Reality Check for Marianna

  

One more post on this year's Pick of the Year with Marianna Spring and Clive Myrie...

As I listed earlier, the first part of the programme rehearsed the usual subjects covered by the BBC's Disinformation Unit, with social media getting it in the neck over misinformation as usual.

However, here comes another preachy passage from later in the programme when they discussed the 24 November migrant tragedy in the English Channel when 27 people drowned.

They'd already played a clip of a Thought for the Day by Bishop Nick Baines where Bishop Nick had said, “The difference between the fallen Westerners in Afghanistan and the drowned Easterners at Calais is that we label the latter, question their choices and forget their identity”, and Clive had said “the feelings were summed up” by this TFTD, without outlining quite whose feelings were “summed up”. [I'm assuming he thought he and Marianna were speaking for everyone], when this was said:

Marianna Spring - It always strikes me whenever I see these stories in the news just how bad it must be for you to leave where you call home. Because why would you ever choose to. It's the place where everyone you love usually. It's the place you know. It's the place you so desperately want to stay. And in that terrible tragedy where so many people were killed off the coast of the UK a large number of them were from Afghanistan. And we've all seen what's happened there over the past 6 months, especially, and the Taliban takeover and what that means for lots and lots of the people who live there, who are fearing for their lives.

Marianna Spring describes herself as an “award-winning specialist reporter covering disinformation and social media” with BBC News and BBC Trending, but she was peddling a bit of disinformation of her own there. 

It's simply untrue that a “large number” of people killed in that terrible tragedy “were from Afghanistan”. Most were Kurds.

FACTCHECK - 16 Iraqi Kurds, 4 Afghans, 3 Ethiopians, 1 Iranian Kurd, 1 Somali, 1 Vietnamese, 1 Egyptian died on 24 November 2021 in the English Channel disaster.

Maybe she should fact-check herself?

In a nutshell

Rod Liddle certainly has a way with words. In his Sunday Times column today, for example, he describes Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' as "three minutes of anodyne, flopsy-bunny drivel filtered through the sphincter of a spineless liberal BBC apparatchik". And do you know what? He's right too.

Saturday Morning Light Breakfast

I

Fresh from having its ruling against Naga Munchetty squashed by the elegant shoe of Lord Hall, the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit has contented itself with upholding two complaints on the grounds of swearing. Mrs Whitehouse would have been delighted. 

Over the past week, two rulings have been released. The first concerned the use of the f-word during BBC One's D-Day 75: A Tribute to Heroes  in June, while the second concerned Nicky Campbell's mis-speaking of Jeremy Hunt's surname as 'C***' on Radio 5 Live in June. 

They have been fully upheld on the grounds that neither programme gave a prompt apology for the use of blue language. 

Tellingly, it's taken about three months for both complaints to crawl their way through the maze of the BBC's complaints process.

*******

II

Further to Sue's post about Lord Singh's aggrieved departure from Thought For The Day after (he claims) the BBC censored him on the grounds that some of his talks "might offend Muslims", The Right Rev Dr Gavin Ashenden, former chaplain to the Queen, has written a letter to The Times arguing that it's more than a storm in an eggcup:

It is more that the BBC has surrendered to a politically correct or progressive culture that pretends to want simply to avoid causing offence. But the actual effect is a wholesale redistribution of power and influence. This culture has no problem causing offence to Christians through an erosion of Christian culture and ethics; nor, it seems to Sikhs, if we take Lord Singh at his word. Instead it prefers the victim causes of identity politics and Islam. Lord Singh’s vital and principled intervention signals the increasing restriction of freedom of speech and thought that the privileges of our culture are predicated on.

Very true.

I see. incidentally, from the Times report that both James Purnell and Lord Hall got personally involved in batting away Lord Singh's concerns.

*******

III

Talking of the Times, the paper also reports that Newsnight's Kirsty Wark recently told a literary festival audience that she got where she is today thanks to positive discrimination by the BBC:

I joined the BBC as a graduate entry when they needed more women. I became a producer young because they needed more women in senior positions. Now I’m still on television because I’m older. I’m not quite sure it would have been the same if it were ten years earlier, but I’ve been quite privileged to have the longevity of this career.

