Category Archives: racism

BBC World News America Boss: Fear And Loathe The Tea Party And Republicans

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Dick Meyer, executive producer of BBC World News America, has written another heavily biased viewpoint article for the BBC website. This time it’s published under the hilariously ironic rubric, “Echo Chambers”. Meyer’s purpose here is to frighten you in the way parents used to scare children with tales of monsters in the woods and gypsies come to steal them away in the night. His essay is about as rational and respectable as any folk myth.

Reports of Tea Party demise are greatly exaggerated

Who said the Tea Party was dead again? The Left-wing media echo chamber, that’s who. Meyer thinks differently, so perhaps that’s the blurb about this BBC “Echo Chamber” section (upper right corner of the page) is referring to here:

Unscrambling the noise of the global debate, from social media to scholarly journals, Kansas City to Kathmandu.

Unfortunately, Meyer’s diatribe is proof that he and the BBC are still caught squarely in the middle of an echo chamber, with no escape possible.

Meyer’s basing his tale on the results of a few results in the recent elections around the country. Just like his anchor, Katty Kay, Meyer perpetuates the lie that Mike Bloomberg is considered a Republican. Bloomberg is in fact a life-long Democrat who switched parties specifically to ease his run for mayor of New York City. After being certain of re-election, he dropped the “R” and has pretended to be an Independent ever since, all while pushing Left-wing, Nanny State policies. Even this bio piece about him refers to NYC as “Democrat-leaning”, and explains why Bloomberg was elected and re-elected. For Meyer to present the election victory of ex-Marxist De Blasio as some sort of sign of a magic shift to the Left in NYC is a joke. The city is Left-wing by and large, save for the Upper East Side and a few small enclaves in Queens and the like. Rudy Giuliani was an anomaly, elected to clean up the streets and make the city safe again. He stayed in office largely on the strength of his behavior after 9/11. Bloomberg was then elected not because the city had shifted to the Right, but because Bloomberg was thought to be the right guy to fix the city’s economic troubles. The “R” next to his name was a mere convenience, nothing more. Meyer displays either intellectual dishonesty or simple ignorance. My bet is on a combination of both.

The Virginia result is another example of Meyer’s dishonesty. The Democrat victor, Terry McAuliffe, is a well-known Democrat money-man and former Clinton crony. He had huge support from the national Democrat organizations, including a stump appearance from the President Himself. His Republican opponent, on the other hand, got precious little support from the national party, partly because of the internal struggle between the Republican Establishment and the Tea Party movement. The national Republican Party gave plenty of support to Christie, who didn’t really need it, and plenty of support elsewhere. But not for Cuccinelli. Even so, McAuliffe’s victory was a narrow one, about 2.5%. As it happened, a fake Libertarian candidate also ran in Virginia, quietly funded by one of the President’s old money-bundlers. He got more than twice that number of foolish Virginians to vote for him, thus handing McAuliffe the victory.

Meyer is either unaware of this, or thinks it doesn’t matter. Either way, his own personal political bias leads him to misinterpret the result, and misinform you as a consequence. This is the kind of man the BBC puts in charge of an entire daily news program made under the BBC banner. They and he don’t care, though, as they have an agenda to push: Fear and loathing.

Meyer’s casual relationship with the truth is also evident even his mention of the local Alabama race. He describes it with emotive language:

Further south in Alabama, the national business lobby coalesced behind a standard issue Republican running against a fire-breathing Tea Party man in a special House election – and won, reasserting the power of the Regular Republican Party.

“Fire-breathing”. Cute. It was actually so close they had to have a run-off election. And it was more cash from the business lobby – who backed The Obamessiah and are now moving firmly behind Hillary Clinton (where Goldman Sachs goes, so generally does the rest of Wall St. and the banking industry) so not at all a sign of Republican Establishment power – that really gave Bradley Byrne the win. The NY Times describes this as a sign of things to come, a warning that the Tea Party is still a strong force fighting for control of the Republican Party. Meyer understands this, hence this fearmongering article.

Now for the loathing. First, it’s clear that Meyer has no more idea what the recent mixed election results mean than anyone else does. All he knows is that the Tea Party movement is still out there working on elections. But then we come to the point of the piece. Since it’s an article by a BBC producer about the Tea Party movement, you can guess where this is going.

The difference in the black/white vote in all three of the big elections was as stark as can be.

In the exit polls of the Virginia governor’s race, blacks picked the Democrat 90% to 8%; whites voted for the Republican, 56%-36%. In New Jersey, blacks voted for the Democrat 78%-21%; whites for the Republican by the reverse margin, 79%-21%. In the New York mayor’s race, blacks voted for de Blasio (whose wife is black) 96%-3%.

My suspicion is that black voters feel a growing threat or hostility from the Republican Party, or at least from its Tea Party wing.

This would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous and offensive. All of a sudden blacks are trending more Democrat, eh? A “growing threat”? Not even remotely. As nearly everyone here knows, the black voters have backed Democrats for the last several decades. It’s been a monolithic voting bloc for so long that Dem leaders take it for granted. Every time somebody here made a comment that the blacks were voting for skin color in 2008, somebody else points out that previously blacks voted for Al Gore in almost equal numbers. How can this world-class journalist, with decades of experience producing national news broadcasts, get this so horribly, tragically wrong?

Let’s examine just how wrong and dishonest Meyer is being here. Here’s a link to a couple of charts which show that blacks overwhelmingly have voted Democrat for decades. Note that the percentages in many years pretty much matches the new results Meyer claims as proof of a new trend. Here’s another set of data from an academic paper out of Columbia University (NB: pdf file) showing the same very high percentages – the high 80s and low 90s – again disproving Meyer’s claim. Why would African Americans believe that the Tea Party movement is a threat to them? Because partisan fearmongers like Meyer keep telling them so, over and over, in spite of all the evidence before them.

It isn’t at all surprising the racial dimensions of politics have been exacerbated during the administration of America’s first black president. The reverse would be far more surprising.

Especially considering just how much people like Meyer in the mainstream US media kept telling us that we were too racist to elect a black man, and that not voting for Him was proof of racism.

The Tea Party movement from the start has had to defend itself from accusations of racism. They are increasing in volume, however – allegations that can be heard on MSNBC most days.

Yes indeed, because people like Meyer in the mainstream US media and the Left-wing blogosphere kept saying it was a racist movement. That theme has been perpetuated quite happily by the BBC ever since they finally admitted its existence in April 2009 (even then Kevin Connolly insulted hundreds of thousands of participants with a sexual innuendo on air, and it still remains in print on the website).The BBC’s North America editor, Mark Mardell, has been telling that tale over and over ever since he set foot in the country with a preconceived notion. I’ve written at length about this as well, and evidence of Mardell’s vicious and dishonest attacks can be seen here, here, and here, just for starters. Then there’s the evidence of his claim at the BBC College of Journalism that, even though he’s never seen over racism at a Tea Party rally, all opposition to the President’s domestic economic policies is racist. The Tea Partiers aren’t racist, he says, “at least not in a straightforward sense.” It’s not a legitimate policy opposition, he believes, but a racist opposition to redistributing wealth “to people not like them”. Mardell will believe in this crypto-racism to his dying day, that there can be no legitimate opposition to anything the President does. All of it must have some more sinister motivation. His BBC colleagues have pushed this for years as well. In addition to the BBC’s top journalist in the US, correspondents like Jonny Dymond engage in fearmongering as well, with false claims that hate groups are on the rise after the election of the black man, and that the Republican Party is doomed to be the party of old, white males. Meyer clearly agrees.

