Check out this election wrap-up by Matt Frei and Katty Kay, who co-anchored the BBC’s coverage of the second-most important election in human history. Their bias is there for all to see. Frei’s personal bias and unwavering support for the President gets even more outrageous in his blog post.
Their first point is about all the money spent on the campaign. I completely agree – as do most people in the US – that it’s gotten ridiculous, but Matty and Katty reveal their political bias here. The only names mentioned in association with high spending are Republican multi-millionaires who spent their own cash, both of whom lost their races. Katty calls this “divine retribution”, although Matty quickly corrects her editorializing. But two things are missing from their comments.
Ted Koppel actually pointed out to Katty on Tuesday night when she was whining about this issue that her comparison to British elections are completely unfair because the campaigns are of drastically different lengths. British general elections go for a few weeks, while the US production can start as early as anyone likes and seems to go on for 18 months at least these days. I don’t like it any more than Katty does, but that’s how it is. Then there are the dramatic differences in both geography and media outlets. Several states are larger than the entire area of the UK. Statewide candidates (for Governor and Senator) have a huge amount of ground to cover, and in some states have a large number of local media outlets to hit and local newspapers in which to buy a seemingly endless stream of full-page ads. This would cost far more money that the UK spends even if the election campaigns lasted the same amount of time. So they’re making a completely false analogy.
Secondly, notice that Matty and Katty do not mention the tens of millions George Soros spent on his pet organizations, nor the fact that Comedy Central donated several hours of free air time and got sponsors to spend a huge amount of cash on St. Jon Stewart’s “March to Restore Smugness”. Which seems to have been an epic fail on a much larger scale than any individual race. But the BBC has been totally silent on that, as it confuses the Narrative.
When Matty and Katty fret about gridlock, notice that Katty is concerned only that there will be no progress on her pet issues towards the Left. When she talks about making progress on the issues of energy and climate change, she is of course not concerned about progess in a non-Left direction.
Both Beeboids speak with great sympathy for the President, which really goes beyond analysis betrays their personal emotions. At one point, Frei tells the same lie he puts forth in his blog post, that the President is always admitting His mistakes and taking responsibility. In fact, his blog post opens with this:
President Obama is no stranger to contrition. At the beginning of his term, he didn’t shy away from saying that he had messed up, screwed up, made mistakes and so on. But he was apologising about the small stuff from a position of supreme confidence. The buck stops with me, he was fond of saying serenely, confident that the buck wouldn’t give him too much trouble.
Oh, really? Let’s remind ourselves of certain things the BBC censored from their reporting.
When it became glaringly obvious that the public was not happy with what ObamaCare was going to do to the country, the President took the same line of defense that the BBC and the EU mandarins took when the Irish voted against Lisbon: they just don’t understand it well enough. When the President accepted blame for people being upset, He said that it was His fault for not explaining it well enough. This isn’t the same thing as admitting an actual mistake. We heard the same thing from Him during His audience with St. Jon Stewart two weeks ago.
As recently as Sunday, the President was singing the same song:
“Making an argument that people can understand,” Mr. Obama continued, “I think that we haven’t always been successful at that. And I take personal responsibility for that. And it’s something that I’ve got to examine carefully … as I go forward.”
This is not the talk of a man capable of contrition, nor of one who will feel “chastened” by the election results.
In fact, any time there has been a mistake with His Administration, His first instinct is to blame someone else. Problems with the clean-up effort for the BP oil spill? Distract by blaming Bush for it in the first place. People unhappy with the Stimulus? Blame Republicans for not letting Him spend even more money. Caught up in a controversy over a criminal act by the Governor in His home state? Lie and say He hasn’t been involved. Air Force One causes an outcry by buzzing lower Manhattan near Ground Zero just to please a few wealthy donors? Blame somebody else. Can’t get every single bit of legislation rammed through Congress fast enough? Don’t admit it’s a mistake to be so impetuous at a crucial time: blame Fox News instead.
Where’s the contrition? Where’s the willingness to admit mistakes? It doesn’t exist. Matt Frei still has such huge respect for Him that he just imagines it does.
As for Matty and Katty fretting over gridlock in Washington, Katty does just barely admit that the President “doesn’t find it very easy to reach out to the other side”. Where were you in 2008, Katty? Oh, that’s right – back then the BBC was telling us that He was going to be bi-partisan and end the awful politics of Washington.
Instead, immediately after the taking office, the President was in a meeting with Republican leadership about His Stimulus Plans for Us. When Republicans complained about it, He dismissed them by saying, “I won”. This is not the attitude of someone willing to work together with anyone. But the BBC censored that news.
I guess Katty Kay should have encouraged her colleagues to take her own advice and not placed the President on a pedestal, as doing so makes it very difficult to report when He gets things wrong.
She didn’t say it in this clip, but on Tuesday night Katty couldn’t shut up about the one person not holding or running for any office: Sarah Palin. Here’s a little something from Katty herself which reveals her struggle with Palin Derangement Syndrome:
‘Katty, tell me they think Palin’s crazy’
In the blog post itself, Matt Frei still gets it wrong about the President’s efforts in closing Guantanamo Bay.
On day one, President Obama signed the bill to shut down Guantanamo Bay, using his left hand. “Get used to it!” he said. “I am a lefty.”
Wrong. It wasn’t a bill, but an Executive Order. Frei actually was closer to the truth in his Diary post from the time, when he said that the President expressed his “intention to close” Guantanamo within one year “with a flick of a pen”. Of course, we all know how well that’s working out for Him.
Frei also claims that, during the transition period before taking office, the President assembled His team “in a flash”. Also not true. Even the Washington Post was worried about how long it was taking Him, more than a month after He took office. I may make a mistake or misremember something I should have checked, but I’m not paid 100 grand a year to do this, nor do I have any research staff to help me.
This is the bias anchoring BBC World News America every night of the week, from the people whom you are expected to trust for news on US issues.