The top-rated comment below the article rather rudely says, "Positive discrimination. That explains a lot, Kirstie [sic]."

Amazing disgrace

Last Sunday I started to write a post about something that had been mystifying me for some time. Of course, I didn’t finish writing it because, life.

Anyway, it turns out to have been spookily prescient. (Read your palm sir?)

The piece started off by expressing my disbelief and incredulity about how certain Labour MPs could sit there behind Jeremy Corbyn and not quit. About a dozen names came to mind, but the only one from my little list that turned out to be amongst the actual secret seven was Luciana Berger. I’d completely forgotten about Chuka Ummuna and I was barely conscious of the other six.

Surely these MPs have to do something, I thought,  even if only out of exasperation. How can they stay there? Hard, hard left; weak and woolly over Brexit. Another poll has found that everyone now realises that Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic. So the Great anti-racist is a Racist. (Not that many people seem particularly bothered.)

I wittered on, stream of consciousness-wise, about splits. There are no winners, I mused.  Both factions are weakened; the main body is damaged and the breakaways struggle. Those who ‘stay and fight’ claim their over-arching concern is deposing the Tories.

There’s Brexit, and there’s antisemitism. The thing is, where does Monday’s long-awaited declaration of independence (Lexit?) (Cexit?) leave Labour’s remaining anti-Corbyn MPs? Desperately struggling to justify their position - but how?

For your information, here’s the list of MPs I got wrong. (with one exception) John Mann, Ann Clwyd, Joan Ryan, Wes Streeting, Liz Kendall, Anna Turley, Kate Hoey, Lisa Nandy and even Tom Watson. That’s not even counting Louise Ellman, Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth, the recipients of much of the abuse. 

How can they stay?

Anyway, that was Sunday. This is Tuesday.

**********

D’you wanna know the countries that have the worst record for persecuting Christians? 

Nigeria; Iraq; Uzbekistan; Lebanon; Pakistan; Egypt; Uganda; Indonesia; Saudi Arabia; Iran and last but not least, the UK!!.

Not Israel!!  Sarah Montague, Jonny Diamond and anyone who’s gullible enough to listen to them, put that in your pipe and smirk it.

*******

I heard Tim Stanley’s Thought For the Day this morning. It was about Shamima Begum. People who run away to join I.S. are following a perverse distortion of Islam, he opined. Hmm. He may have big ears, but he’s not listening. 

The best sense I’ve heard spoken in a long, long time on the BBC came straight afterwards, from an ex Jihadi bride who has found sanctuary in the US. Her interview with Martha Kearney contained the most sensible Thoughts for Any Day I’ve ever heard. 

The line wasn’t good. It was blurred and echoey. When ‘listen again’ is available I’ll listen again.

Meanwhile, here’s the gist of her wise advice: Shamima Begum has been brainwashed but she is intelligent and will mature in time. The Islamist belief - or should that be Islamic - (actually extreme versions of Christianity share this) is that this life is but a mere preparation for the eternal life to follow. They regard human life as of little importance (for the many, not the few, as the leaders’ longevity will attest.)

In many traditionally Islamic countries, extreme religiosity was beginning to decline, only to have taken up a bizarre resurgence in…Britain. 

Amazing disgrace. Extreme religiosity…. once was lost but now is found. It’s the families; it’s the communities; it’s Islam, stupid.

Giles Fraser on Asia Bibi and 'some people'

This morning's Thought For The Day came from the Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser (yes, him). It was a bit of a curate's egg, but the main point he was making is an interesting one and I thought I'd share it with you via a transcript:

In the last presidential election 81% of white evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump and 16% for Hillary Clinton. And there's little reason to expect anything other than a similar level of support in today's mid-terms. 