And certainly the antipathy of a slice of white America to Obama is rabid. But polling, focus groups and anecdotal reporting can’t get at the role of race in the Tea Party ethos very precisely or effectively. It is clear, however, black voters feel it.

Well, the evidence Meyer cites clearly doesn’t back up his assertion at all. Yet he sticks to the Narrative like a child to his security blanket. It’s no wonder that blacks feel a threat when people in charge of national news broadcasts keep telling them to be afraid, very afraid. That’s the power of the media.

Meyer winds up his piece with more blind guesses about what may or may not happen. Naturally we get the “Washington is so toxic these days” Narrative thrown in (mercifully he doesn’t follow other BBC journalists and throw in the obligatory exclusive blame on Republicans), it’s all a mess, we’re in dangerous waters here. In other words, be afraid, very afraid, that the evil, racist Tea Party movement is still out there, waiting to wreak havoc and do harm. In other words, a typical BBC article on the topic.

This isn’t the first time the BBC website has given Meyer a platform for his partisan antics. He’s previously defended the President against critics, dismissing “so-called scandals” that we now know to be very real, and – what a shock – placing blame for the recent government shutdown exclusively on Republicans.

Fortunately, Meyer is no longer in charge of a news broadcast on a major US network, so the damage he can do is fairly minimal. He used to be, and it was during his tenure at CBS that Dan Rather destroyed his own reputation over those fake Bush memos. So there’s form on partisan hackery subverting journalistic integrity. Where was he before taking the reins at BBC WNA? The Left-wing NPR, which cultivates an audience of elite, white liberals. Perhaps not coincidentally, anchor Katty Kay is the regular guest host on NPR’s Diane Rehm show. What was that about echo chambers again? However, Meyer’s BBC World News America is still broadcast every day on a few PBS stations around the country. Worse is the fact that BBC News has been increasing its investment in the US section of the website, hiring more and more staff, producing more and more output, and attracting more and more US eyeballs.

Is this beyond the BBC’s remit? It’s a discussion that needs to be had. Either way, it’s important that people are aware of the hyper-partisan, dishonest journalism at the top.

BBC Salivating Over Possible Race Riots?

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Yes, I know that’s a bit over the top, and I’m deliberately phrasing it as a question because I’m not categorically stating that’s what they’re doing over the possible result of George Zimmerman’s trial. But it sure seems that way. Having said that, let’s all note that this is the first BBC mention of the trial since just before it actually started. They’ve been absolutely silent about the trial the entire time it’s been going on, and it’s not difficult to suspect their silence has something to do with the fact that most of the testimony – from both sides – has discredited the case for the prosecution. BBC reporting on the incident before the trial has been dishonest, misleading, and has censored key facts in order to lead their audience to the approved thought: Zimmerman killed an innocent boy from a distance, in cold blood, due to racism and racial profiling, and Trayvon Martin was murdered simply for what we call “Walking While Black”. Let’s also remember that the BBC tried to stoke racial tensions with their World Have Your Say segment in which they encouraged discussion about how the US is essentially run by white supremacists, with a legal system driven by white supremacists. They did everything in their power to suggest to the audience that Zimmerman remained free initially due to a racist State, again misleading the audience to the desired thought. After five-plus years of Beeboids in the US finding racists under the bed and telling you that opposition to the President has racist underpinnings, the Narrative is all but assured.

Now that it’s pretty much over, bar the closing statements, and a verdict is coming soon, the BBC can resume normal operations. Notice that they continue to use the “undated family photo” of a smiling, angelic, pubescent Martin, instead of the more updated photos Martin himself posted on Facebook. This is a deliberate editorial choice to lead the reader in a specific direction. If they had shown the more recent photos of Martin in a hoodie, with the golden “grill”, the gun, etc., that might prejudice the reader into thinking maybe the lad was a possible troublemaker. What’s particularly galling about this editorial decision – for that’s what it is, the photo didn’t come up randomly – is that the mere fact that Martin had grown into being a bit of a troublemaker, and was all about the gangsta act, absolutely shouldn’t make anyone think he had it coming. Yet the BBC News Online geniuses decided that they didn’t want to portray Martin as anything other than in the best light possible. It’s only natural to wonder if someone with thuggish tendencies would start the fight, which is why the BBC kept all this from you. This is dishonest, and a failure of journalism. Of course, BBC journalism on this story has been a failure from start to finish.

Reminders of the BBC’s failure can be read here, here, and here. Note especially how the BBC has censored the fact of the physical altercation between Martin and Zimmerman from all reporting – except for one article. This physical altercation is the key to the entire case, as Zimmerman’s defense is that Martin was beating the crap out of him and then, when he noticed Zimmerman’s holstered gun, made a reach for it. It was then that Zimmerman grabbed his gun and shot Martin. This should be included in every single report about the case, from start to finish, because it’s the single most important element on which the jury will base their verdict. If one doesn’t know about this very close physical contact – and BBC audiences who blinked and missed the lone mention don’t know about it, as its been deliberately kept from them in nearly all reporting – then the entire case looks dramatically different from reality. Even though the BBC didn’t mention the fight once, I think they got away with it as they’ve never mentioned Zimmerman’s testimony that Martin was reaching for his (Zimmerman’s) gun, which would then make a clear case for self defense. An acquittal would seem like a sham of a travesty of a joke. Which would then mean that BBC audiences would not only be unsurprised at a resulting race riot, but would be inclined to understand and support the outrage. I think that’s the goal of BBC News producers and journalists here: to direct their audience to a specific opinion on the case.

As far as I’ve been able to determine, the BBC has never reported on Zimmerman’s history of fighting against racism, or his efforts in support of blacks. Nor have they every made mention of Martin’s checkered recent past. Can’t have those inconvenient truths interfere with the Narrative.

The  way the BBC opens the report betrays their agenda:

Florida officials have appealed for calm as the trial of a neighbourhood watchman who shot dead an unarmed black teenager enters its final phase.

“Unarmed”. This is “accurate”, but at no time does the report mention the physical altercation between the two. The BBC is once again censoring the most important fact of the case, and it’s important to call them on it. This makes it all the more bizarre for the BBC to then mention further down that both Martin’s and Zimmerman’s mothers said that the screams heard on a recording were their own son’s. Why was anyone screaming? Without the key fact of the fight, this is a non sequitur. Expecting the reader to remember the one mention of the fight from two weeks ago doesn’t work. Just in case anyone might possibly start edging toward an unapproved thought, the BBC makes sure to tell you that Martin’s mother was “absolutely” certain it was Trayvon. Wasn’t Zimmerman’s mother also sure? I guess the BBC thought her opinion was not as relevant because she didn’t qualify it with such a strong word. By elevating one mother over the other, the result is that the BBC guides you once again towards the desired conclusion that Martin was completely innocent, and that Zimmerman was possibly beating the crap out of him before drawing his gun and murdering the lad in cold blood. They reinforce the notion of Zimmerman’s complete guilt by informing everyone that the prosecutor told the jury that Zimmerman killed Martin “because he wanted to”. Again, without the knowledge of the physical contact – especially about Zimmerman’s repeated testimony that Martin was reaching for his (Zimmerman’s) holstered gun – people already inclined to believe the racist Narrative – which the BBC encouraged – will draw the desired conclusion.

It’s entirely possible that the BBC journalists who put this together believe in their hearts that Zimmerman is a racist who killed an innocent boy in cold blood. But that’s no excuse to censor the most important fact of the case, or to emphasize one side’s argument over the other.

