Category Archives: Mark Mardell

Gone To The Dogs

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Well, well, well. After ten days, reality has at last forced the BBC to acknowledge the big joke about the President being fed dog as a child. How many of us here have noted that they’ve refused to touch this story? BBC US President editor Mark Mardell finally decided to address it.

Nobody is really taking it too seriously as a negative on the President, but it has been an effective counter against Democrat attacks on Romney for that one story about the dog on the car roof.

Two obvious examples of bias in Mardell’s post:

1. When acknowledging that the dog-eating story plays into the “larger Narrative” (a Beeboid knows a Narrative when he sees one, eh?) that the President is too foreign, he either doesn’t understand or refused to admit that this was the whole point of putting that anecdote in His autobiography. The intent was to make Him seem in tune with the whole world and not just a parochial, isolationist American. In fact, even the BBC told us that His world experience was a selling point. Mardell has either forgotten that, or just doesn’t want you to remember.

2. So it’s pathetic and biased for Mardell to then say, “But I fear more politicians may try to make dogs a touchstone of the American way.”  He admits bias right there in the open. If you sell yourself as being Post-American, don’t blame someone else for pointing it out. Instead, Mardell tries to defend his beloved Obamessiah.

Immigration Games

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(UPDATE: See my comment below) I was going to comment about this in the open thread, but in the light of today’s noise about the housing benefit shuffle in Newham causing “social cleansing” and allegedly inspiring right-wing extremism, I thought it was worth a full post. I’m talking about the BBC’s revelation that immigration from Mexico into the US is being reversed.

Mexico-US migration slips after 40 years of growth

The rate of Mexican immigration to the US has stalled or maybe even gone into reverse, an analysis shows, ending a four-decade-long trend.

Not may, it has. The Pew figures (NB: pdf file automatic download) quoted by the BBC pretty much show that. The reason I’m bringing it up is because of the illegal factor. It’s important to remember that the BBC has generally taken the activists’ line and used their language in reporting on the issue in the US. Remember Mark Mardell’s jaunt to the Arizona border (page 4 of the open thread) and the other reports trying to tell you it was all about racism against people with brown skin and a Mexican accent? Then there are the other reports siding with illegals and playing the race game. The fact that these people are in the US illegally is somehow not their fault, but the fault of unfair laws which magically make them illegal ex post facto or something. The real objection wasn’t, of course, about immigration of non-whites, but about illegal immigration.

Activists – mostly Hispanic – always play that qualifier down, if not wipe it from the discussion entirely. And the BBC played right along. So it must have come as something of a shock to the BBC News Online producer who had to skim through the Pew report and discover that last year there were more illegal Mexicans in the US than legal ones: 6.1 million to 5.8 million. So why didn’t the BBC ever discuss that disparity last year when they were freaking out about the Arizona law and all those other states trying to stem the tide of illegals? The rest of us knew the problem was about illegals, and said so at the time. Yet the BBC tried to play it as racism anyway. When Mark Mardell tries to whip up a little anger by shoving in your face Pat Buchanan’s racialist diatribe about losing “white America” to the Mexicans, it’s all part of this Narrative. Forget about the illegal issue and focus on race. It ends the debate before it begins. But the BBC approves when Hispanics vote for their own kind based solely on ethnicity.

It must also come as a shock to those who rely on the BBC for the news on US issues to learn that the first black President has in fact been deporting record numbers of illegals with brown skin back to Mexico. How can that be racism, BBC? Is He a puppet or something on this issue? I’d love to know how they square this with their belief in Him. I remember when Mardell was actually for a moment trying to defend the President (page 8 of the open thread) against charges that He wasn’t protecting the border properly. Obviously He wasn’t, since there were more illegals than legals last year. Mardell is silent, of course.

It’s important to make this distinction when reporting on the US issue of immigration law, because, as the Newham article doesn’t show, the problem in Britain is about mostly quite legal immigration. There’s a huge difference in the cause and effect in the UK from what’s been happening in the US.  Which is why it’s wrong for the BBC to conflate the two situations and play racialist games.

If xenophobia is (I’m speaking hypothetically for the moment) a primary factor in British objection to seemingly unlimited legal immigration of third-world Mohammedans, this still has nothing to do with US objection to illegal immigration of Mexicans. There is a world of difference between the two. Why has the BBC been unable to make this distinction? I say it’s because they’re viscerally opposed to restrictions on immigration simply out of reflexive fealty to the abstract notions of diversity and multiculturalism, as well as a reflexive opposition to any nominally conservative policy.

I’ve previously mentioned how the BBC hired German immigrant Franz Strasser (middle of page 4 of the open thread) to tour the country reporting on immigration in the US in all its various colors. The reason I criticized every single report in that series was because he and his editor dishonestly censored the word “illegal” (middle of page 7) out of the whole picture. Even when he was doing reports from two different “Sanctuary Cities” (middle of page 4 of that same thread), which deliberately flouted US immigration law to harbor illegals. He acted as if this didn’t exist. The whole series was conceived and design to whitewash (see what I did there) the illegal issue so that you’d all think any objection to immigration had to be based in racism. Now here are hard figures to show that there really has been a problem with illegal immigration.

The BBC article about the Pew study notes that “immigration” is going to be a big issue in this election year, but still cannot bring themselves to add the “illegal” qualifier, which is actually what it’s all about. The situation is not the same, yet they still pretend it is.

Now that illegal immigration is down, even seeing a negative trend, one has to suspect that the policies have been working. Too bad Britain doesn’t even have the level of sovereignty that Arizona does. Oh, and I guess this means that Global Warming won’t be driving all of them into the US after all.