Christians vote for President Trump. One of the consequences of this is that Christianity is rarely seen as something neutral in America's acrimonious culture wars an, so, a strong association has been established between Christianity and, to put it crudely, rich white American men - or, if that's not exactly right, between Christianity and historic privilege and power. 

And the problem with the closeness of this association. reinforced by the media attention given over to American politics, it not that it isn't partially correct, because it clearly is, but rather that it doesn't speak anything like the whole truth about global Christianity. For whilst in some places Christianity may indeed be the religion of privilege and power, it's also the world's most persecuted faith. 

Take the case of Asia Bibi, not a rich white American man but a former farm worker from the Punjab. In 2009 this Roman Catholic woman was arrested after an argument with co-workers who said that she was too dirty to drink from the same cup as them. The subsequent accusation against Bibi, which she denies, was she insulted the Prophet Muhammad. Bibi was charged with blasphemy and sentenced to death by hanging. Since 2010 she's been locked up, attacked by fellow prisoners and the object of an almost obsessive communal anger that demands her death. Last week the Supreme Court of Pakistan overturned her conviction, declaring her innocent and free to go. Except she still isn't free to go because she's been banned from leaving the country and her life remains in constant danger. 

Asia Bibi is just one example amongst many. From North Korea to China, from Iraq to Somalia, Christians the world over continue to be bombed and imprisoned, but it feels to me like this is not a cause that some people are instinctively comfortable getting behind, partly because of the historic association between Christianity and privilege. 

Moreover, when Christianity is positioned on one side of a partisan political struggle, it's too easy for those on the other side to think that the persecution of Christians just isn't one of their issues. 

For the story of a woman like Asia Bibi doesn't fit with the dominant narrative that Christianity is the religion of rich white men. And this could be why Bibi, and so many others like her, have been so shamefully ignored for far too long.

UPDATE 7/11: Thank goodness...

Top Billings

For many years listeners to Radio 4's Thought For The Day were treated to regular contributions from the Rev. Canon Dr. Alan Billings, a liberal Anglican priest. But a few years back he became the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire and had to leave the programme. It looks, however, as if he kept his old TFTD ways of thinking and applied them in his new role. And he's been front-and-centre today, on non-BBC broadcasters, defending the controversial South Yorkshire Police tweet shown above. He's not been doing very well though. Take this, for example:

South Yorkshire Police asked the public to report "non-crime hate incidents". Nick Ferrari's extraordinary interview with their Police Commissioner is 🔥🔥🔥. pic.twitter.com/M72FhwobkM

— LBC (@LBC) September 11, 2018

Or this:

Maybe it's time for him to hang up his sheriff's badge and mosey on back to the Today studio. After all, he can be as platitudinous as he likes there and it wouldn't matter.

Giles Fraser 'Forgets' to be Historically Accurate

This morning's Thought For The Day on Today was delivered by the Guardian-writing cleric Giles Fraser, as always seems to happen at New Year. 

Now, that's not just me imagining him to be ubiquitous on Thought For The Day at New Year. Giles himself tweeted yesterday that "I seem to do it every New Year."

Incidentally, he also tweeted that it's "highly possible that if I finish this bottle of red I will sleep through my alarm and there won’t be a Thought for the Day in the morning." Well, the red wine didn't make him sleep through his alarm and there was a Thought for the Day in the morning.

It has (understandably) proved somewhat controversial though.

Now, I have to say that I thought it was one of the best Thought For The Days I've listened to (which may not be saying much of course). I learned something new - about New Year's Day being the Feast Day of the Circumcision of Christ in the Christian calendar (and why) - and I think Giles's overall point was both interesting and correct, and his 'thought' well-written and worthwhile. 

The problem comes with Giles's moment of linguistic historical inaccuracy - the bit where he calls Jesus "a Palestinian Jew".