In actual fact, the only racist remarks made were by Trayvon Martin to his girlfriend moments before the incident. He referred to  Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker”. This was all over the news after her testimony in the trial, yet the BBC censored it, as they have everything else during the trial. So BBC audiences have no idea about reality, and know only the dishonest Narrative forced on them by BBC journalists. As it became increasingly clear that the racism angle was a non-starter in the trial, Martin’s own family made a public statement that it wasn’t about racism. Yet the BBC kept that from you, and are now wringing their hands over a potential race riot in the event of an acquittal, because, well, that’s been the Narrative from their friends and acquaintances and thought leaders in the US mainstream media, as well as their friends and acquaintances and thought leaders in the far-Left blogosphere.

Just in case anyone doubts where the BBC’s sympathies lie, just look at the one report which mentions the fight. As always, we get the angelic photo of Martin, plus a sympathetic picture of Martin’s mother wiping tears from her eyes. Of course everyone is going to feel sorry for her, feel her pain. It’s still manipulative for the BBC to juxtapose that with the angelic, smiling image instead of the more recent and relevant thug shots. The BBC has also censored the recent news that the judge blocked from the trial a load of texts from Martin about learning to fight, how he could sucker punch somebody, and getting a gun. Again, this might make Martin seem less than angelic, and possibly responsible for his own actions and starting the physical altercation. It might lead the BBC audience to suspect that this wasn’t a cold-blooded racist murder after all, so they left it out. They know about it because even the Guardian made a brief mention.

John Anderson in the open threads has been keeping us apprised of the craziness of this trial, including how even prosecution witnesses end up supporting Zimmerman’s case. A couple of examples here, here. and here. The BBC certainly doesn’t want you to know any of that, and it’s not included in this report, either. So BBC audiences will have absolutely no idea why Zimmerman might be acquitted, if that’s what happens. There’s a reason the prosecution has demanded, and the judge has in one case allowed, that the jury consider lesser charges instead of the one they brought. Their case is a disaster, and they’re desperately trying to get a conviction on something, anything. But BBC audiences don’t know about the reality, so this news of a lesser charge being introduced must seem very curious indeed.

Quite simply, you cannot trust BBC reporting on this story. And it’s because of the personal ideological biases and prejudices of BBC journalists.

Mark Mardell and the Crypto-Racism of the US

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This post was inspired by a recent comment from Jim Dandy, one of our defenders of the indefensible. He said that he wanted opinion in his journalism. I expressed my disappointment that he wanted “opinionated” journalism, and he objected to what he thought was my deliberate twisting of his words.

You do know what opinionated means don’t you? It does not mean the condition of having an opinion. Or perhaps you are deliberately twisting my words.

Impartiality allows for opinion to be expressed.

I was confused by this, and asked for an explanation, which I got:

Opinionated is a perjorative term suggesting the person unduly, aggressively and dogmatically holds by their opinions.

It might be different in the US.

Still confused, I tried a different tack, and asked Jim if he felt that the BBC’s North America editor, Mark Mardell was the embodiment of his definition, to which he said, simply, “No.”

This led me to compile this collection of Mardell’s journalism to provide evidence that he does, in fact, unduly, aggressively and dogmatically hold by his opinion. Specifically his opinion that the Tea Party movement and, essentially, all opposition to the President is based on racism.

Read the following, and decide for yourselves whether or not Mardell allows his personal opinion to inform his reporting, and whether or not he has dogmatically stuck to his guns in spite of the evidence before him.

September 15, 2009, when Mardell was barely a month into his new job:

Is race a factor in Obama protests?

So I am describing and inviting debate, not passing comment. The relationship between black and white has been such an important driving factor in American political history that it would be strange if it now mattered not a jot. The allegation is that many of those who are calling their president “un-American” mean he is not white.

Democratic propaganda, over-sensitivity or truth? Tell me…

He says he’s not passing comment, then gives his opinion anyway. This is after he gives you a link to only one point of view from the vaunted NY Times: yes, opposition to the President is based on racism. Mardell came to the US knowing for a fact that this is a racist country. Let’s see if he learns anything in the coming years.

Just a couple of weeks later, Mardell eagerly reported that Jimmy Carter said that opposition to the President was due to racism. He then went out to try and find people to support that, but came away with only the suggestion that the African-American community thinks it’s all down to racism. To Mardell, this is proof enough. The President Himself said that He doesn’t think that’s the case, but Mardell believes He’s lying.

Just outside his restaurant, I chat to some African-American women and mention what we are doing.

“Woah woah for Carter,” one says, raising her hands above her head. “He tells it like it is.”

She cannot peer into the soul of the protesters, any more than President Carter can.

But many African-Americans may feel as though a subterranean stream has burst above ground, even if the president would rather not get caught in the spray.

This woman may not be able to peer into people’s souls, but obviously Mardell can. And he does, over and over.

January 26, 2010:

Tea Party seek purity and victory

Mardell and the sub editor who wrote the title are actually referring to what they see as ideological purity regarding taxation and small government, but nobody with any intellectual honesty can claim that they don’t realize the not-so-subtle reference to the idea of racial purity espoused by actual white supremacists. Mardell chose the word very carefully. After talking about policy stuff, he said this near the end of the post:

There is no display of the visceral hatred that dripped from the cable networks last summer, and little of the sense that Obama’s government is some how illegitimate, rather than just plain wrong. There is a feeling that the president promised to govern from the centre and he hasn’t. But I have to ask, is this movement really of the people, or of largely white, largely well-off people?

They’re white, so there must be an underlying reason behind their objection to expanding government and raising taxes and increasing our debt and leading us to government-provided health care. Never mind what they say out loud: Mardell is looking into their souls. This is journalism?

Curiously, when reports came out about Sen. Harry Reid’s unfortunate statements about The Obamessiah back in 2008, Mardell defended him against charges of racism.

Indeed is what he said racist, or in any other way reprehensible? Liz Cheney thinks it is racist. The Kansas Star calls the remarks “stinking racist comments”. A left wing blogger Field Negro says it is “ignorant stereotyping”. Mr Reid himself refers to the comments as “improper”.

But what has irritated me about the flood of articles is that there has been a lot of nudging and winking but few have come out and said what they find offensive.

Imagine that. The man who has no trouble declaring racism without pointing to specifics which he finds offensive is irritated by what he sees as vague hints by other people.

So let’s have a look at what he actually said. The comments come from a book out this week, Game Changes .The authors say Reid “was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama – a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he later put it privately.”

Mardell then actually defends Reid by saying he’s just “old-fashioned”. Nothing to see here, move along. Why is this not racist, but someone who objects to wealth re-distribution, full stop, without a word about anyone’s dialect or skin color, is racist? Of course, Harry Reid is a Democrat. He holds approved thoughts, so cannot be racist. However, if one holds an unapproved thought about an economic or political issue, there must be something inherently wrong with one’s character, an underlying reason for disapproving of, say, the NHS. Reid gets a pass, but as we all saw recently with Mardell’s and the BBC’s coverage of Mitt Romney, a Republican is by definition flawed for making a much less dangerous gaffe (e.g. “binders of women”).

In closing, Mardell’s defense of Reid reached new heights of hilarity:

But the guts of what Reid was saying was that many American voters were still pretty racist but some wouldn’t see Obama as “really” black. He thought Obama was acceptable to the electorate because he was light-skinned and didn’t have a voice that identified him as black. That seems to be Reid’s attempt to describe a state of affairs that may be unpleasant, but may be true. He was explaining the lie of the land as he saw it, not endorsing the views he outlined. If you can’t do that you are no good as a strategist.

You read that right: Reid was making a racist statement to highlight the racism of other people. How clever of him. Mardell really does have a magical gift for peering into people’s souls, doesn’t he? Naturally, this supports his opinion that opposition to the President is based on racism.

Later that year, October 9, 2010:

Why is the Tea Party boiling?