Still, it’s nice to see the BBC at last revealing even the tiniest bit of truth about what’s been going on over here. But it’s a shame that they don’t make an effort to correct the false impression they’ve been creating about the concern over illegal immigration in the US.

 

 

Is The Occupy Movement Racist Now?

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A while back, the BBC followed the lead of their brethren in the Left-wing US media and tried to get you to think the Occupiers were similar to the Tea Party movement. This was done because – to the media’s dismay – much of the country failed to hate the Tea Party movement and buy into the demonization promoted by the press. So, having resigned themselves to that fact, the media luvvies tried to gain acceptance for the Occupiers by trying to promote the idea that they had similar ideals to the Tea Partiers. The BBC even played a little game of “Who Said It” to help drive home this notion.

Now it appears the two movements do have something in common after all: their opposition to The Obamessiah.

Tea Party and OWS Protest Side-By-Side Against Obama in San Francisco

The unthinkable finally happened last night in San Francisco: the Tea Party shared a protest with the Occupiers, both groups angry with the same person.

And who was this unifier, the only man who can bridge the divide and bring together all sides of the political spectrum? Why, President Obama, of course.

I don’t need to remind anybody here that the Narrative from the BBC has been that opposition to the President is not so much policy-based as it is steeped in racism. They simply refuse to acknowledge that people can be genuinely opposed to His policies for legitimate reasons. See the video of Mark Mardell’s appearance at the BBC College of Journalism for a reminder of his mocking of a Southern woman whom he describes as a racist, as well as his opinion that the Tea Partiers are really, deep down, under the skin, concerned about the Government spending money “on people not like them”.

So, one has to ask now: Is the Occupy Wall St. movement racist?

Over to you, BBC.

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MARDELL ON BUCHANNAN

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Biased BBC contributor Alan comments;

“Mark Mardell suspects Pat Buchannan of being a racist based on some quotes from his book…some of which are reproduced below….though they seem nothing that you wouldn’t read in any British newspaper, Guardian and Independent excepted, today…or hear from Trevor Phillips himself, not to mention Cameron’s speech on multi-culturalism.

Mardell complains of a more obvious split between left and right….why might that exist now? Because previously, pre-Internet, the Left wing media had the field pretty much to themselves….not to mention all the teachers and academics. The BBC was the collossus that dominated and bestrode the world having huge influence on the direction of political and social thought. Now with the internet not only can people read for themselves the sources of information without a journalist filtering it through his own prejudices but they can spread their own ideas to vast numbers of people that were out of reach only a few years ago.

The Left has lost its monopoly on information…and information is power….which is why there is a concerted effort to close down any rightwing blogs or websites that don’t echo their own thoughts….and not just websites but political parties also….Germany, whose intelligence agency states that Islam is the greatest danger to the German democracy, has decided that it is rightwing parties that should be closed down perhaps…not mosques. (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,815242,00.html)

Mardell whilst lamenting the separation of politics still plays that game himself…calling Buchannan a racist and his thoughts at best ‘maverick’ and ‘pungent’….no right thinking person could possibly think like that surely?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17079971

‘I haven’t read the book, but judging from extracts it is easy to see how his pungently expressed anti-multiculturalism could be seen as racist.Conservative views that seem very far to the right by British standards are all over the place – from blogs, to right-wing talk radio, and above all on Fox News. You can’t be in America long before you hear people bemoan the death of a more bipartisan past. To an extent this is piety, but sometimes the split in the media makes America feel like it is dividing into two armed camps. There is a grave danger for American democracy that the two parties not only can’t agree, they can’t even discuss.’

These are some of the quotes…are they ‘pungently’ expressed…or just expressed? They seem standard fayre for someone proud of his heritage and regretting seeing it deliberately being broken down and labelled as nasty colonialism or white and therefore racist, or too Christian or not gay enough…he looks to an America of one culture with one set of values regardless of colour…..not a dangerous mish mash of competing ones:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/twelve_pretty_racist_or_just_crazy_quotes_from_pat_buchanans_new_book.php

 ‘Perhaps some of us misremember the past. But the racial, religious, cultural, social, political, and economic divides today seem greater than they seemed even in the segregation cities some of us grew up in.  Back then, black and white lived apart, went to different schools and churches, played on different playgrounds, and went to different restaurants, bars, theaters, and soda fountains. But we shared a country and a culture. We were one nation. We were Americans.’

‘When the faith dies, the culture dies, the civilization dies, the people die. That is the progression. And as the faith that gave birth to the West is dying in the West, peoples of European descent from the steppes of Russia to the coast of California have begun to die out, as the Third World treks north to claim the estate. The last decade provided corroborating if not conclusive proof that we are in the Indian summer of our civilization.’

 From the chapter, “The End Of White America”:

‘The white population will begin to shrink and, should present birth rates persist, slowly disappear. Hispanics already comprise 42 percent of New Mexico’s population, 37 percent of California’s, 38 percent of Texas’s, and over half the population of Arizona under the age of twenty. ……. Mexico is moving north. Ethnically, linguistically, and culturally, the verdict of 1848 is being overturned. Will this Mexican nation within a nation advance the goals of the Constitution—to “insure domestic tranquility” and “make us a more perfect union”? Or has our passivity in the face of this invasion imperiled our union?’

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Sticky Spot

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Mark Mardell addresses the difficult subject of US foreign Policy without committing the new BBC crime of “Value Judgement.”

