Mark Mardell was fond of editorialising when he acted as the BBC's North America editor.
Curiously, he obviously still believes it's appropriate to sound off in a highly opinionated fashion - even though he's now a presenter on Radio 4's The World at One and The World This Weekend.
Even by his standards though, his latest blogpost - Cameron is not asking the big question on Islamic State - is stonkingly opinionated. And on a highly controversial subject too.
He mocks David Cameron for saying that Islamic State poses an "existential threat" to the UK:
One has to have a fairly lurid imagination to envision that IS could snuff out the UK.
He also implicitly includes the PM in his description of the "emotive words and stirring phrases from politicians around the world" - as is made explicit by his later description of Mr Cameron's proposals on how to deal with IS as "portentous pronouncements".
He also gives Tony Hall the finger by ranting about his feelings about the terminology used to describe the so-called so-called Islamic State:
It is perhaps telling that Mr Cameron objects to the BBC using the phrase "Islamic State", he prefers Isil - which stands for Islamic State in the Levant - or the preface "so-called" .
No doubt there will be a big debate about this, but personally I loathe that phrase.
It is only used in ordinary conversation in scorn: "Your so-called girlfriend.
And, it seems to me, once we start passing comment on the accuracy of the names people call their organisations, we will constantly be expected to make value judgements. Is China really a "People's Republic"?
Now, I have to say that I agree with Mark Mardell on that - and on other things in this piece. His strong opinion here mirrors mine, but...
...I'm an unpaid blogger, and he's a well-paid senior BBC news presenter. I am allowed to express strong opinions. Is he?
And, seemingly inevitably when it comes to 'old hand' BBC types (and where I part company with him), he ends by blaming...
...can you guess?...
...no, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, just try to have a guess who Mark Mardell of the BBC ultimately blames for the appeal of Islamic State...
...go on, can you guess?
Yes, it's us! The West! We're to blame!:
But there is a critical element that is often ignored, a Western aversion to what should be obvious and beyond debate - the appeal of IS is not just an increasingly violent and fundamentalist interpretation of a religion, not just a retreat into the values of the past in the face of the shock of modernity, but an explicitly political reaction to the actions of the West.
******
Incidentally, Mark Mardell has been backed over this by a fellow BBC journalist, via a re-tweet from a Palestinian-American columnist:
Birds of a biased feather flock together, eh?