So here there is a great paradox: a movement that boasts its theoretical love of America and democracy but which hates its real life institutions. It’s not their fairly mainstream economic theories I strain to understand, but the passion; a passion which means that political discourse has become increasingly uncivil, filled with vitriol and abuse.

It’s nice that Mardell admits his condescension, but this is where we depart the realm of journalism and enter the land of opinion. That’s the whole point of BBC editors, of course, which causes endless problems. Notice how remarkably different his reaction to the Tea Party movement was to his opinion of the Occupiers. He loved their passion. I wonder what the key difference is?

So why is the Tea Party boiling?

Some say it’s racism. Those I’ve met are not racist but I do wonder if for some there’s a sense of lost superiority. For all their lives there’s been a white man in the White House. It’s not just that Obama isn’t in this image, he does not fit any stereotype of a black person that they know. Cool, cosmopolitan, calm and aloof. There is a sense of disconnect for what ought to be their view of the natural order.

“Some say…” He says straight out he hasn’t met any racists yet, but refuses to let go of his suspicions. He’d been in the US for over a year by that point, gone to several Tea Party gatherings, spoken with lots of politicians. Yet it hadn’t changed his opinion one iota. Is he lying that he didn’t meet any racists? Or does he just think he hasn’t worked hard enough to find them under the bed? You can almost feel Mardell straining to justify his opinion in spite of what he sees in front of him.

A woman who told me that Obama was a socialist and her country was sliding into Marxism said when he was elected president she drew the curtains for three weeks and couldn’t answer the telephone. Only the Tea Party saved her.

America is changing fast and some in the Tea Party people don’t like the loss of the assumption that white, European, 1950s America is the norm, the benchmark.

He hasn’t met any racists, but is still confident enough to tell you that some in the Tea Party are concerned about race. Not only is no evidence provided to back this up, but he even says he’s never met any actual racists. How can he get away with this?

Just a couple weeks later, October 30, 2010:

Tea Party not so mad

The main speaker said: “Our name is being dragged through the mud, that we’re violent racists.” The all-white crowd cheer or just nod. I have never seen any overt racism at a Tea Party rally and don’t today.

No “overt racism”, eh? Then why bother pointing out the “all-white crowd”? A rhetorical question, I know. When people don’t hold approved thoughts, there must be something wrong with them. Having given up the struggle to justify his opinion that it’s based on racism in the face of no evidence, he’s moved on to qualifying his statements that he hasn’t found any evidence. He doesn’t have to provide any now.

Over the past year I have spoken to many supporters of the Tea Party and been to lots of rallies. I have spoken to people whose characterisation of Mr Obama and his aims seems to me way off beam, a cartoon enemy conjured from some 1950s nightmare. Some believe the constitution tightly constrains the sort of economy America must have, and that only they can define what is properly American.

Now he’s giving his opinion on Constitutional law and economics. This isn’t journalism at all. This is an op-ed piece. Like I said, this the inherent problem in the very concept of BBC (titled) editors.

There is a wide-eyed enthusiasm that is easy to mock.

Yes, very easy to mock. In fact, it’s so easy, that Mardell happily mocked one of them during an appearance at the BBC College of Journalism. First, of course, he has to give the disclaimer that he’s never seen any overt racism. The relevant bit begins at around 54:45 in, where a young Beeboid asks Mardell about the “visceral hatred” of the President.

We’re not racist, he says, “At least not in a straight-forward sense”. Oh, really? He says that underlying the concern about government spending our money, it’s really about not wanting the government to “spend money on people not like them”. No real evidence, but he remains as convinced of it as he was the day he arrived. Even if we don’t come out and wear the pointy white hoods and carry our lynchin’ ropes around, we’re still racist under the skin. And he happily mocks a woman with a Southern accent. “You knew exactly what it was.”  Oh, how they all laughed, eh? To Mardell, the Tea Party is driven by crypto-racism. This is what they really think of us, and it informs all BBC reporting on US issues.

(Full analysis of the BBC’s CoJ audience with Mardell can be read here.)

Right before the election last November, Mardell laid it all out:

A lot of time in my first two years was spent trying to understand what lay behind the anger that I had seen on TV.

As we’ve seen, he had a pre-conceived notion of what lay behind that anger: racism. So what has he learned in the intervening years?

Beyond a fairly conventional conservative concern about taxation and debt, there is an inchoate angst that their country is going in the wrong direction, that they need to “take it back”.

Some think this is code for “take it back from the black man in the White House”.

After all the evidence of his reporting on the subject, it’s quite clear that Mardell is using the standard hack trick of “Some say…” to present his own opinion. We know he’s being disingenuous here. He’s said quite openly a number of times that he thinks it’s all about race. Using this dodge is a big phony act.

It is not that simple. Nearly all of the people I met were white and most middle-aged or older. But few were racist in the conventional sense.

The only time I have seen that in the raw, I was off duty, at a dinner party. A woman growing increasingly passionate as the wine flowed called Obama a “monkey” and said “he’s trying to give OUR money to THEM”.

Not the poor, not the shiftless, “them”.

Since the woman Mardell mocked earlier was a crypto-racist and didn’t openly make any racist statements, we have to assume that this is now two clear incidents – to him – of racism, out of the hundreds of thousands or people Mardell’s seen at Tea Party rallies and whatever political gatherings he visits. Yet on the strength of this he still demonizes the entire movement, still convinced that tens of millions of people are driven by racism and not legitimate policy concerns.

“They” are part of a different America, with a different history who want a different path for their country.

A millionaire in a designer chair in his plush Chicago home, surrounded by modern art, makes the same point as the broken-toothed men perched on smashed-up office furniture outside a beat-up shotgun house in Texas.

Next to me in the pew of a Florida church, the man with a trim grey beard and a “veterans for Obama badge” tells me the same thing.

These very different people all had one thing in common. They’re black. And that means they share a history and often they also share a perception of the present.

Black Americans up and down this huge country tell me Mr Obama didn’t create this mess, and he needs time to clear it up.

They know all about patience. They know all about clearing up other people’s mess. They know about being shut out of this country’s narrative.

There’s a black history month. It rather implies that for the other 11 months, it is white history that will have its way. With Mr Obama they feel that has changed, just a little.

And with that, Mardell moves from demonizing the opposition for caring only about the color of a man’s skin to declaring that we must re-elect a President simply because of the color of the man’s skin. It means a lot to black people to see one of their own as President, so we must dismiss all other concerns. He was only recently pushing that Narrative, in September 2012. (Even then he was still declaring that opposition to the President’s  policies is really only objecting to redistributing wealth “to people not like us.”) This is racialist thinking at its finest. Anyone who watched the full video of Mardell’s appearance at the BBC CoJ will also have seen him admit that the President actually isn’t quite up to the job. In other words, we must keep a poor performer on simply because of the color of his skin. He’s not that competent, but it’s okay cos He is black. The soft racism of lowered expectations lives on at the BBC.

In the end, Mardell has learned nothing. He came here with a pre-conceived opinion, and steadfastly refused to let the evidence before him change his mind. His personal opinion remains unchanged, and informs all of his reporting. Since he’s the “North America editor”, his opinion also informs other aspects of BBC reporting on US issues.

Next, we can have a debate about what it means to have opinion in journalism, and how impartiality allows for it.

Daniel Nasaw’s Horrible History Lesson

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Daniel Nasaw is one of the handful of Beeboids working the US beat who was actually born and raised here. In his latest feature for the BBC online Magazine, a “From Our Own Correspondent” segment, he visits a Civil War battle reenactment to use as a metaphor for a primary Narrative about the current state of US politics we hear across the spectrum of BBC broadcasting: an historic, extreme polarization.