Poor Obama is in a sticky spot. In a period of of electioneering, he must wrestle with the tricky problem of who to suck up to.
Should he choose the disproportionately influential Jewish lobby, which is conspiring to suck America into another of their selfish Jewish wars?
Or should he courageously plump for pleasing the good American people who are “tired of foreign conflicts” and consider it expedient to appease the Iranians.

Carefully avoiding any Value Judgements, Mark Mardell turns to some important experts on the Middle East to find out more. He approaches Cliff Kupchan and Michael Scheuer for their interesting views on the matter. Or should that be interested views.
Professor Matt Kroenig does inject some sense into the mix at this point, but Mardell has not been entirley open about the earlier two spokespersons. We are told is that one is a ‘maverick’ but, what are their political leanings?

“Republicans regard any hesitation in backing Israel as unpatriotic,” says Mark Mardell. His impartial opinion appears to be that good folk vote Democrat.

Seriously, the online article is a little more nuanced, and they did link to a Ronan Bergman NYT article I linked to myself the other day.
To many listeners the Today item I heard this morning would have been a stand-alone item, and that would have been a definite value judgement crime of the first degree.

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Responding To A Defender Of The Indefensible

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This is regarding a comment from Dez on an open thread which had already dropped off the main page by the time I noticed it. I haven’t had time to put together the response his comment deserves, and since I think there is an important point to be made here, I’m making it a main post rather than continuing the discussion in the middle of an old thread.

A week ago on a previous Open Thread, John Horne Tooke commented in response to a criticism of BBC reporting by “As I See It” that the BBC’s biased coverage of the US had convinced his college-educated daughter that Republicans “do not believe in science”. It was on Page 7 of this Open Thread (Js-kit/Echo won’t allow linking directly to a comment).

That’s obviously about either Creationsim or Warmism, or both, on which the BBC has form. Basically this is based on the assumption that all Republicans are “climate deniers” and Christians who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old. The BBC has declared that skepticism that human activity is the driving factor in Global Warming is “anti-science”,  and so all Republicans get tarred with that epithet, even though there are plenty who buy into Warmism. As for Creationsim,  people like Justin Webb and Nicky Campbell (R5L Sept. 8, 2011) have conflated a belief in God as Creator (a very broad term) with the belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old, and suggested that, for example, both Sarah Palin and Rick Perry are unfit for high public office because of it. In the case of JHT’s daughter, she got it from Chris Evans. There’s probably also something there about opposition to embryonic stem-cell research being anti-science. It’s easy for the BBC audience to assume that this is the case for all Republicans, since the Beeboids themselves keep reinforcing that opinion. In short, biased BBC reporting, along with constant partisan attacks from BBC Light Entertainment personalities, forms incorrect opinions.

So I extrapolated from that to a pet peeve of mine, and replied that if JHT’s daughter also thought that the Tea Party movement was driven by crypto-racism, he’d know whom to blame. I was of course referring to the BBC US President, Mark Mardell, along with the fact that the majority of BBC reporting about the Tea Party movement has suggested that opposition to the President was based more on the color of his skin than on any policies. There’s plenty of evidence for this, which I’ll get to in due course. Dez disagreed with me. His comment in full is below the fold.

Hell Yeah! Because it can’t be anything to do with the idiots pictured here:
http://snotrockets.net/politics/tea-party/the-tea-party-are-a-bunch-of-racists-there-ive-said-it/
And it can’t be anything to do with The Patriot Freedom Alliance:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073094/Racism-row-erupts-Tea-Party-calls-Barack-Obama-skunk.html

Or Marilyn Davenport:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378380/Official-apologizes-Obama-chimpanzee-email-Tea-party-member-fired.html

No! It’s all the fault of Mark Mardell because he told the BBC College of Journalism that; “I’ve been to lots of Tea Party meetings and I honestly don’t think most of them are racist… I think for them it is about the Government spending their money…”

Bascially, Dez’s argument is that since others besides the BBC have pointed to fringe elements and isolated incidents, the BBC cannot be blamed for influencing public opinion on this matter. I won’t put words in his mouth and say that Dez also believes that the Tea Party is driven by racism. I think he does, although I’m happy to be corrected if he chooses to explain himself. Furthermore, he’s also misrepresenting what Mardell actually said at the BBC  CoJ.

First of all, let’s discuss who influences public opinion. 50% of the UK public watch the BBC for their news. The BBC has far more influence there than any other television news organization. BBC News Online is Britain’s most popular news website, especially seeing a 109% boost in visitors during the last two years from that desirable 18-24 year old demographic. Nobody has as much influence in online news as the BBC. Outside of that, while Radio 4 has lost some of its audience share, Chris Evans has nearly 9 million listeners. So when he says the Tea Party is racist, he reaches more people at the same time – including JHT’s daughter – than just about anyone else in Britain who isn’t an athlete, royalty, or on X/Strictly whatever. Then there are all the Left-wing comedy programmes and news quizzes, on both radio and tv. The Beeboids at the Today Programme believe they set the agenda for the nation’s news each day. No other media organization has anything like the number of channels or online presence or audience figures of the BBC. It’s not even close. The BBC has by far more influence on public opinion than the rest of them.

The Daily Mail may have passed the New York Times as the top online news source, but how much is that due to celebrity gossip and photos of women in bikinis, never mind the fact that the NY Times has a pay wall which cuts readership short?  The Mail got 45.3 million unique visitors in December,  Those figures are worldwide, not only British readers. The BBC suggests that’s more about “popular journalism”, big photos, an search engine optimization than the quality of the actual hard news, so it’s difficult to claim that the Mail has more influence on public opinion than the BBC.  Sure, the Mail can raise a fuss sometimes and affect a tiny bit of change, as Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross found out. But do 50% of the public get their serious news from the Mail, or do more of the British public read their website for news than BBC? Clearly not.

