There’s a bit of a thing going on about Nicky Campbell using the term “Inshallah” when he signed off on last Sunday’s TBQs.
Was it supposed to be affectionate but slightly ironic? Or was it another example of Islam infiltrating our cultural norms? In other words, does it demonstrate the BBC’s normalisation of Islam in the UK.
Putting into context by taking Nicky Campbell’s and TBQ’s past performances into account, it’s truly hard to say,
Remember, not everyone can be an obsessive BBC geek. Some of us know more than enough about a given BBC employee’s political affiliations and preferences. We trawl their Tweets and document their impartiality lapses, be they overt, covert, subtle, subliminal or imaginary. We might spot something genuinely worrying, or, on the other hand we might get over excited about something that turns out to be nothing.
Nicky Campbell has been eviscerated (and the contents analysed) by connoisseurs of BBC bias over the years, particularly as regards his radio 5 shows, which I’m afraid I’ve never heard. My radio doesn’t go there.
Lookie here. And, on this very blog, there are 12 items tagged Nicky Campbell! (only one was mine)
Personally, I do watch TBQs, not only for the pantomime but also to keep an eye on what’s going on. Watching one’s back. In my opinion Nicky Campbell does tend to over-apply moral equivalence. Not that he tolerates radicalism or violence, but let’s call it an almost rigid adherence to the non-value-judgmentalist, multicultural ethos preached by the BBC.
On that occasion Campbell’s use of that term may have been tinged with irony, but at the same time, in that particular context there is certainly an element of deference to Islam. Which some of us find sycophantic and - I don't know - disconcerting.
As we know, the BBC is used to pleading ‘we must be doing it right because we get criticism from “both” sides’, so maybe Campbell’s gratuitous use of this expression with an infinitesimal touch of irony is pure mischief-making. A way of hedging his bets and leaving enough mystique in its wake to please the Muslims while simultaneously heading off the inevitable cries of bias from the likes of us. Or maybe it’s none of that; just creeping Islamisation.
Meanwhile the normalisation of Islam in the UK grows apace, and if it makes some of us feel uneasy, we must suck it up. Happy Ramadan.
Normalisation that's a good word. It is now normal for people to hate Jews a little more than is necessary and it's coming from all sides fuelled by endemic Muslim hatred. People can now openly say what they feel because of the drip drip effect of insidious anti Israel and anti Jewish remarks eg the MP that that "Philip Green was acting like Judas betraying the BHS pensioners for 30 pieces of silver" and this was repeated by the BBC so it becomes a normal and acceptable thing to say about a Jew. And it up to us to realise where this may lead to if there is no loud protest.
ReplyDeleteCampbell was just doing that as a two-fingered salute to people complaining about his bias.
ReplyDeleteYou may well be right. But apart from the utter absurdity of any non-muslim using the term, it’s virtue signalling of the most shallow variety. Perhaps as you suggest, virtue signalling as a form of attack (isn’t it always?). Not that I would expect any less from Nicky Campbell.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3628876/BBC-mocked-article-offensive-England-fan-costumes.html
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry but this needs sharing everywhere utter muppet lefty bbc idiots.
That is pathetic. May as well ban people from dressing up as Vikings lest Scots and people up north get offended over memories of invasion 1000 years ago. Sick, twisted Beeboids.
DeleteThere was a time, just after 1945, when 'Tora, Tora, Tora' was quiet in vogue.
ReplyDeleteApparently.
OFF TOPIC: On Newsnight last night Katie Razzell was doing her thing - putting a Remain spin on her supposedly impartial assessments of opinion around the country. She was in South Wales where the sentiment was clearly in general pro Leave. But the whole narrative of her programme was getting young people to persuade Leave-voting older people to vote Remain! She didn't invite the older people to try the reverse with the younger Remain voters.
ReplyDeleteApologies for being OT, but the Open Thread has vanished from the page.