Nasaw doesn’t so much get the basic relevant history bits of the Civil War wrong as he does the lesson which he’s trying to invent from it.

Antietam: Re-enacting a bloody 1862 US Civil War battle

(Audio “From Our Own Correspondent” version is here, beginning @17:18)

In addition to the morale-boosting effect for the North (it was a strategic draw, really but ended Gen. Lee’s push into Union territory), the Battle of Antietam is pretty legendary because of the carnage, so it’s a good choice for Nasaw to hold up as a symbol of how horrible the splitting of the nation was. Which becomes the problem, as we’ll soon see. First, a bit about the whole reenactment thing, which seems to baffle our not-so-humble correspondent as well as amuse him much in the way natives in exotic locations reenacting colorful tribal rituals amuse the tourists.

It really is a pretty big hobby, as Nasaw says. Lots of groups all around the country – even in places that weren’t remotely involved in the conflict – many with the same kind of enthusiasm and attention to detail as any historical hobbyist group. They can be as hardcore as any bunch of enthusiasts, and relaxed about it at the same time. They’re there mostly to have fun rather than declare their allegiance to any political ideology. Not that the history behind the game isn’t on some people’s minds in many cases.

Unlike Nasaw, who seems to have approached this event from another culture entirely, I’ve actually participated in one of these battle reenactments. As these things happen,  a friend of a friend knew someone involved with the local historical society who was putting on one of these battles. They needed bodies, so I jumped at the chance. Also unlike Nasaw, I had no ancestors involved in the Civil War, as mine didn’t even get to the US until more than almost 40 years after it was over. I ended up dressing for the Confederate (“Rebel”) side, simply because that’s where they needed bodies. I was supplied with a period costume of civilian clothing, not a uniform, as the South couldn’t always afford everything for their troops. This also struck home the fact that – as Nasaw points out but apparently doesn’t accept – many really did come out to fight for their homes and safety of their families more than for any political ideal, or to keep their right to own slaves.

We did a few minutes of actual drills from some period military book, and learned to load and fire the percussion muskets (all replicas, not rifled IIRC) used at the time. Having to stand there furiously attempting to reload after one shot while a wall of guns fired at me from the other side, and the next rank of my team running forwards into the volley to their next spot before taking their next shot, told me in about thirty seconds a whole lot more about why these battles were so bloody and not always conclusive than anything I’d ever read on the subject. It’s all a bit of a joke to Nasaw, but it can be a real lesson. As for who decides who dies when, naturally I asked the same thing he did, but didn’t take offense like he seemed to at being told that was a rookie question.  As it turned out, there were a few veterans in charge of each side who would just occasionally say, “You’re dead….now you can die….we need a couple people to die on this next volley,” and so on. Not a big deal.

Now for why Nasaw is wrong to use the Civil War for the message he wants to get across. First of all, the concern about States’ Rights goes back long before the Civil War, right back to the founding of the United States of America. It was a vital issue debated by the founders for years before and after independence. In fact, the Civil War wasn’t even the first time secession came into the picture. Of course, what’s going on here is that Nasaw is trying cast light on the polarized political situation we’re in today. We keep hearing from our media elites that the country is more divided, political discourse is more polarized than ever before. Mark Mardell likes to cite claims of grizzled veterans that we all used to get along so well, politicians were never so partisan, etc., as part of his proof that it’s never been this bad before. They’re all at it, really, because that’s the same Narrative we hear from the mainstream Left-leaning media in the US. And they’ve been doing it for some time, not just recently. It all started, we’re supposed to believe, when the US elected a black man as President. All those anti-Bush protests and the ChimpyMcBushitler posters and celebrities crying about Bush hating black people after Katrina, that wasn’t polarization, you see. It’s only when a Democrat President – particularly this One – doesn’t get His way that we’ve suddenly gone horribly wrong. For example:

March 2010, Mardell: Is US politics nastier than ever?

January 2011: Jonny Dymond ponders “the anger and polarisation apparent in today’s American polity” in regards to a mentally unstable person attempting to assassinate a Democrat politician and murdering a few people in the process

October 2011, Mardell: US ‘divided society’ protests spread (Oh, hang on, that was about their darling Occupiers’ class-war rhetoric, and no Beeboid was fretting about how they were polarizing politics)

August 2012: Paul Mason says the pick of Paul Ryan for VP has “polarized US politics”

September 2012, Justin Webb: What happened to America’s community spirit?

Andrew Marr’s upcoming special film about the four years of The Obamessiah’s reign will see him push the same Narrative.

I’m sure everyone has seen or heard other examples as well. So what’s the most obvious historical example of the US being divided? Exactly. Because subtlety isn’t a quality trait with media types bent on getting convincing you about their world view, Nasaw needs to spell out just how relevant this is to today’s situation. It’s where he delves into the issue of States’ Rights and slavery that he gets it wrong.

Long before Lincoln was elected, slavery was a known problem. In fact, while quite a few founders were slave owners, quite a few more were not, and even the top figures who owned slaves at the time knew it was a bad idea. However, there’s a significant economic dimension to the problem as well. Slavery was actually kind of dying out because the trade became less economically viable, but the arrival of the cotton gin kept it going long after its sell-by date, to the point where it was becoming massively difficult to shift the South’s economic engine away from it. The South would have had to diversify economically eventually, but it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. Nasaw, like so many who don’t actually understand the history, sees the Civil War as being exclusively about protecting slavery and the concept of States’ Rights as a smokescreen behind which to hide it. Although it’s watered down in the printed version, in the audio version Nasaw is more explicit about this (beginning @19:18:)

“That’s the familiar slogan wielded by Americans who want to whitewash the stain of slavery from the War’s glory.”

Well, yes and no. While it’s true that slavery was the key right which led to the secession, it’s not something that’s been a major issue from the start. There’s also the fact that many in the South have a particular cultural heritage they want to defend (this feeling might just be familiar to some of you, no?) which has precious little to do with slavery. That gets suppressed every time someone whacks them with the slavery cudgel, which leads to no small amount of resentment. Plus we mustn’t forget the trials of the Reconstruction, when much of the South was occupied militarily and politically by the North. In some places they tend to teach that era of history as if Gen. Sherman left only last week and the remains of buildings are still smoldering in the streets. That’s caused a scar on the regional psyche which goes far beyond a single issue. In short, there’s much, much more to the whole thing than slavery alone. But that muddles the issue, and gets in the way of the metaphor you’re meant to have jammed into your brains. It’s possible that Nasaw is simply unaware of all this, didn’t learn anything other than the standard liberal tropes (history being not only written by the victors but updated by future elites), and really does see it in the simplistic terms he lays out here due to ignorance and not just pure ideology. In “reporting” from this biased perspective, he’s denigrating millions of United Statesians.

Nasaw gets a Civil War expert to tell us that today’s debate goes all the way back to the War, it actually goes back much further. Of course a Civil War expert is going to focus on his area, and of course this makes it a nice red herring. It’s here where Nasaw starts to make some offensive parallels. His goal is to make a direct tie from today’s Tea Party protests and critics of ObamaCare to those desirous of keeping slavery going. He wants to show that it’s the same mentality, the same people, the same belief system. That’s how he sees it, and that’s the story he set out to tell.

I probably don’t need to point out how this also ties right in with the overall BBC Narrative that there is really no legitimate opposition to the President’s policies and that all those complaints are really driven by crypt0-racism, but reminders can be found here, here, here, and here.

While many of the Founding Fathers were slave owners, many equally felt that it was wrong, and that it was something that would eventually have to go away. But more important than that specific issue is that, besides the North-South divide we know about today, there was also originally a kind of chasm between the wealthy Eastern States – industrial and mercantile Northeast, coastal trade cities, etc. – and the poorer, rural West. When I say “West”, however, I’m using it as defined at the end of the 18th Century. Back then, the western parts of Kentucky and Tennessee were a largely unexplored frontier. In other words, very rural, and not wealthy. Even in the country’s early years there was a kind of resentment from those States.