So I think it’s fair to say that the BBC has more influence on public opinion than any other media outlet. Does the BBC overwhelmingly try to tell you that the Tea Party movement is racist, inspired by racism, or is filled with racists? Yes. The list is seemingly endless.

Jonny Dymond recently made a dishonest report about how hate groups are on the rise because there’s a black President. This was part of the BBC Narrative which began in 2008, that opposition to The Obamessiah can be due only to skin color and not policy.

In one of his earliest blog posts since taking over for Justin Webb, Mark Mardell was openly asking if opposition to the President was driven by racism. He said that, considering how important racism has been in US political history, “it would be strange if it now mattered not a jot”. In his first weeks on the job, Mardell was already ignoring the main economic policy points of the Tea Party movement and Republican opposition to a Democrat President, and focusing instead on a suspicion he has, based on small evidence.

Not long after that, Kevin “Teabagger” Connolly was pushing the same Maureen Dowd article from the NY Times that Mardell waas. In that same post, David Vance also tells us about Gavin Essler in the Daily Mail scowling at those Hitler signs, and whipping up fear that someone might assassinate the President. So even if the Mail does have a negative influence on the public, we can partly blame Beeboids for that, too.

There have been plenty of comments on this blog about Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire pushing this same Narrative, never mind all those edgy comedians who make a good living working the Left-wing tropes.

The next issue is whether or not Dez is correct that the outliers his examples highlight are enough to convince someone that the Tea Party movement is, in fact, racist. I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog trying to show that, contrary to BBC reporting, the movement is actually driven by people’s unhappiness with the President’s and the Democrats’ economic policies, and there’s no need to get into all that here.

The short answer is that every large gathering and movement is going to have its parasitical fringe element, people who ride the coat tails of the larger movement to push their own issues. It’s become a cliché that every Left-wing protest march will feature someone with a “Free Palestine” sign or a “Troops out of Iraq” placard or a hoodie with that “A” for Anarchy symbol, regardless of the issue of the day.  But we don’t say that the student riots protests against tuition fees were driven by support for the Palestinian cause. The same thing goes for Right-wing gatherings and pro-life supporters or similar. So there are obviously going to be some racists somewhere who see protests against the President as an opportunity to bare their own racist grievances. It can’t be helped. Hell, there might even be people who actually are racist, but are also legitimately concerned about the destructive economic policies.

However, I’d say that it’s impossible for a grassroots movement which grew into a national phenomenon to be largely driven by racism if Herman Cain and Col. Allen West got so much support from them. The second Tea Party protest I attended back in 2009 was hosted by a black man. And how racist can people be who vote for Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio? Or are there actual racists who hate black people but have no problem with Indians or Hispanics?

But I think it would me more informative to instead answer a question with a question.

If we’re supposed to accept that the Tea Party movement is driven by racism based on a few outliers and isolated incidents, would Mardell and Connolly and John Horne Tooke’s daugher and Dez equally say that the Occupy Wall St. movement is driven by anti-Semitism if I provided several examples? Would they do what we’re so often instructed not to about Muslims and extremism or young black men and crime, and stain the majority for the behavior of the few?  Would, then, the following be enough evidence to declare that anti-Jewish sentiment does matter a jot in the Occupy movement:

Anti-Semitic Protester at Occupy Wall St LA


Occupier shouting “Go back to Israel” to a Jew

The Hate in Zuccotti

Pete Sutherland traveled to Zuccotti Park all the way from Georgia Friday, shivering as he wielded a handmade sign that read, “The Reason the Arabs Hate Us.”

“Jews are the smartest people in the world,” said Sutherland, 79. Not in a good way.

“They control the media.”

But no one tells the truth about the Hebrew people, as he sees it, because “the media doesn’t want to commit suicide by losing the Jewish advertisers.’’

“I’m not anti-Semitic,” he finished.

The New York Times thought the Occupy movement was getting such a bad reputation that they went out to make a story defending them. The Times instructs us not to smear the majority for the acts of a few.


Occupy Wall Street Has an Anti-Semitism Problem

A quick sampling of the anti-Semitism on display among the Occupy Wall Street set yields the flamboyant and aggressive protester who yells,“You’re a bum, Jew” at his yarmulke-wearing interlocutor; the conspiracy theorist who laments that “Jewish money controls American politics,” and warns the Russians not to let the Jews take over Russia too; and  the self-described Nazi with the swastika tattoo who regrets that America has been handed over to “other people.” Ah, people power.

I could go on. So do we declare that the Occupy movement is mainly anti-Semitic, or that it’s fair for people to get that idea?  I didn’t say so after my encounter with the Occupiers at Zuccotti. In fact, I said that, despite the videos I’d seen and reports I’d read, I hadn’t seen any real anti-Semitism there, and so wouldn’t declare the entire movement tainted. Which brings me to my final point: Dez’s misrepresentation of Mardell’s CoJ appearance and misunderstanding and mischaracterization of my comment.

