Ignosce mihi, listener, quia peccavi

Biased BBC's David Preiser has been patiently and painstakingly laying out the latest scandals to self-inflict the Obama White House for many months now. His readers tend to be forewarned about most major U.S. stories which don't initially seem to interest American-based BBC reporters (for whatever reason). His readers are also rarely surprised when these stories finally break and take the world by storm. 

Those scandals - which may also have been registering on the BBC's radar for quite some time, though the BBC seems not to have noticed them out of the corner of their (biased?) eye - have, in the last couple of weeks, grown so public and so threatening to the Obama administration that even the BBC's North America editor (you know, the one who doesn't seem to be aware of Canada's existence) has, it appears, felt obliged to post about them - as David himself has pointed out. 

David will probably raise his eyes to Heaven, I suspect, at the blurb on the website for today's From Our Own Correspondent, headed with the mock title 

Conspiracy!

Correspondents' stories from around the world: a field day for conspiracy theorists as the White House stumbles in a fog of political scandal.

Ah yes, those "conspiracy theorists"! 

Who's the correspondent pushing the "conspiracy theorist" angle, introduced with an ironic smirk (reformed in sound) by Kate Adie? One Mark Mardell. (Yes, you know - the one who doesn't report from Canada very often - to put it mildly!). 

Have a listen to Mark's report. His style remains superb. Let me, however, (in an ever so slightly sarcastic fashion) paraphrase it for you: 

Ha, ha, those conspiracy theorists! Sane people believing crazy things. I met a conservative Tea Party guy once, in a field with sheep, being paranoid! Prat! Uh-oh though, it turns out the sheep guy was right and not a prat. The sane people weren't believing crazy things after all and he wasn't paranoid. I was wrong. [He didn't say 'David Preiser was right', but he should have done!]

"In America crazy can be true". The IRS's trawl "is clearly biased against the Right". President Obama denies knowing about it. I believe him, as "there's no evidence". The Department of Justice has been unjust [against the Right]. The Associated Press has been raided. More "intimidation, than investigation".

[As David Preiser told us, long ago...]  the scandal over Benghazi, where "militants" killed four U.S. dipomats and about which conservative critics of the MainStreamMedia [MSM] have been jabbering on about, has been growing too. Yes, it is [through grinded teeth] "largely the case" that the MSM [naming no names, Mark Mardell of the impartial BBC?] has been ignoring this ...but here the President-of-Presidents is a victim here: "The trouble is, that from the very get-go, the President's critics eagerly build on the uncertain evidential sands a tottering tower of such Baroque design that anyone [like me, Mark Mardell] simply looking for facts is a bit put off". Those stupid websites mentioning the President's Muslim-sounding middle name, Jeez!!! The facts look a bit more "prosaic". [Assume a 'prosaic' voice to put a favourable gloss on the administration's spin]. "But in hyper-partisan America there's little mileage in reporting a dull, old-fashioned careerist cover-up."

Some are bound to see "patterns in the clouds, wispy facts". That's the American way. Reds under the beds. Alien cover-ups. Tin foil hats. Watergate, ah, Watergate! Conspiracies can be real. Oh dear, I [Mark Mardell] have had to reconcile myself to that flippin' t-shirt cliché that says, "Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you". I suspect these events will have "a real political importance" in a country where both political sides lack any empathy toward each other and that those who believe the administration is out to get them will be reinforced in that belief, in this "Disunited States of America".

Despite what seems to me to be yet more evidence of Mark's instinctive tendency to feel sympathy for Barack Obama, he is at least admitting (again and again) that he got it wrong. 

Indeed he did. 

I've learned more from David Preiser at Biased BBC (a mere blog - with issues!) than I've ever learned from Mark. Mark, like 'the MSM' in general, ignored these scandals and dismissed those whistle-blowing them as tin-foil-hat-wearing, conservative, sheep-knowing right-wingers. They were wrong. David P was  right. David is never shy of admitting his (rare) mistakes. It's good to see the BBC's rather-more-highly-paid Mark Mardell following suit.

To repeat an old catch-phrase of mine, thank goodness for the internet!