Added to this strain is the more obvious cultural division between the more industrial, mercantile North and the largely agrarian South. Different European heritages also played a part. A further cultural difference was that many in the Southern region looked to Republican Rome for an example of how things should work. This was fine for a largely agrarian nation, not so much for an increasingly urban and commerce-driven one. So there was an innate suspicion of too much central government power from the very start, and for a variety of reasons. Slavery was not the only causus belli.

In fact, the State of New York under Governor Clinton (not the guy from Parliament-Funkadelic, and no relation to the former President) threatened to secede back in 1788 because he felt the ratification of the very Constitution we’re talking about today actually went too far in curtailing his own State’s autonomy. That was all about finalizing borders and maintaining the independence of a country – a State with a capital “S”, which is why I tend to write it that way – which he had been enjoying until then. Like several other key figures, he accepted it once they added the Bill of Rights. Even more important was Clinton’s objection to the new Federal Government imposing a national tariff on foreign commerce, New York’s cash cow. In other words, very much like the kind of objection involving States’ Rights and the Federal Government’s ability to tax commerce we heard about ObamaCare in front of the Supreme Court. More secessionist noise was going on under President Jefferson a few years later for other reasons, which is partly why Clinton was brought in as his Vice President (Somebody ask Paul Mason about a VP pick polarizing the country, right?). Yet Nasaw wants you to focus exclusively on slavery when discussing the concept.

Basically, the Civil War was the culmination of all this stuff, which had been brewing for more than 75 years. The right of secession had long been accepted. The irony of the early instigators of the Revolution’s feelings of being slaves to the British Crown while owning slaves themselves wasn’t lost on them. They knew, but were for reasons best left to people much more intelligent and informed than I, ultimately incapable of sorting it out early on. Lessons hadn’t been learned well enough, the South became too economically dependent on free labor, a lot of people in power didn’t want to suddenly have hundreds of thousands of opposition voters appear on the scene all at once (like in Mississippi, for example, where blacks would have instantly outnumbered whites) and the rest is…well, you know.

But Nasaw doesn’t seem to know any of this. All he sees is a chance to equate slavery enthusiasts with people who oppose a Federal Government wanting to “reform healthcare systems”. The very term “reform” is loaded with positive connotations, a biased perspective on its own, although that’s a discussion for another time, and one we’ve had before anyway. Any opposition, then, to new powers of the Federal Government are similarly tainted. This stifles debate even before it begins. When a couple of the people he meets object, Nasaw sneers. He gives the game away when he asks those playing the Union side if they feel “morally superior” to the Rebels. It’s all black and white to him (no pun intended, although it’s pretty unavoidable).

If one is going to have an honest discussion about the origins of the States’ Rights debate, one has to go way past the Civil War, all the way back to the years before the founding of the country. The concept is entrenched in the US Constitution for a reason: it was vitally important to the founders, who had been debating the topic for years already. It’s about something far beyond a single issue, even one as culturally and morally important as slavery. To simply dismiss the whole thing by tainting it with support for slavery, full stop (subtext: You’re A Racist!), does a disservice to the audience, to the debate itself, and to the nation’s history.

I understand that no humble correspondent can be an expert on every subject, and it’s impossible to do in-depth research for every story. But this is a clear example of a reporter having a preconceived story he wants to tell, one that is exactly in line with the perspective put forth by nearly every other report on the subject, and really screwing with history to get his point across.

 

PS: Amusingly, Justin Rowlatt’s preceding segment about Las Vegas’ economic struggles gives you in a few seconds more information about the looming economic catastrophe in China than pretty much all other BBC reporting in the last few months put together. Unfortunately, though, he’s yet another Beeboid who see that the money has run out but is unable to grasp why that is.

Mardell Plays The Race Card

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At first, as I was reading this latest report by Mark Mardell I was thinking how amazing it was that it was not about this or that candidate, that it wasn’t about some political issue which affects the President, and that he had made a rare excursion outside the campaign trail to discover something else about the US besides political polarization. Here he is, I thought to myself, talking about art and something interesting.

How wrong I was.

In reality, this was Mardell telling you that we need to re-elect the President cos He is black. Aside from any niceties about the artist, Kahinde Wiley, being used to promote an agenda interviewed about his vision and a brief discussion of his work and what it represents, the message could not be clearer. The editor even has is as the highlight quote:

“I’m looking for a sense of self-possession, a type of swagger, a sense of grace in the world”

Oops, sorry, that was the superficial praise of Him, the revival of the “Oh, look how cool He is,” meme, which has so often passed the lips of Beeboids since He came among us. That’s really all He’s got these days, which is sad. What any of this has to do with running a government I have no idea. But that’s not the point, is it?

The actual quote I’m talking about:

“Obama stands as a signal, that this nation will continue to redefine what it means to push beyond the borders of what’s possible”

See, we must re-elect Him so that other countries think we’re cool. For no reason other than the color of His skin. This is racial thinking, and I object.

The whole thing is really about His race, and about how we need to keep Him in power as a racial symbol. Nothing about His accomplishments, nothing about merit, nothing about ability or achievement. It’s all about race. These are Wiley’s words, not Mardell’s, but it fits in perfectly with Mardell’s own beliefs and the story he wants to tell.

“The reality of Barack Obama being the president of the United States – quite possibly the most powerful nation in the world – means that the image of power is completely new for an entire generation of not only black American kids, but every population group in this nation.”

Yes, it does. We’ve done it. But what does it tell an entire generation of black American kids if we say the only reason to keep the President in power is because He’s black? Do we really tell them that a black person’s only intrinsic value is the color of their skin?

“The way that we’re coded for power has been recontextualised in terms of race. Now there are children who are four or five who would have known only a black man at the seat of power in this nation. It’s an important social message.”

Yes it is. That’s why we elected Him in the first place. Not because we thought His ideas about nationalized health care were so great, not because He was against homosexual marriage at the time, not because we wanted to send George Bush packing, as he wasn’t running for office. We elected The Obamessiah because of the color of his skin, to send that social message. Mostly so the whites among us could pat ourselves on the back more than to actually uplift black people. But why is that a reason to re-elect someone who isn’t up to the job?

I realize that this last question comes from a Right-wing perspective. Mardell, of course, wouldn’t see it that way. As far as He’s concerned, as we’ve seen over an over again from his “reporting”, the main reason The Obamessiah hasn’t been a brilliant President who fixed the economy and saved us all is because He wasn’t allowed to by intransigent Republicans in Congress. So Mardell will see this idea that we will continue to send a positive racial message as mere icing on the cake.

It gets worse:

“There is a cultural shift in the nation that says possibility is not necessary impacted or determined wholly by the colour of your skin.”

Really? Then why is this entire piece about how we must determine our nation’s future wholly by the color of His skin? This doublethink drives me crazy. On the one hand, we’re supposed to accept – which I do – that the election of a black man to the White House means that we have made at least some progress towards seeing beyond skin color, that enough of the country is not as racist as we were led to believe. While on the other hand, we’re supposed to say that we must keep Him in power simply because He’s black. Again, I must point out that there’s nothing here about His character or accomplishments, or trying to prove He’s done a good job and deserves a second term.

“That said, this society has a long way to go, and – as we go through this election cycle – there are echoes of racism that continue to enter and occupy the American imagination.

“There is – and always will be – the legacy of chattel slavery in this nation, an obsession with racial and gender differencec, but I think that, at its best, this nation is capable of creating standards for itself and reaching towards those standards.