You can watch Mardell speak for himself here. (@ around 54:20 if the link isn’t direct)

Mardell mocks a Southern white woman while confirming his off-camera colleague’s opinion that racism was certainly a factor in the 2008 election. “You knew exactly what it was,” he chortles. He then says that he doesn’t think “most” of the people at Tea Party protests he’s been to are racists. “Certainly not in a straightforward sense.”  Dez conveniently elided that bit. Which leads to his error about what I said. Mardell isn’t saying that most of us aren’t racists, he’s saying that it’s there underneath the surface of the economic issues. “Deeper than that, it’s about the Government spending their money on people who are not like them.”  Dez conveniently elided that bit as well. Dishonesty? Or a simple mistake? Only Dez can tell us.

I said at the time, and have repeated many times since, that Mardell believes the Tea Party movement to be driven by crypto-racism. His own words tell you so. Now, I’m not blaming Mardell’s appearance at the CoJ for people being misinformed. That’s a misunderstanding on Dez’s part. What I am saying is that Mardell, the BBC’s top man in the US, believes it to be true, and that it influences his and his fellow Beeboids’ reporting. The question from his colleague presupposes that racism is a factor, and Mardell confirms it. This tells us the editorial opinion of and the conventional wisdom at the BBC, which informs all their reporting on the issue. In other words, they already thought that, long before Mardell’s appearance at the BBC CoJ. This is a problem. Aside from the smear factor, it also causes them to ignore or play down the real economic issues behind the opposition to the President’s and the Democrats’ agenda. Mardell can acknowledge that excessive government spending is a concern, but deep down it’s driven by racism. Even when writing about Herman Cain’s popularity, he actually thinks it’s important to ask if the man’s black skin would “bother any right-wingers”. So Dez’s portrayal of Mardell is absolutely false.

Of course there’s no memo going out telling everyone to push the racism angle or anything. It’s just groupthink, reinforced from the top. They read it in the Washington Post and the New York Times and the HuffingtonPost, and they hear it from their Left-wing associates and friends, and laugh at it with their favorite Left-wing comedians. It’s visceral, and is spread throughout the BBC.  That’s why you hear it not only from Mardell and Dymond, but from Bacon and Campbell and all the rest of them.

And that’s why 50% of the public who watch BBC News, as well as heavens knows how many more who rely on BBC News Online – who combined make up the majority of the population – think the Tea Party movement is driven by crypto-racism.

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HOW DO I BEGIN…?.

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David Preiser has already covered this story but I wanted to put in this little post-script. I think you need to listen to the soundtrack below whilst contemplating Mark Mardell on Today this morning, eulogising Obama’s State of the Union address last evening. The love he evidently feels for President Haughty moved me-  as I am sure it will move you. However I am worried that if things don’t go as the scrupulously impartial Mark hopes, this may yet prove unrequited.

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Mark Mardell Visits A Jon Huntsman Gathering And Defends The President On The Economy

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The BBC’s US President editor is in New Hampshire to cover the Republican Primary. “It’s the economy, stupid” is the running gag these days about the number one reason why the President might not be re-elected. Among the elite media, anyway. Much of the rest of the country might be worried about His continued assault on gun rights, poor performance on stopping illegal immigration, the constant class war rhetoric, the possibly unconstitutional power grabs and recess appointments, His poor foreign policy record, and His general apparent incompetence to improve anything, but that doesn’t interest Mardell or his fellow travelers.  And we never hear about any of that from the BBC anyway, so it may as well not exist for the purposes of this discussion.

As Mitt Romney solidifies his lead over Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich, where do you think the BBC’s top man in the US goes to keep his finger on the pulse of the people? A Jon Huntsman gathering. Who?

Yes, Mardell went to a gathering of supporters of the candidate who has been at the bottom of the polls from the beginning. Huntsman is now getting a little play in New Hampshire, because that state is full of Reagan Democrats, who basically were the “independents” who voted for The Obamessiah in 2008. To support his attendance at a Huntsman event, he points to an article by the Left-wing (but not identified as such, contrary to what Jane Bradley said they should do) Daily Beast which says Huntsman had his best debate performance yet. In other words, Democrats like him, so Mardell is on the scene. I’d be more impressed if he had found a non-Left article speaking positively about Huntsman.

Now, you might be saying, “Hey, Dave, Hunstman is suddenly on the rise, so it’s logical that Mardell would check out his gathering to see what’s up.” Well, he didn’t do that for Santorum, who rocketed up from the bottom of the polls in Iowa. He went to a Ron Paul rally after a quick stop at a Romney speech. The BBC instead sent Peter Marshall of Newsnight to laugh at Santorum. Contrary to the tone here, Santorum’s rise was discussed with distaste in BBC reporting.

No, Mardell has liked Huntsman from the beginning. He was mentioning Huntsman when the man was not even a blip on the radar, yet didn’t mention Herman Cain until after the first debate, when he dismissed Cain out of hand. Last September, Mardell told an audience at the BBC College of Journalism that he liked Huntsman as a candidate and especially that Democrats liked him. I think that about sums it up right there. But this is at least as much about defending the President as it is about Huntsman.

For his latest, Mardell is talking to some other Republican voters. What’s especially troubling about this report is that Mardell also seizes an opportunity to defend the President on the economy.


Do Republican attacks on Obama strike a chord?

Actual Republican voters in New Hampshire are more conservative, or at least used to be. Reagan lost a primary to Pat Buchanan, for example. The state has, though, seen a serious increase in Democrat voters in the last few years. The problem is that the state also has this rather lax, same-day voter registration deal, so people can switch parties or independents can sign up for one (one has to be registered for a party to vote in the primary) on the day in order to flood the polls for a given candidate. There are rumors that out-of-state Paul minions are coming in to take advantage of this as well. So the particular circumstances of New Hampshire benefit Huntsman more than just about any other candidate.

