Sudoku, Soduko, Joduko?
Judoka…. I didn’t know what that meant until the story about Or Sasson hit the headlines. As Craig noted, (great to have you back) (how was Aleppo?) the BBC also got confused, mistaking “Or” for “Os”, which - although it must be quite hard to make a mistake in at two-letter word (or possibly a three-letter word) - was probably because the BBC’s massive Olympic team of reporters and journalists are more familiar with the latter, which is a slang word for Australia, and I suppose also an abbreviation for “Ossie”, as in Oswald, Oscar or Ostrich.
(No such mistake was made with the opponent’s name, "Islam el-Shehaby" which is obviously more familiar to the Beeb.)
There have been quite a few political incidents in Rio, which the BBC has reported in their scrupulously impartial manner, not wanting to be caught out while making an unseemly value-judgement. The Lebanese bus incident, in particular, was notable for this, and the subsequent reprimand - did the BBC mention the reprimand?
However my point is that several commenters have defended Egyptian Islam el-Shehaby (or possibly Islam el-Shebaby) on the premise that he made a ground-breaking, nay, defiant decision by actually appearing with Or (or Ori ) the Israeli in the first place, and he certainly wasn’t going to risk adding insult to injury by looking pleased about it as well.
Since the BBC has made such a big deal about Saudi and other hijabbed women being ‘allowed’ to compete, I thought they might at least have taken an interest in the cultures that let their political and religious cultural customs override those noble Olympian principles.
But, no. All that nonsense is accepted without a murmur. Nary a value judgment to be seen.
I think I said this once before, and I might say it several times more, but we’re not the only ones who regard the BBC as you-know-what. Do look at the comments below Rod Liddle’s piece here, about those Norwegians.
Is it time for Craig and me to retire? Nothing would please me more than to become redundant.
From this blog, anyway.
We could start another blog entitled “The BBC isn’t Biased”. Catchy though, eh?