“Obama stands as a signal that this nation will continue to redefine what it means to push beyond the borders of what’s possible.”

And so on. There’s quite a bit more on this theme: it’s important to keep a black man in power, regardless of His competence or policies, because the US has an unfortunate history on racial issues.

The BBC has gone from the 2008 election message that if we don’t elect The Obamessiah it’s because we’re racist to saying that any opposition to His policies is based on racism, to how we must re-elect Him because of past racist sins. This really isn’t much of a positive statement about how He’s done as President, is it?

This is all they’ve got.  Mardell is dimly aware that the President is going to have a tough time running on His record, which is why the campaign is all about how evil the Republicans are. Mardell simply cannot let go of his racialist views, and so sought out Wiley to use as a tool to promote this message: the US is a racist country, and not only did we have to elect Him to assuage some of that guilt, but we must now re-elect Him because of it.

There can be no other message taken from this. It’s sad not so much because it attempts to dismiss any legitimate objections to the President’s policies and how might govern if given free reign in a second term. It’s sad most of all because this infantilizes black people.

At the end of the day, people of African-American descent are not valued by Mardell or his kind for their character or their accomplishments, but only for the color of their skin. This is racialist thinking, and it’s coming from the BBC’s top man in the US.

If you don’t vote for Him in November, you’re a racist who wants to send the wrong message to black children, and wants to tell the world that we’re not cool, and that there is no longer any Hope. What’s that? You have an objection to one of His policies? Racist!

Think I’m making it up? Seeing something that isn’t there? In his next piece, Mardell says it explicitly:

The core political debate about the redistribution of wealth is sharpened by redistribution to people who “are not like us”.

This is the same slander he babbled to the BBC College of Journalism last year. The rest of the very long outburst is about how this election is all about race, and if we don’t re-elect Him, black children will feel bad.

If, on the other hand, he loses, many African Americans will take it personally, will be worried and hurt, and see the result as another reverse in their long struggle.

FROM FACT TO FICTION…

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A Biased BBC reader notes..

“A short play earlier this evening about a problem child at school. From Fact to Fiction

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kxzy4

The child was ethnic British, that’s fine, but the BBC approved play write couldn’t resist feeding in a comment by an actor in the role of a teacher (6.25 mins into programme) that she “couldn’t help but notice that ALL  the kids at the ‘exclusion centre’ were ‘white'” (surely they didn’t mean Eastern European? ), to which another teacher replied that “Asian families have higher standards and Black mothers won’t let them talk back”.

The latter is a blatant lie, since black children are MORE likely to be excluded from school, and there have been frequent suggestions that this is due to “racism”. NO real teacher would pretend that black children on average are better behaved.

Just to underline that the criticism is of working class poor ethnic BRITISH, the Scottish teacher then lists of the pregnancies of Maria’s  lazy fecund family then lists and name some of the local ‘problem’ ethnic British families (just to be sure we couldn’t think they’re Polish or Portuguese immigrants). If this isn’t out and out race hate and stereotyping of our people, I don’t know what is. The very idea of running this play, where Maria is a black or Asian child would be unthinkable to Auntie!

Frankly disgusted.”

Is The President’s Harvard Law School Professor A Racist?

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Roberto Unger, one of the President’s old professors at Harvard Law School, has said that the President “must be defeated” in the next election (@6:10). Is he a racist?

Actually, Unger is making the same criticisms of the President as some others from the far-Left have been making, including Occupiers: He has failed to transform the country into a Progressive Paradise. He hasn’t governed Left enough.

“President Obama must be defeated in the coming election,” Roberto Unger, a longtime professor at Harvard Law School who taught Obama, said in a video posted on May 22. “He has failed to advance the progressive cause in the United States.”

Unger is one of those who believe that their side must spend a few years in the wilderness in order to refocus and regain strength and purity.

Unger said that Obama must lose the election in order for “the voice of democratic prophecy to speak once again in American life.”

He acknowledged that if a Republican wins the presidency, “there will be a cost … in judicial and administrative appointments.” But he said that “the risk of military adventurism” would be no worse under a Republican than under Obama, and that “the Democratic Party proposes no new direction.”

But check out the specific policy criticisms:

  • His policy is financial confidence and food stamps.”
  • “He has spent trillions of dollars to rescue the moneyed interests and left workers and homeowners to their own devices.
  • “He has delivered the politics of democracy to the rule of money.”
  • “He has disguised his surrender with an empty appeal to tax justice.”
  • “He has reduced justice to charity.”
  • “He has subordinated the broadening of economic and educational opportunity to the important but secondary issue of access to health care in the mistaken belief that he would be spared a fight.”
  • “He has evoked a politics of handholding, but no one changes the world without a struggle.”

Much of this resembles complaints from the Tea Party movement, no? Unger even says it was misguided to push ObamaCare through when they did. I realize, though, that most of the rest of his diatribe is standard far-Left fare.

As we know, the BBC Narrative is that there is no legitimate opposition to any of His policies, and any objection to Him is really inspired by racism. Their top man in the US, Mark Mardell, came to the US job expecting racism as a reason for opposition to the President.

The relationship between black and white has been such an important driving factor in American political history that it would be strange if it now mattered not a jot.

Last year, he told the BBC College of Journalism that opposition to the President’s policies – particularly amongst Tea Party types – is ultimately based on racism. Mardell also reiterated his expectations of racism. Beginning at 55:30:

“I’ve been to lots of Tea Party meetings, and I honestly don’t think most of them are racists. I think some of them…..uh…certainly not in a straight forward sense…I think for them it really is about the government spending…uh…their money. Now, I think that deeper than that, it’s about the government spending money on people who are not like them….sometimes.

And I think there are people who feel a disconnect because they just didn’t expect this sort of person in the White House, and particularly because He plays against their stereotype of what a black person is like. I mean, it’s actually quite a stereotype in the African-American community, the thoughtful, professorial…uh…you know…intellectual. But it’s not a stereotype in the ‘country’ South.

But yeah, I mean it’s one of those things that I feel that I can only answer when I go out and when I talk to people. And I haven’t found it as strongly as I thought I would.”

So when Prof. Unger criticizes the President for having a policy of “financial confidence and food stamps”, is that racist? When he scolds about the “politics of handholding”, is it about the government holding the hands of people not like him? Or are some people permitted to object to these policies while others are not?

Another BBC correspondent in the US, Jonny Dymond, made a rather dishonest report about how there’s been an “explosion” of hate groups since the black man became President.

So, one has to ask Mardell and everyone else at the BBC: is Prof. Unger a racist after all? Or is he magically exempt from the charge of racism because he’s of the Left, even though some criticisms are virtually indistinguishable from those Mardell suspects to be driven by racism?

Oh, and the BBC sure won’t be telling you about this any time soon. Doesn’t help the Narrative.

RACISM HERE, RACISM THERE, RACISM RACISM EVERYWHERE!

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Gosh, it seems that racism is everywhere these days in our wonderful multicultural country and just in case you had forgotten this the BBC has discovered more than 80,000 racist incidents recorded in schools across the country in the last four years. Time for a non-debate on Today…

“Sarah Soyei of Show Racism the Red Card, and Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, discuss whether there is a rise in racism in schools…”

Balanced? Someone from the Racism Industry and a Trade Unionist? How about having someone on who disputes the very basis of all this race hustling? Don’t get me wrong, I think racism is loathsome but those who see it under every stone and behind every shadow are as much of the problem as the alleged racists.