But Mardell is there more to defend the President than to push Huntsman. So he talks to some Huntsman supporters about their thoughts on the economy. First, he talks to an actual Republican, a business owner and son of a former Republican governor and White House staffer. Chris Sununu definitely blames the President for the bad economy. Mardell, though, questions him.

I put it to him that is fine as political rhetoric, but question whether Obama’s policies have really hurt his thriving ski resort.

Somebody show me an example of Mardell doing this to an Obamessiah supporter.  He let’s Sununu answer the question, but then dismisses it.

Not everyone agrees that the language of the campaign reflects reality.

It’s very clever how he emphasizes that this is “rhetoric”, which devalues the position. In the interest of balance, of course, Mardell then talks to someone who – what a shock – doesn’t like where the Republican Party is going. Donald Byrne is one of those “independents” registering specifically for this primary I was talking about. It would be more informative if he’d found an actual Republican who felt differently, but I guess one right-winger a day is all he can stomach. Tell me if any of the following sounds eerily familiar to everything the BBC has been telling about the Republicans:

He says the language used about Obama is pandering to the base.

“I think the Republican party in the United States has shifted very far to the right,” he says.

“Being a moderate is a negative in this campaign and that’s very unfortunate, because the majority of Americans are moderate and well balanced in their thought process.

“There is too much pandering to these right-wing extreme sides.”

This could have been copied and pasted from any number of BBC reports. Actually, it sounds like a good White House talking point. Wake me up when Mardell finds an “independent” who says that the Democrats have moved too far to the Left, and that it’s bad for the President to pander to Left-wing extremes. No, to Mardell, that’s a good thing, what He should be doing.

One thing Mardell neglected to tell you about Byrne is that he hosted a Huntsman gathering at his own home last month, and that he doesn’t like Romney’s strong talk against China. It’s pretty obvious that a software entrepreneur with a vested business interest in dealing with China is going to like the former Ambassador to China who sucked up to them. The “pandering” to extremists Byrne was talking about was, in fact, about anti-China rhetoric and not, as Mardell wants you think, specifically about the US economy. So a little dishonesty from Mardell there to help his Narrative.

To further defend the President on the economy and convince you that the fiscally conservative position is actually an extremist one, Mardell found a big-government Republican and economist who worked for the first President Bush. You won’t be surprised to learn that he says that the debate between Keynesian and Milton Friedman economics is silly. It’s more between Keynes and Hayek, but Friedman is a big American name, so we’ll accept that. In any case, Mr. Bastani says that neither approach works, and anyways Keynesian economics has become the middle ground. If Mardell asked him if anything the President has done might have harmed the economy, we aren’t told.  Did he censor that bit, or did he just not bother to ask at all? Either way, you’re left with a specific Narrative.

That’s the same message you’ve heard over and over again from a number of Beeboids, isn’t it? How many times have we heard “Two Eds” Flanders say it? How many times has the BBC gotten Blanchflower or some other Left-wing pundit to say this? Mardell himself has said (at that now infamous BBC CoJ appearance) that the British public support endless deficit spending, and that the President is “the last Keynesian standing”. He thinks that’s the answer. So he went out and found people to support his own personal position.  And we know his own personal position, because he revealed it in front of the BBC CoJ camera.

Both these reports from New Hampshire were written from his own personal viewpoint: Huntsman is the good candidate, Keynesian policies are best (it’s a misunderstood Keynesianism, actually, as the man himself never promoted an endless, infinite deficit),  the other Republican candidates are extremist, and that any talk of the President hurting the economy is mere rhetoric.

As a result, you’re not informed about what’s going in New Hampshire, but you do get a message.

UPDATE: In case there’s any doubt about the reality of Huntsman’s supporters, here’s a video of some supporters who think he’s practically a Democrat. Notice how they whine about evangelicals just like Mardell and the other Beeboids do.

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One Year On From The BBC Using Mass Murder To Push An Agenda

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It’s been one year since an unhinged Arizonan killed several people in cold blood while attempting to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The BBC is silent on that matter today, which is slightly curious considering the big deal it was at the time, and what larger meaning they and their fellow travelers in the Left-wing US media tried to force onto it. They tried to blame Sarah Palin for inciting this act of mass murder. She had previously published a map with a cross-hairs on it, calling for supporters to “target” various Democrat opponents. Ignoring all common sense and the fact that this was a common rhetorical gesture, nothing to do with a call for violence, the BBC pushed the idea that Palin was to blame. But now…silence.

(UPDATE: See the bottom of this post.)

The easy “journalistic” defense is that the BBC has only such much time and only so much room to do stories, and the Republican race, the economy, and foreign policy developments take up the bulk of their time. The rest of the 55 Beeboids employed to cover the US are dedicated to producing more lightweight, magazine-style pieces and celebrity gossip, so hard news is outside their bailiwick.

Call it a straw man if you will, but then please give me an alternative reason for the BBC’s silence. My bet is that the agenda the BBC tried to push at the time has proved to be false, so they’ve ignored the story since there’s no special issue mileage to be gained. Also, if they bring it up again, they have to be careful not to remind you of their behavior at the time.

Let’s recall how the BBC, following the lead of their like-thinking brethren in the US media, tried to tell you that this act of mass murder was partially Sarah Palin’s fault. Let’s also recall how they pimped the President’s ill-advised attempt to use this tragedy to push His anti-gun agenda.