ReplyDeleteDepressing news, the Folkestone QT audience is for Remain. Even with a panel stacked 3:2 for Leave. Having Eddie Izzard (who's looking increasingly like my friend's grandmother) sat next to Farage was a clever stroke by the producers. Sometimes in certain team sports, two superstars essentially cancel each other out, leaving the rest of the team to make the difference. In this case, it left Chris Grayling and Allison Pearson to take the Leave side. Let's just say that a few audience members made more useful and eloquent pro-Brexit remarks than either of them.
Dimbleby in hands-off mode for Tony Benn's continuous stream of lies, but he managed to go after Grayling over trade tariffs, which was a prediction not a lie about a new survey or historical facts.
Izzard's pathetic lying about Farage and immigration was like some live re-enactment of an internet troll. Yet DD never intervened.
Farage's quip about being delighted to finally have some company in campaigning for Leaving the EU was met with very loud applause, but like a couple of earlier incidents, I'm interpreting it as fewer but louder than the Remain faction.
Allison Pearson is thick. She just went through a bizarre series of mental contortions to screw up the answer to this week's obligatory comment about Leave sounding like 1930s Germany.
DD just said to the audience that he knew they are "50/50" split between Remain and Leave. This is what the producers claim, but it's clearly not the case. I say this because the majority response to the Remain arguments are in reaction to the most idiotic and false comments from Izzard and Benn. Izzard in fact just said he came out as playing at being a cross-dresser, as the sort of affectation other people express by smoking a pipe or reading Joyce , was part and parcel of what the EU was all about. No, really.
Confused and sparsely scattered applause in reaction.
DD now challenging - fairly and correctly, to be sure - Grayling's shameful defense of the £350/week BS. Why do they bother? But he has yet to challenge a single Remain lie, and there have been more than from the Leavers. I will now combine being charitable with being a feverish conspiracy nutter and say DD was making the effort to challenge only Leavers in order to pre-empt complaints about the panel being stacked in favor of Leave. Complaints From Both Sides.
Izzard just invoked the '30s as an attempt to distract from Pearson's comments about the recent rapid, mass immigration bringing actual jihadi mass murderers into Europe. Sad that none of the Leavers can even attempt to counter this sick narrative. Ugh, then she went on about the £350 million/week BS, and Dimbleby challenged her Evan Davis style.
As soon as I finish whining, Farage does it properly. First time I've heard anyone do it. He said what they should really do is talk about the real net figure (excluding the phantom rebate and subsidies) which is bad enough, full stop. At last.
More shouting, eventually leading to Izzard repeating the word "immigration" over and over while claiming that that's all Leave talk about.
Now a perfectly articulated democracy argument for Brexit - by a guy with a Scottish accent, no less - but met with less than majority applause.
Ah, the obligatory question about Scotland leaving. DD gave Izzard first swing, who went on the same stupid rant repeating the same pablum as before. He got into it with another audience member, and for a moment it literally descended into the Monty Python 'Argument Room' sketch.
Bottom line, Folkestone is for Remain, I think, which surprises me. This continues the downward trend. 3 weeks now, I think. Don't know what to make of it. Ugh, loud applause for Benn's pro-Hillary closer. I blame the BBC, because the audience won't have any idea about the email scandal or the Benghazi lies.
OK I’ll be OT too! I caught a bit of Woman’s Hour on Radio Four last week. There was a feature about encouraging women entrepreneurs - highly commendable I would have thought. But it soon became apparent that the enthusiasm of one of the guest speakers was too much for the BBC presenter (Jane Garvey or Jenni Murray?), who suddenly and quite incongruously interjected, “We don’t want this to be a party political broadcast for entrepreneurism”. Astounding.
ReplyDeleteBut then of course this is the same programme, and possibly the same presenter, that earlier in the year was swooning in sycophancy over Angela Davis, a woman who supported the Soviet imprisonment of dissidents.
That is astounding, Terry.
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