BBC Censorship: Trayvon Martin Edition

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(UPDATE: See end of post) I didn’t even want to get into the Trayvon Martin George Zimmerman story, but the latest BBC report on the story, about a judge declining a request to raise his bail, is still misleading you on what happened. They’re still telling you that Zimmerman wasn’t charged immediately because of Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law. That was the initial story that was going around, but way too much information has come out since then so that it’s no longer the issue, and hasn’t been for some time. Yet the BBC is still stuck on that. The BBC has been publishing updates on Zimmerman’s situation, yet they’ve left out a huge amount of information, keeping you all not only uninformed, but left with a false impression of the story.

The Stand Your Ground Law, at least in the Florida version, is mostly about defending against an imminent threat. It’s clear from the language that home invasion is a major concern. There is part of it that says a person has no duty to retreat when confronted with physical force, and is allowed to meet force with force, but the main thrust of it seems to be about defending against other situations like breakins and car-jacking, and not a physical altercation. In fact, the law was created in to clear the legal cloud prosecutors said disgusted them after having to charge a man in 2004 who shot and killed someone who had broken into his recreational vehicle.

To further give you the desired impression, the BBC put together four case studies involving Stand Your Ground Law in Florida. Only one of the three involved a physical altercation, where a kid who was bullied brought a knife to school because he was afraid of getting attacked. The others were about a gang shooting, somebody shooting an unarmed man during an argument, and a guy who got into a drunken fight with someone and, after separating himself from the fight, one of them went and got a gun, came back and shot the other in a non-threatening situation. So now you’re supposed the think the law is awful.

But here’s the thing: The so-called Stand Your Ground Law is irrelevant. The statute preceding it in the books is the only one worth talking about. That law is about the “Use of force in defense of person”. It says:

A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:

(1)He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony; or

(2)Under those circumstances permitted pursuant to s. 776.013.

Which is the next bit about home invasion, etc., which you can read on the same page I’ve linked to above.

Why is it important to bring all this up? Zimmerman was engaged in a physical altercation with Martin. When that happens, it’s down to self defense. There was plenty of physical evidence of that fight, which the BBC has never reported. The only time they’ve acknowledged the notion is in a previous report about Zimmerman’s hearing, when they portrayed it as merely being his claim that there was a fight. But the evidence is real, not just a claim. The mainstream media tried to hide it to keep the racism Narrative going, but reality forced their hand. Since the BBC is unaccountable, they’ve simply kept that false story going without consequence. The evidence was out there, but the mainstream media tried to hide it. So no wonder the BBC News Online producers had no idea at first. But they should and probably do know now.

So here’s what the BBC doesn’t want you to know. It’s all over the news that someone at NBC deliberately edited Zimmerman’s call to the police to make it appear as if he thought Martin was suspicious simply because he was black. Combine that impression with the half-a-story we were all fed at first that the young man was shot in cold blood, rather than during an actual fight, along with that photo the media circulated at first of a smiling, angelic much younger Martin (the photo in that HuffPo link), and many people got the idea that a young black kid was gunned down in the street for no reason other than the color of his skin. We know now that, while Zimmerman did say Martin was wearing a hoodie, there were other signals that made him suspicious. It took several days for the truth to even begin to come out, but by then it was too late. Most people had already formed their opinion by then, including, it seems the BBC.

The gated community he was patrolling had recently been seeing a rash of break-ins by young black men. It was cold and raining, yet there was a young black man wandering around. His actual words to the police – which NBC deliberately edited to create a different impression – were as follows:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

NBC, though, cut out the middle bit to make it sound like Zimmerman said, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”

The BBC never told you any of this.

NBC has since fired the editor responsible, but hasn’t made a real correction or national apology to their viewers. So many people still probably don’t know what actually happened, and have only that false story to go on. Early on, CNN had on a so-called voice expert to claim that Zimmerman used a racial slur in the call, further inflaming everyone’s racial anger. They’ve since had to quietly walk that back.

Then we have the fact of the physical altercation after one of the confronted the other. Zimmeran says that after following Martin, he turned away only to be challenged by him. That’s his side of the story anyway, and we’ll never know Martin’s. But there’s also the physical evidence of that fight: the injury on the back of Zimmerman’s head, and the other evidence of a fight according to the police report. Unfortunately, when ABC initially showed police CCTV video of Zimmerman being brought into the police station, they deliberately fuzzed it up and obscured his head with a big lower third graphic so you can’t see anything. So when they claimed there was no evidence of a fight, everyone believed it, and again racial anger was exacerbated by a deliberate act of a major broadcaster. After being called on it, ABC released an “enhanced” version (i.e. after removing the doctoring they did) which, lo and behold, showed the gash on the back of Zimmerman’s head. Nothing about that from the BBC, either.

The other really sad thing about all this – besides the tragic fact of a young man’s death – is that it seems extremely difficult to get the real facts of this story. Anyone doing a search for the various factors will notice that nearly every search result brings up a lot of partisan sources and precious little from the mainstream media. Try a search for various elements of this story and you’ll see what I mean. So no wonder everyone has a different idea of what happened, and no wonder we’ve now had retaliation violence. Yes, you heard that right. There have been at least one incident of black on white violence where the attacker said it was revenge for Trayvon Martin. Somebody also shot up a Sanford police car near the scene of Martin’s death.

There was supposedly another one, but that one sounds to me like the white guy brought up Martin’s name first and really caused the problem. When you have people like Spike Lee tweeting what he thought was Zimmerman’s home address, Al Sharpton –  who has his own primetime show on MSNBC – trying to incite race riots, and the President Himself expressing sorrow and emphasizing the racial angle, you get angry mobs baying for blood. So many people are convinced now that Martin was shot in cold blood for walking while black that if Zimmerman is actually tried and found innocent, it’s going to be a bad scene. All caused by the media.

Since we now know that nearly all the initial Narrative on this story was false, and all that anger was based largely on false reporting and media bias, you’d think the BBC would do a special report on it, considering how important race and racism in the US is to them. After all, Jonny Dymond’s remit seems to be traipsing around the country looking for racists under the bed (see my latest “Life in These United States” for more about him) and the BBC did that World Have Your Say segment not long after the shooting about how white supremacy was a major problem. Plus, we’ve heard over and over again for the last four years how racist the US is, how racist the Tea Party movement is simply for opposing the governing policies of a black President. So now we have this awful racial divide going on over this issue, which was really caused not by the killing itself, but by mainstream media faking material and stoking the flames of racial hatred. The least the BBC could do, I think, is have another honest discussion about what’s actually happened. It’s hard to think of a valid journalistic reason why they haven’t addressed any of this.

UPDATE: A totally different NBC journalist in Miami has now been fired for making his own false edit of the audio. As if by telepathic instruction, this completely independent act of editing took the same false approach. Now the station is going to add a line manager and extra layers of journalism to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Does that sound familiar?

Keep hiring the same kind of people and give them the same sense of superiority and privilege, and they’ll keep doing the exact same thing no matter how many layers you add.

RACISM AT THE MET!

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Good Friday arrives and the BBC Today gets stuck into one of its favourite themes – “institutional racism at the Met.”  Naturally the assumption pursued is that those officers accused of racism are guilty and by way of balance we have Dr Richard Stone, who was a member of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and who has penned an open letter to the Met Police chief commissioner, calling on him to show leadership and suggesting that that is what has been missing all along and Superintendent Leroy Logan, the founder and past chair of the Black Police Federation. Again, the clear message is guilty as charged. I guess they could not find the chair of the White Police Federation…hang on, that doesn’t exist because if it did it would be racist.  But when it’s the Black Police Federation…

Like all sensible people, I find racism abhorrent, but what’s worse is the enthusiasm from some quarters, including the BBC, to somehow characterise white officers in the Met as “institutionally racist.” In itself this seems, well, racist!