Category Archives: Uncategorized

That’s one reason I can think of for this BBCi headline.

BBC: Reagan had ‘evil sex’ angst

Compare this with ABC and Time.

ABC: The Reagan Letters

Time Magazine: The Real Reagan

Of course, it couldn’t be a commercial motive since the Beeb is “above it all” and the license fee keeps the larder well-stocked. Another less charitable possibility springs to mind: a visceral reaction to the man and what he stands for. So, in an article about a new Reagan book which features 1,000 of his handwritten letters, why does the BBC lead with such a stinky headline? My guess is that they do not wish to deal with the other substantive issues in the book which highlight something many leftist elites do not wish to acknowledge–that Ronald Reagan’s vision of freedom has been largely vindicated. And if they cannot discredit Reagan’s record, why not trivialize it?

ABC News is neither pro-Reagan nor non-commercial but it at least gives Reagan’s book a fair shake. BBC small-mindedness plummets lower by the day. Go ahead and compare what the BBC writes about the Reagan book with the ABC News article. As I look back over the BBC article, it’s really not all that bad, but the headline is very misleading. Here is the ABC News piece with the letter from which the Beeb plucked its verbal noogie. (Reagan’s words are italicized.)

Perhaps the most surprising letter in the collection is one that Reagan wrote in 1951 to Florence Yerly, an old friend from his hometown in Illinois. Florence had just been through a bitter divorce, and wrote to Reagan that she was giving up men ?— permanently. Reagan told her she was making a big mistake. He explained why it was important that she have a man in her life. And then he explained the importance of love and sex.

My personal belief is that God couldn’t create evil so the desires he planted in us are good and the physical relationship between a man and a woman is the highest form of companionship. If I can, I want to say all this to my daughter. I want her to know that nothing between her and the man she loves can be wrong or obscene, that desire in itself is normal and right. The world is full of lonely people — people capable of giving happiness and love is not a magic touch of cosmic dust that preordains two people and two people only for each other. Love can grow slowly out of warmth and companionship and none of us should be afraid to seek it.

As he closed the letter, Reagan admitted to feeling a bit queasy about giving such explicit advice:

Now I’m going to seal this letter very quickly and mail it because if I read it over I won’t have the nerve to send it.

Have a look at the Time cover article here.

blogleagues never sleep. Bran at Blog Irish continues to hold the Beeb to account whilst Norm at Normblog goes after those clueless Beeb apologists.

would have averted all this trouble.

“We goofed.” Those two little words, uttered by the BBC early in its latest escapade in biased journalism — falsely claiming the Blair government “sexed up” its intelligence reports during the lead-up to the Iraq invasion — would have saved a lot of time, a lot of money, and at least one life. Instead, we have the BBC’s bloated buddy, Andrew Gilligan, admitting, in the Telegraph, what everybody knew: that he committed lousy journalism, and the Labor Government promising, in the Guardian, that the world’s most arrogant media institution (pace, New York Times) was going to become accountable at long, long last. Maybe the empty suits mismanaging the Corporation will even be fired. That would be good. Next Thursday, the Hugely Expensive Commission charged with investigating the suicide of a Gilligan source, will conclude its wildly disproportionate inquiry. It will be the most expensive correction notice ever published.

Read the rest of Denis Boyles’ non-Beeb-related EuroPress Review here.

Here

wasn’t caught in a hurricane but he was blown away just the same…undoubtedly a rare occurrence.

comments about a BBC story on the ‘danger’ of referenda.

Now that Sambrook has done his sandbagging and Greg has put his finger in the Dyke, Andrew Gilligan is pressed by Lord Hutton on the meaning of “Absolutely yes“. It must be hard for the mighty Beeb to have this story cycling in and out around the globe. Now the ‘storm surge’ approaches as even traditional BBC allies advocate greater accountability. Quite a storm.

Over on Transport BlogI’ve made some comments on a BBC article comparing railways then and now. The list of omissions and apparent inaccuracies is staggering.

in this BBC quiz about Islam. Perhaps that has led me to look kindly on it. It’s very much the BBC view, but I accept a certain delicacy is necessary here. In several cases I gave the answer I knew they wanted while maintaining reservations. Jihad certainly can mean interior struggle -but the non-PC “holy war” translation is enthusastically accepted by many Muslims. That figure for the projected US Muslim population is based on figures for the present population that are contested; estimates vary by a factor of three and the BBC has gone for the higher end. Divorce can indeed be initiated by man or woman, but what they do not say is that the rules are not symmetrical. Finally, I found it a little odd that there wasn’t a “Muslims believe” wrapped round the statement that “Islam began in the Arabian Peninsula in 610 when the prophet Muhammad began to receive his revelations of the direct word of God,” but I attribute that to a condescending mindset that is willing to humour all religions equally rather than to acceptance of the tenets of Islam at the BBC.