“………..most, if not all, of the critique here tends to leave the impression of a pro-Brexit, pro-Trump, anti-left, anti-liberal crowd.”
and
“I'm starting to wonder what the point is though? There are already countless sites and forums with viewpoints like the ones espoused on here”
Funny you should say that AnonAnon, because only the other day Craig and I were just saying the exact same thing. We both agreed that dissenting comments liven up a blog, especially one that’s that’s teetering on echo-chamber territory. We’re on red alert, at high risk of radicalising ourselves and anyone who passes by. So we’re grateful for the input.
Why, only the other day me and Craig were nostalgically reminiscing about one particular online adversary from the olden (Biased-BBC) days of whom neither hide nor hair has been heard since 2010. (Where are you now?) His provocative disputatiousness kept us on our toes. Citing specific examples of our ridiculousness - some valid, some not - was good for us and made us more scrupulous and self-critical.
He even started up a dedicated tribute blog. What larks!
The penultimate comment-of-all-time was particularly perceptive:
“Anonymous” 24 April 2011 at 20:28 said:
“Stumbled on this by accident.What the fuck is this shite about.No wonder this blog is dead. Was the “writer” committed to an asylum?
We’ll never know if he was or if he wasn’t. Probably wasn’t.
Seriously, Craig and I had virtually this identical conversation about two days ago. “All the ‘action’ is on social media now. Blogs are so last season” we said, and so on. In fact the contents of your comment were so familiar to me (and Craig agrees) that I immediately thought it was somehow a “false flag” affair.
I wouldn’t put it past Craig. Or, I’m getting quite forgetful myself - it might have me, and I’d clean forgotten having done it.
Anyway Craig and I kind of left it in the air. What’s the point, we asked ourselves.
There is an inherent problem with focusing on BBC bias, which is of course that as soon as one complains about the BBC’s unfair treatment of: Brexit, Trump, Nigel Farage, Israel etcetera, it forces one into a position that isn’t necessarily the position one would ideally wish to be in. Namely being seen as, or coming across as uncritical aficionados of the above-mentioned, when of course one needn’t really be that at all.
I’ll give two examples. Israel and Trump.
Israel:
My last piece rather generously compared the BBC’s stock-in-trade web-report of Banksy’s crass political stunt (“Walled-Off Hotel”) with Channel Four’s sycophantic effort on the same topic, fronted by an embarrassingly fawning Krishnan Guru-Murthy. Least Worst, I called it.
Lo and behold, a link through our ‘traffic sources’ on the dashboard led to a left-wing forum which referred to ITBB as a “Zionistic” blog. The commenter appeared to regard my muted critique of the BBC as evidence that the BBC was in thrall to the Zionist lobby. See ? Not for a minute did they think this might be an example of balance and fairness but they leapt straight to their own foregone conclusion - Jewish tentacles is wot done it.
This is an example of where being ‘fair’ amounts to arming one’s enemy, which promptly and predictably comes straight back to bite one on the bum. I’m perfectly well aware of Israel’s imperfections, but the BBC’s gross misrepresentation of both Israel and her foes is what I believe needs to be countered.
So, let’s say that if we allow ourselves to appear less than wholehearted, the enemy will pounce. This principle applies across the board.
Let’s consider Donald Trump.
What an absolute shame that the only time the leader of the free world appears to be ‘on the right side’ it has to be in the form of a man “who has no words.”
That was how Howard Jacobson described Donald Trump while chatting to James Naughtie on “Meet the Author” on the BBC News channel. This was an extended and/or slightly different version of the radio programme Craig transcribed.
In the interview about his collection of articles from the Independent, Jacobson also spoke about a forthcoming novella inspired by Trump; a fairy tale about the leader of the free world - a man with “no words”.
No-one in their right mind could argue with the general consensus that Donald Trump is vulgar, narcissistic, devoid of taste and super-inarticulate.
However the trouble with Trump isn’t just the absence of words or the lack of vocabulary, but the inability to express his ideas and aspirations articulately or eloquently. He can barely make himself understood, and one has to hope that one’s interpretation of his ideas and aspirations is valid, and not just one’s projection upon a suitably blank canvas and a wishful interpretation of what one would like them to be. (rather like Hope and Change)
To camouflage this debilitating wordlessness, Trump plugs the deficit with hand gestures and ‘meaningful’ reiterations, ultimately arriving at a persuasive kind of fluency. It almost works.
Let’s not forget Obama’s ‘meaningful’ pauses, which were routinely given the benefit of the doubt when he too might have been plain stuck or lost for words. Repetition is a commonly used cover-up; think Jeremy Corbyn.
Anyway, if you’re one of the millions who think it’s time that politicians and the media abandoned their dance macabre of choreographed evasiveness and euphemism which simultaneously bored and frightened us to death. If you wanted politicians to break free from empty political posturing you’d have no choice but to weigh your misgivings about Donald Trump against the current ‘hell in a handcart’ scenario, and take a deep breath and plump for Trump, a big gamble, but the least worst.
Those who desire certainty and familiarity whenever we leave our front door have little choice but to pin our hopes on a wretched man with no words, even though the man’s fundamental aspirations are irredeemably tainted by his flawed personality.
Over at Biased BBC, Alan quotes Peter Hitchens, circa 2013. (If I had done such a thing back in the day, I’d have been greeted with a flurry of “This has to do with BBC bias precisely what?) Nevertheless, much of what Hitchens wrote back then is still relevant, apart from the bit about Enoch Powell, whose infamous “Rivers of Blood’ speech proved astonishingly prescient, with time.
And just to be clear which are the similar blogs you allude to? Are they any good?
Oh yes, so what’s the point of this blog? At the very least it could be a therapeutic spleen-vent for the authors, and at best it could be ………..