DB busted several Beeboids for their disgusting behavior at the time. BBC tv news editor Rachel Kennedy blamed Palin when tweeting:

The tweet has since been deleted. Down the memory hole, like so many other unfortunate tweets by BBC employees after they’re caught out.

As DB noted at the time, Katie Connolly (who later left the BBC to work for a Democrat strategy group) tried to smear the Tea Party movement with this by tweeting that the entire movement was Giffords’ enemy. Gavin Esler and a stalwart of the BBC College of Journalism were just two of the other BBC employees who joined in the fun.

The BBC’s top man in the US, Mark Mardell, also tried to smear Palin and the “rhetoric” of the Right for this tragedy. Sure, he opened with the “we don’t know the motives” disclaimer, but his entire post is dedicated to pointing the finger of blame. As I said in a post following the incident, this was drastically different from his behavior when Maj. Nadal murdered several people in the name of Islamic jihad.

Mardell further pushed his Narrative that Republicans engage in dangerous behavior in a later post, in which he promoted a speech by the President. The President also ran with the sick Narrative that Right-wing political rhetoric was to blame for the incident, and did a “we must all work together” speech.

It became apparent almost immediately to those who looked somewhere other than the BBC and the Huffington Post for their news on US issues that the mass murderer was mentally ill, and that partisan politics had precious little to do with his actions. The BBC took days to admit this, and not a single Beeboid apologized for their biased, inaccurate, slanderous statements.

Today, the BBC is silent. If they do whip up a news brief about it for tomorrow morning, they won’t be reminding you of their disgusting behavior at the time, won’t be reminding you of how their fellow travelers got it horribly wrong, won’t want you to recall how this tragic act was used to advance a political agenda.

UPDATE: The news brief is up. As predicted, no mention at all of the media hysteria, hoping you won’t remember the BBC’s disgusting behavior. One would have thought this would be a good moment to think about the dangers of divisive rhetoric, but then it’s only the Left doing it on this issue, so the BBC won’t touch it.

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Mark Mardell Writes Criticisms Of The President, But Doesn’t Blame Him For Any Of It

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The BBC’s US President editor (“North America editor” is a misnomer, as Mardell never discusses – with the lone exception of the heroic Pvt. Manning – anything other than US politics and things which affect the President) wrapped up 2011 with an assessment of where things stand for Him as we head into the election year. Mardell actually writes critically of Him, admitting that things haven’t gone so brilliantly, but manages to avoid blaming Him for any of it. It’s really an amusing bit of sleight-of-hand.

Before any defenders of the indefensible chime in with “There’s no pleasing some people: even when the BBC criticizes the President you’re still unhappy,” let me explain what he’s done here, and how this Mardell is writing from a partisan position.

The headline is a bit OTT, and can actually be interpreted as a sign that it’s not His fault:

Is Obama doomed in 2012?

This notion is supported a couple of times when Mardell states that the President was “dealt such a poor hand”, and how the economy will doom Him. None of it is His fault, you see. So let’s look at each of Mardell’s pretend criticisms and see how he doesn’t actually blame the President for anything.

He starts right off with this bit of dishonest Democrat spin:

Whoever wins the election in November, the result will leave the losers with a sour taste. The US could be a fractious, jittery place by the end of the year.s

 And it’s not fractious now? Haven’t we’ve been hearing how bitterly divided we’ve become from the Left and the BBC ever since the Tea Party movement rose to prominence? The country is already divided. What does Mardell think the 2010 midterm elections were about? The only question is what the percentages are now. By saying this, Mardell is shifting blame away from the President for the fact that the country isn’t as united as we were promised. Any real problems will be due to sour grapes, nothing to do with His divisive rhetoric.

Mardell then lays out what he sees as the two major factors in the President’s chances of re-election. Whoever becomes the Republican nominee will largely determine His fate. Personally, I don’t see any of them winning against the overwhelming combination of the mainstream media, Hollywood, and Wall Street money. Romney might do better than the rest, but I’m not sure he’ll excite enough of the non-Left or the Reagan Democrats to bother doing anything other than a protest vote for some fringe party. So that’s one factor which is going to benefit the President no matter which way it goes, I think.

The other factor, of course, is the economy. Here’s where the blame-shifting really begins.

There are glints of light, indications it is getting a little better. But another set-back in Europe could blow the US further off course. And whatever story of slight optimism the statistics tell, most Americans won’t be bathed in the glow of a feel-good factor.

It all started in Europe now?  See, if things go south, it won’t be His fault. Not a single mention of any of His policies which might have contributed to where we are now. Nothing about the failed Stimulus, nothing about the crushing regulations of the EPA or the looming 16-ton weight of ObamaCare or the $4.7 billion thrown down the Green Energy toilet. Worst of all, no mention of the fact that we haven’t had a budget passed since He took office. Whose fault is that, Mark? Can’t blame Europe or 2008 for that one. So he keeps silent. In fact, neither Mardell nor anyone else at the BBC has ever even mentioned it.

Any reader who relies on the BBC for information will have no idea, and so will buy into the “Trapped in a world He never made” Narrative. Which sets things up nicely for the one genuine criticism:

It is hard not to look back on the mood in 2008 without shaking your head slightly. There is little doubt President Obama has been a disappointment. He has disappointed many supporters, disappointed those in the middle ground, and even, curiously, disappointed his enemies.

