Did anyone catch the recent "Desert Island Discs" featuring Anthony Julius who was Lady Diana`s lawyer? Last Sunday I blogged about the BBC's decision not to show a documentary because it apparently failed to meet the "strict rules on objectivity". As a fervent Scot, and son of the manse, Gordon Brown hates Britain's past; anything to do with the empire and with colonialism, especially. So, of course, does the BBC, which leaps at any opportunity to denigrate British achievements. The government's absurd and patronising decision to "apologise" for the way children from broken homes were sent to Australia and elsewhere in the Commonwealth to start new lives is thus naturally front page BBC news this morning. Yes, some of these children were badly treated, and it is deeply sad and regrettable that they were. But standards of childcare, and understanding of childcare issues, were very different then. The idea of "apologising" for what happened is preposterous and nauseating. Nice to see the BBC running every possible allegation against our Armed Forces when in Iraq. It suits their narrative and plays to the BBC meme that regardless of their sacrifice, you just cannot trust the British Army. Muslims are unhappy and Brits must pay. The "darker side" to the British Army allegations that the BBC loves to run sickens me. Are you content with how the BBC presents thiAnthony Julius On Desert Island Discs
>> MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2009
He had said that he was Jewish and loved English Literature enough to have wanted for some time to teach it.
At the end she presumed to offer him a copy of the Torah - and he protested saying that he wanted the full King James Version of the Bible so he would still have access to the beauties of the New Testament.
The BBC is full of this anti-Christian presumption. I assume that Kirsty and team did not already know that the Torah IS the Old Testament - but are they not commiting (by their lights!) the cardinal sins of stereotyping and patronising a Jewish person to presume that he might automatically take the Torah? Julius deserves credit for being so forbearing of the caricaturing!
Add this to the "Good Rebellion, Sir" stance that they take as a matter of course with this question at the end. A David Walliams and the like are somewhat lionised as and when they refuse the offer of the Bible by the admiring Kirsty and her ilk...seems to be desired even to show how much against "The Man" they all are!
Note: This item was submitted by a reader and will be updated with attribution when he/she confirms how they want it to appear. If you spot anything you think merits inclusion please contact us here.Obama Season on BBC 2
On Wednesday the BBC issued the following press release:It's one year since the inauguration of Barack Obama and BBC Two has the British premiere of a remarkable Storyville film, By The People: The Election of Barack Obama. Filmed by two young filmmakers who were given remarkable access to Obama's election campaign, it has captured moments of extraordinary candour and intimacy. This film will be complemented by Simon Schama's two-part film, Obama's America, which considers the daunting challenges facing the president; and God Don't Live Here Anymore?, in which theologian and writer Dr Robert Beckford journeys into heartland America to investigate the impact of Obama, both as a politician and a believer.
How objective can we expect that little lot to be?
From Hank Stuever's review of "By The People" in the Washington Post:HBO's uplifting but stultifyingly naive, please-drink-a-little-more-Kool-Aid paean to the historical highlights of President Obama's campaign and election…
And here's the Associated Press:
At a recent VIP screening in Washington, the campaign's advertising director joked that [filmmakers] Rice and Sams wound up in the way of all best shots of America's Obama moments. The audience -- made up mainly of political reporters who lived through the campaign, and some White House staff -- laughed at that, mainly because, as almost everyone acknowledged, "By the People" is really just a very long commercial for Obama.The documentary has a laudatory tone; after following Obama for two years both Rice and Sams said they voted for him. The film could leave Obama fans pining about potential yet unfulfilled and give opponents another example of the media fawning over the president.
On the day after Obama's victory, the BBC's Storyville editor Nick Fraser wrote the following on his blog at the Independent:I have never seen anyone like Obama. Politicians do not have the wisdom or brass to address us in this way. So, in common with the rest of America and indeed the world I watched the events at Grant park, succumbing to the hope.
Little wonder a "stultifyingly naïve, please-drink-a-little-more-Kool-Aid paean to the historical highlights of President Obama's campaign and election" appealed to him so much.
As for Schama and Beckford - the BBC covered the previous administration by commissioning aggressively anti-Bush films from the likes of Republican-hating activist Greg Palast. For analysis of the current administration it turns to a historian who is one of Obama's biggest cheerleaders, and a theologian who hasa poster of Malcolm X on his office wall at Birmingham University.AD NAUSEAM
What's next? A grovelling apology to Oz for James Cook landing there in the first place? Or to Spain, for beating them in the Armada, thereby postponing the colonisation of British fishing grounds by Spanish fishermen for four hundred years?
Would that this Prime Minister (and the BBC) would focus instead on issues that really matter. How long will it be before one of his successors will be forced to "apologise" for his headlong, wreckless rush towards causing fuel poverty for millions by his fervent belief in global warming? And for wrecking British social fabric and culture by encouraging unrestrained immigration?THE WAR ON OUR ARMED FORCES
>> SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2009
Monday, 16 November 2009
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