True to form, BBC One's News at Six tonight marked Barack Obama's farewell speech with some purple prose from Nick Bryant:
- He's one of the most gifted speakers ever to occupy the White House - the poet laureate of his own presidency.
- Seldom has there been such a photogenic presidency. It had the look of a black Camelot. And the thank you to his wife Michelle left him struggling to contain his emotions, the Great Wordsmith rendered speechless, expressing himself with tears.
- It was presidency that began with the mountain top experience of becoming the first black man to live in a white house built by slaves, but it ended in the valley with the knowledge that Donald Trump will try to dismantle his signature achievements and try to demolish his legacy.
- Barack Obama is a leader who will have the word 'Era' attached to his name, but some will see it as a great failing of his presidency that the name 'Trump' now looms so large.
That "great failing" was the only failing suggested in this gushing 'good bye' from the outgoing president's adoring BBC.
I think I heard some of this on radio 4 at about 18:30 whilst driving - I just don't get the love in objectively, he doesn't seem to have that much of a legacy to shout about.
ReplyDeleteExactly!
DeleteIs he... really a...great... orator, or ...does he...just scatter... (not very) pregnant...pauses, like confetti at a Register Office wedding?
Sisyphus...yes I find those what I call "false cogitation" pauses so annoying...he really overuses them to the extent you can almost feel the audience wanting to shout out the answer.
DeleteI think Reagan started it (and sadly it was probably genuine in his case because of the Alzheimers). Prior to that they just got on with it and Kennedy was a famously rapid fire speaker. Bill Clinton continued the pause thing...combining it with the "point of tears" croak in the throat. George W Bush needed it owing to slowness of thought I would say.
At least with Trump's pauses you have the pleasure of thinking "WTF is he going to say now!"
Thanks for the 'false cogitation pauses' - absolutely
Deletespot-on! The crocodile tears business is annoying too - how do these hams do it, smear their fingers with concentrated onion extract?
Barack Obama is a leader who will have the word 'Era' attached to his name.
ReplyDeleteYeah, like 'the Stalin Era', right, BBC? It's always a good sign when you have your own Era now. He's just gushing without thinking about his words.
This is actually a bit damning for Bryant and the BBC, if Obama's main accomplishment is being black. Racialists do insist on judging people by the color of their skin first. But I have to say it's refreshing to hear a Beeboid admit that The Obamessiah is to blame for dividing the country so much that Donald Trump had a shot.
I think any President who gets to do two terms gets honoured with an era - the Bush era is definitely something I've heard! Eisenhower era...Truman era? I think he just squeezed in. Roosevelt covers such a span it's more "New Deal" and "WW1"
ReplyDeleteWill the BBC be sending anybody wearing a Trump hat, do you think? Like yer woman Anand.
ReplyDeleteApparently, The Obamessiah is such a gifted speaker that his speech was nearly ten minutes longer than the farewells of Bush, Clinton, and Reagan combined.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obamas-farewell-address-longer-than-reagans-clintons-and-george-w.-bushs-combined/article/2611472
With the BBC basking in the warm glow of every word.
The Beeboids will be in a very dark place indeed if this weird Russian scandal doesn't make Trump step down.
A windbag then.
DeleteNot. Enough. Tissues.
ReplyDeleteBBC "journalists" are the Basil Fawlteys of the news. "You never get it right, do you? You're either crawling all over them, licking their boots, or spitting poison at them like some benzedrine puff adder. "
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0578593/quotes