Hissing Sid and what we’re told to think

Why do we have to have our news filtered through the weirdest prism, day in day out. Is it because of this? 

I mean, this morning we were treated to the news of an increase in Islamophobic incidents. A spike, no less. No-one was beheaded in the course of announcing those incidents, nor in the incidents themselves. 

Mind you, I do understand the urge to point out such spikes, as I appreciate that antisemitic incidents are occasionally pointed out too, usually after some particularly egregious anti-Israel reportage.

You can always tell when the announcer is taking care not to sound Islamophobic by the way he pronounces the words Mussslim and Isslam; like hissing Sid.  A variation on announcers going native over the pronunciation of certain place names, perhaps. 

Quite odd, and it puts one in mind of the comedic Arabic accent that George Galloway puts on when addressing a certain audience. He must do to ingratiate himself with them. I vunder eef it verks? Pwobbibly not.

Another odd bit of news, delivered with palpable sanctimony, and puffed up into an actual  headline, was the fact that one of the Michaels, Adebolajo, had been unsuccessfully approached as a potential recruit (intelligence?) by MI5. And that, apparently, solely upon the say-so of one decidedly shifty-eyed individual who had somehow managed to get himself invited onto Newsnight to expound the theory of reasoned action the prediction of behavioral intention predictions of attitude and behavior and radicalisation in relation to the formula BI=(AB)W1+(SN)W2 in spite of an obvious difficulty with the meanings of words other than ‘basically’  - and was subsequently arrested, on BBC premises, on alleged terrorism related charges.

So? What are we supposed to  think? Do tell us, BBC. What, exactly, is the insinuation you are making? The incompetence of the security services? The mendacity of the security services? What? 

Or is it that you are trying to infer that MI5 should have preempted the incident, while you simultaneously rail against a smidgeon of a hint at any curtailment of our freedom and human rights?

We may feel sorry that ‘unspeakable’ things had been done to Mr. Adebolajo, but surely we weren’t being told this in mitigation, were we? 

You cautiously refer to the two Michaels as ‘suspects’. “The two people suspected of killing Lee Rigby.” Is that a legal requirement, potentially prejudicial to a presumed trial going forward? Because  in view of the fact that they were caught, by the whole wide world - and one can legitimately apply the word ‘literally’ at long last - red-handed,  it appears completely ludicrous.

The person suspected of being Nick Robinson, if that’s the latest BBC sub judicial edict, had to apologise for inadvertently saying the ‘suspects’ looked a bit you-know-what-ish.  

You subject us to the wisdom of a number of antisemitic, homophobic, misogynistic advocates of Sharia, whose racism you ignore in the scramble to avoid seeming racist yourselves, notably probably the most David Brent-like Muslim in the UK Caliphate whose unconscious humour one might adore, but whose opinion on this or any other incident one could do without.

We’re subjected to the desperate attempts to create moral equivalence between the shouty screamy EDL and their cleaver-wielding antagonists, or have the EDL carried out any terrorist attacks you’ve omitted to tell us about? 

Probing the significance of everything said, done or excreted by the Muslim Community is terminally irritating to many listeners, though you might not realise that. It might even have the counterproductive effect that no-one is allowed to openly hope for.