The disappointment, of course, is that He hasn’t completely transformed the country as He promised, and as the far-Left hoped He would. But as we’ll see in a moment, that’s not His fault. Mardell has admitted elsewhere that he, too, bought into the hype, although he didn’t quite spell it out. The middle ground voters who bought into the hype will be genuinely disappointed, but as I’ve said, I don’t see too many Reagan Democrats voting against Him. Many of them still share Mardell’s mindset of “It’s not His fault”. As for the bit about the President having “disappointed his enemies”, I have no idea what that means. Who thinks He’s worse than expected? He’s been exactly as awful as I predicted.

In any case, Mardell’s choice to use the term “enemies” merely serves to further set Him up as a victim. The less emotive “opponents” or “critics” would have been better.

Obama loyalists will point out that no mortal could have lived up to the expectations heaped upon his head, especially when he had been dealt such a poor hand. They argue that he has saved the country from ruin, while accepting no-one gets credit for preventing disasters.

 There you go: nobody could have lived up to the hype, so any disappointment among His followers – or even among the middle ground who took a chance – is not His fault. We read that His worshipers claim that He saved the country, although I guess this piece isn’t the time or place for substance.

But it is also true that many of those who strongly backed him, and will still back him, think he has not been bold enough and has not confronted those who were always going to tear him down. 

 “But”? Usually, beginning a sentence with this conjunction leads to a conflicting idea. Yet it really doesn’t. Instead, it’s more of how worshipers will still support Him. And there’s more emotive terminology from Mardell: “those who were always going to tear Him down”, further contributing to the victim portrayal. Does he think there’s any possibility that someone could have a legitimate criticism of Him from the other side? It appears not.  No, anyone who opposed Him was always going to, no matter what He did.  It’s not His fault, you see.

Now it’s back to avoiding blame:

Many in the less ideological middle ground have the opposite complaint. They are often disappointed that instead of the dawn of a new politics, there has been a exacerbation of politics as usual.

One of Obama’s key appeals was as a healer, a bridge as one biography put it. He preached a future where Americans would work together, reaching across party divides. Instead, the bitterness, distrust, and gridlock have grown worse.

 Whose fault is that, Mark? Perhaps we got a clue during the first week in office of President “I won”?  Who allowed the Democrat leaders in Congress to write their dream legislation without bothering to reach across the aisle? Whose leadership is responsible for that?  Mardell isn’t forthcoming. Instead, we just get a “things are worse”, with the expectation that He’ll be unfairly blamed for that as well. In case you had any lingering thoughts of blame, though:

While he talked of changing the way politics was done, we have seen the same old Washington grow in strength and obstructionism, more broken, even less desirous of reaching solutions than before. Maybe that is not his fault. But it is not his triumph either. The obstacles have been piled higher, not blown out of the way.

 Again, we’re told that it’s more of a failure to change the world – an impossible task for which no one can seriously hold Him accountable – than anything He actually did. Not a single word about what the President might have done to contribute to this situation. What about the two years of Democrat super-majority where He was able – or rather the Dems were able while He sat back and watched – to ram legislation through Congress without real bi-partisanship? Was that out of His control as well? What about all the class war rhetoric in His speeches? What about all those lame “car in the ditch” metaphors? Has nothing He’s done contributed in any way to the gridlock and bitterness?

Nope. You all know the drill.  Say it with me: Republican intransigence. Now for some more of that victimizing language:

His enemies were never going to like what he was about, and what he stands for. They would never applaud his economics or his foreign policy.

Enemies. What He stands for. Again with this. So what’s your point, Mark?

But the best politicians earn a sneaking admiration for their skills even from those who detest what they do with their talents.

 So what? You’ve just reminded us for the third time that His enemies would never vote for Him no matter what, so who cares whether or not there’s a hint of admiration?  The whole point is that He needs to keep the middle ground interested.

Mrs Thatcher did. Tony Blair did. FDR did. (It’s probably true Reagan didn’t.)

Reagan didn’t?  What about all those Reagan Democrats, Mark? And please don’t expect me to believe that the virulent hatred for Thatcher – among her enemies at the BBC, for example – is any less than that of Reagan among the US equivalent. Not a bit of it. But again, so what?

But Republicans think Obama has handled the politics badly, and Congress worse. He has been politically clumsy handing both allies and opponents.

Hey, at long last, an actual criticism. But it’s a bit late in the game. Who could have imagined such behavior from a neophyte who had never handled major administrative tasks or been a real leader or had to actually work with anyone or done anything other than expect to get His way no matter what? Not Mardell, that’s for sure. Which is a shame, as he’s supposed to be such an expert political junkie. It just shows how much he bought into the illusion of Him, and how blind he’s been to reality the whole time.

So the charge sheet against him is long.

Nearly all of which Mardell just told us isn’t really His fault, or avoided placing any blame. Not a single reference to any actual criticism of Him or His policies from the other side. Only statements about “enemies” who always wanted to “tear Him down” no matter what. And there’s so much of His “rap sheet” left unmentioned: the ATF scandal and Solyndra, for example. Oh, that’s right, the BBC has barely mentioned any of that, so most of Mardell’s readers will have no idea. Equally, many on the far-Left are unhappy with His ramping up of Bush’s war policies: eternal rendition without charge or trial, and the worldwide drone apparatus allowing Him to do targeted assassinations of anyone He pleases, US citizens included. Oops, I forgot: the BBC has censored all of that stuff, too.

The odds are about even. So much depends on his opponent, the economy and his strategy. I will be following all three very closely, and you can read about it first here.

I think he’s a little scared. But we all know what the strategy is going to be: The Republicans will ruin everything, give the country back to the evil rich, and we need four more years to achieve all the Hope and Change. And the BBC US President editor will be right there to encourage all of it.

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