The paper review on this morning's The Andrew Marr Show was fun to watch. There was plenty of good-natured disagreement.
The reviewers ran from the centre-right (Fraser Nelson) through the centre-left (Miranda Green) to the far-left (Paul Mason) - or, as they say in certain of the louder parts of Twitter, from the far-right through the right to the left.
Such labelling can, of course, be more revealing of where the labeller is coming from, regardless of whether the labeller is actually aware of that or not.
(My labels, however, are neutral and impartial ones and, thus, wholly trustworthy. Naturally).
(My labels, however, are neutral and impartial ones and, thus, wholly trustworthy. Naturally).
Andrew Marr himself stuck a particularly striking label on Norbert Hofer, the Austrian Freedom Party candidate in the Austrian presidential election re-run, this morning:
We've, of course, got Austria, with Norbert Hofer, the neo-Nazi, possibly going to be elected as president.
That drew the following Twitter reaction from economist Andrew Lilico:
Paul Mason is a well known member of the far idiocy. Why is he paid so much by the BBC to give idiotic views on television? What is his qualification ?
ReplyDeleteSentence two likely answers sentence one. And three.
DeleteI agree with Ozfan and his enquiry. However, in my semi-conscious state this morning I was sure I heard PM stay something to the effect that Castro was initially a National Socialist who morphed into a Communist. Has anybody got a transcript?
ReplyDeleteMarr seemed a bit angry in his intro this morning, didn't he? They must have gotten some unnerving complaints about last week's poor performance.
ReplyDeleteMarr's introductions to his sofa panel were prima facie evidence of the BBC's labeling bias. Rule #1 in effect.
Paul Mason is introduced as a "broadcaster and Guardian journalist", Miranda Green is introduced as being from the FT, and Fraser Nelson is introduces as being "from the Right, the Spectator editor".
We were told many times by Beeboids and other journalists that the BBC didn't have to label somebody from the Guardian as being from the Left, as it would be obvious to anyone just by saying they're from the Guardian. So it's blatant health warning bias for Marr to label Nelson as being from the Right, as anyone watching Marr's show (this isn't aimed at The One Show or Strictly audience) knows full well what the Spectator is.
Mason's main defense of Castro is that he ended Apartheid in South Africa. "The Cuban people were able to achieve so much economically..." Amazing. He later seemed to suggest that Castro's brutality to suppress his people (while raising them up, apparently) was understandable because otherwise the US would slaughter the Cuban people like they did to the Vietnamese. Which is along the lines of Livingstone's defense of Castro.
The interview with the former Tory Health Secretary was interesting. Marr was clearly out of his depth, just able to follow the "spending more money efficiently and wisely" line of thinking. Equally obvious was that the whole point of this segment wasn't about discussing that community and home social care is a big part of the future of health care so much as it was about getting a dig at the Tory Government for not offering to spend more money smartly and wisely on the NHS. "Don't you think you're being disloyal by attacking (Hammond) publicly?"
A waste of a good topic.
Emily Thornberry is, of course, an idiot. She was prepped for this, had the prepared answers to what she was told Marr would ask, and still blew it in favor of just attacking Boris Johnson and David Cameron.
Then followed the trying to have it both ways while providing full deniability. Marr knew it was a lost cause fairly quickly. He was hoping to get her to say that freedom of movement was inevitable if Britain didn't want to be shut out of Europe entirely, but she had nothing beyond the boilerplate and waffled when she wasn't just whining about the Tories.
I guess it gave the appearance of a "challenging" interview. It was challenging for Marr trying to make Thornberry look like she had anything of substance to say. So he moved on to firmer ground and got her to do the standard Leftie thing and have it both ways with Castro and Cuba. Standing up against the evil US, and then she stole some of Mason's lines. OMG these people have no moral compass. To close the interview, he gave Thorberry an opportunity to bash the Tories on health care.
Thanks for reminding me about the labelling in Andrew Marr's introduction:
Delete"Reviewing the morning's news - including reaction to the death of Fidel Castro: the broadcaster and Guardian columnist Paul Mason, the Financial Times's Miranda Green and, from the Right, the Spectator editor Fraser Nelson."
That said, maybe AM stating that Fraser Nelson is "from the Right" - inadvertently? - drew attention to the fact that the other two chosen guests were from the Left.
DeleteIt certainly highlighted the fact that Marr didn't give health warnings for them at all.
DeleteAfter the above unpleasantness, I did enjoy Michael Gove effortlessly swatting away everything Marr threw at him. A quality performance: humble, informed, agile, on point, leaving Marr grasping at straws.
'Inadvertently' as in, after a long day at the office, rather than retire early to the warm bosom of the family home, one finds oneself outside a club warming the chilly tush of a subordinate?
Delete