruel And Crass Tweets From Left Wing Writer

Nothing at all at the BBC website about Guardian contributor Kia Abdullah’s crass and heartless twitter comments on the tragic death of three British students in a road accident in Thailand.

‘Is it really awful that I don’t feel any sympathy for anyone killed on a gap year?’
‘I actually smiled when I saw that they had double-barrelled surnames. Sociopath?’

All across the twitterverse and blogosphere within hours and hitting the dead tree press by Sunday even the Guardian had to do a nifty piece of sidestepping.

But the BBC obviously felt the story wasn’t worth covering.

I wonder why?

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

Those Oh So Sensitive BBC Editors…..

By | | , , , ,
6 Comments

It’s a tough job, trundling through BBC’s Editors Blog (did Goebbels have something similar at his Propaganda Ministry?) but two items are worthy of note.

Firstly a tear stained piece from Jeremy Hillman, editor of the BBC News business and economics unit. Jeremy was soooooo upset about George Osborne suggesting

the BBC’s approach to reporting the economy was relentlessly to focus on the bad news and the most gloomy statistics.

Hillman went on to produce a fistful of examples in an attempt to derail Osborne’s case, par for the course for any BBC suit when faced with accusations of bias. Then he sits back smugly thinking he has proved his point.

Actually Sarah Montague, despite Hillman’s spin about consciously downplaying Padoan, did indeed home in on the Padoan remarks so obviously she didn’t get the memo.

But we all know what Osborne was really getting at – not that they ignored positive items about the economy from third parties but the whole question of tone and emphasis which is why he used the word “relentlessly”. Ever since the Coalition took office the BBC’s overarching leitmotif has been CUTS rather than savings and one only has to watch any QT audience to see how successful that campaign has been.

However the good news is that Osborne’s comment touched a nerve. I guess that this issue has been raised at several North London dinner parties recently because Hillman and his pals realise that Charter Renewal is beginning to appear on the horizon and they cannot afford to upset a senior cabinet figure. Let’s hope that other government big cheeses start getting under sensitive BBC skins on a regular basis.

Then this abject apology re the Israeli Dog Stoning story from Nathalie Malinarich, world editor of the BBC News website

We failed to make the right checks. We should never have written the article and apologise for any offence caused.

Don’t worry, luv – we know why you failed to make the right checks…..while you were all busy filling in your expenses forms a breathless young graduate trainee rushed in and blurted out “those crazy religious bigoted Jews – as well as murdering helpless innocent Palestinians they are now going after helpless dogs…”

It fitted into the BBC’s anti Israeli narrative so perfectly you just couldn’t resist it…c’mon, Nathalie…is the Pope catholic? Those Jews aren’t they evil?

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

BBC Thinks Roads Are Only For BBC Elite – Not For US

By | | , ,
18 Comments

Our friends at the BBC (you know, the ones who we pay for out of money extracted by force from our pockets and purses) do love to travel in style at our expense but they are not so keen on we ordinary mortals doing the same, especially by road.
Hence the doom laden announcement on the BBC website about the opening of the M74 extension in Glasgow.
True there were positive quotes from the Scottish Infrastructure Secretary Alex Neil and Glasgow City Council leader, Councillor Gordon Matheson but you can always tell where the BBC love really resides when you see the quotes signing off at the end of any website article.

“A fraction of this vast sum (£692m) could have delivered major public transport improvements, and to make the city easier to cycle and walk around.”

That from Glasgow Green MSP Patrick Harvie plus an equally funereal warble from Stan Blackley described as chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland (yes, you’ve got it, FoE, the organisation that’s generously funded by EU taxpayers)
So, Stan, you won’t be driving your VW Campervan along the M74 any time yet?
As someone who regularly drives westward I have often reflected that, if we were in France, there would be a dual carriageway A303 all the way to Exeter and an M30 threading through Devon and Cornwall (one of the poorest counties in England)…..but, being a realist, I just know that the Stan Blackleys of the world would have a hotline to the BBC and, within seconds, there would be the second coming of Swampy ordering us all to get on yer bike..

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

The BBC Hits Obama Hard – Only Joking….

By | | ,
15 Comments

Remember how the BBC regularly hit us hard every day with stories about the arrogance and inefficiency of the Bush presidency? So hard, in fact, that you would have thought we had become the 51st (or, according to Obama, the 58th) state of the union. Also how any mistake made by an officer of the administration was the President’s responsibility?

How times change.

Not much from the Beeb about the Gunrunner scandal involving the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) allowing Mexican drug cartel operatives to buy firearms from US gunshops, ostensibly to track smuggling routes.

Some terribly nasty people say that DoJ Eric Holder, who supervises the ATF was really looking for some juicy soundbites to boost the Obama administration ambition of imposing stricter gun controls in the US.

Dear me – how unchivalrous.

Naturally Holder and Obama knew nothing about Gunrunner – just as, apparently, the BBC knows nothing about Holder and the Black Panthers voter intimidation incident in the 2008 election.

Then there are those Congressional concerns about the legality of America’s involvement in Libya’s civil war. Not much at all apart from this classic from the highly professional and even handed Mark Mardell, highlighted by David Preiser recently at bBBC.

However the US media has been fairly slow to unleash much shoe-leather on both these stories, until recently – and it has been said that the BBC takes all its US cues from the New York Times and Washington Post.

So, whatever the reason we all know that it can’t be because the Beeb is still in the tank for Obama……that can’t possibly be the case…can it?

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

BBC "Forgets" Palin E Mail Story – I Wonder Why……

By | | ,
28 Comments

Having read DB’s post at Biased BBC and the frenetic overture to the Palin e mails saga trumpeted on the BBC website a few days ago

Critics say the e-mails may damage Palin’s presidential chances

I thought I would check out the Beeb’s reaction to the general consensus in the US media that the much vaunted NYT/WaPo “investigation” had spectacularly backfired.

Even plodding Politico hack Molly Ball at Politico (probably through gritted teeth) had to admit

She was hands-on and averse to partisan politics. She championed openness in government and had normal relations with the media. She was a little starstruck by her interactions with national politicians but unafraid to do battle with the chief executives of the world’s largest oil companies.

though, being Molly, she had to inject some squirts of bitchiness a few lines later.

Her colleague Andy Barr, no admirer of Palin, was more generous, as was CNN’s Drew Griffin. In the Daily Telegraph, after the usual set of ill informed bleats from the master of cut and paste “journalism” Alex Spillius, Toby Harnden took Molly Ball’s words and juggled them around to give a semblance of originality.

Even blogging nonentity Ryan Streeter at ConservativeHomeUSA (thought by many to be financed by Lord Ashcroft) who thinks Palin’s role in the GOP should be to strut her stuff as a pretty cheerleader twirling her baton for Superwonk Paul Ryan thought the e mail colonoscopy had proved a damp squib (though, par for the course, he was more mealy mouthed than even Molly Ball.

But from the BBC – zilch, zero, a big fat nothing……I wonder why?

Fortunately, Cornell’s Professor Jacobson, managed to capture the video….

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.