Giles is one of those Anglican clerics who clearly sides more with the Palestinians than with the Israelis and can stray into 'activist thinking' when the issue comes up. Whether he was doing so here or merely being ahistorical in using the term 'Palestinian' I can't say, but Jesus wasn't 'a Palestinian' and he wasn't correct in describing him in those anachronistic terms. Jesus was a Hebrew-and-Aramaic-speaking (perhaps with some Greek and/or Latin) Judean from Galilee in the Roman province of Judea. It was a century or so later than Emperor Hadrian changed the province's name from Judea to Syria-Palestina (after the brutal suppression of the Jews by earlier emperors - especially Titus - after a disastrous revolt).

The issue here, bias-wise, is that due to Thought For The Day's highly circumscribed pool of opinion (comfortable, tightly-bound religion, BBC-style) TFTD speakers whenever they allude to such matters tend to tread much the same path as Giles Fraser. (And, yes, that includes you Lucy Winkett).

Anyhow, here's Giles's Radio 4 sermon in full:

Good morning. 

I've just been reading this fascinating book called Forgetfulness by Francis O'Gorman. His thesis is that modern life is obsessed with the idea of the future to the detriment of the past. As if every day's a New Year's Day, we exist in a permanent state of looking ahead of ourselves towards what's next, towards continual innovation and progress. The modern workplace is full of management gassing on about 'going forward'. Out with the old, in with the new. 

Though a Christian himself O'Gorman believes that Christianity was originally responsible for this slide towards cultural amnesia - all that stuff about repentance and starting afresh, about being renewed through baptism and born again in the spirit. Here, O'Gorman, insists is the source of the desire to live permanently in the future, as if in a rolling process of ever-repeating New Year's resolutions.  

But here's the thing: In the Church's official calendar today's not celebrated as New Year's Day. That's a more secular festival. Today comes eight days after the birth of Jesus which, according to Jewish law, is the day on which male Jewish babies have their brit milah - their circumcision. So, in Church terms, today is the Feast Day of the Circumcision of Christ. 

And this often-neglected festival is connected with O'Gorman's important theme because one of the most historically-common forms of Christian forgetfulness has been around the whole subject of its relationship with Judaism; indeed Christianity commonly presents itself as a 'new testament' to Judaism's 'old testament', as if the Christian bit replaces the Jewish bit as a sort of an update. That's why the language of the Old and the New Testaments can be both patronising and misleading. Because, as Jesus's circumcision makes it perfectly clear, this so-called replacement theology has a massive problem: Jesus wasn't actually a Christian. He was a temple-worshipping, kosher-keeping, circumcised, First Century Palestinian Jew who loved the Book of Isaiah and called God 'Abba'. St Paul may have come to see circumcision as unnecessary for Gentile converts but he certainly didn't mean to distance new Christians from God's promises as laid out in the Hebrew Scriptures.  

The Feast Day of the Circumcision of Christ is, therefore, a day for recognising the rootedness of the Christian faith in its history in Judaism. It redirects our attention to where we've come from and reminds us fundamentally that Jews and Christians are cousins. 

So, in terms of the Christian calendar, the First of January is not all about putting the past behind us with airy and unconvincing promises about the new person we would like to become. 

I agree with O'Gorman. We should be far more suspicious of all this shiny rhetoric of 'the new'. Today's about looking back and acknowledging the things that have made us who we are, and therein lies the possibility of much more meaningful change.

Sneering

The Radio Times's feature-length interview with all of the present Today presenters hit the news because of what the presenters said about Thought For The Day.

John Humphrys said that he "usually" finds the feature "deeply, deeply boring" and wondered why Christians get the bulk of the invites (as they do).

Justin Webb said it annoys him because "they're all roughly the same" with the same nicey-nicey message, "If everyone was nicer to everyone else, it would be fine".

Nick Robinson agreed that there are not enough "profound" ones.

Only Mishal Husain defended the spot as "a bit of punctuation" in the "helter-skelter" of the programme .

And Sarah Montague expressed no view on the subject.

The Archbishop of Canterbury condemned John and Justin's "sneering". TFTD regular Giles Fraser also accused them of "sneering". Tim Stanley in the Telegraph also took it personally and complained that they are only "jealous".

I have to say that I agree with Justin Webb that the main problem with Thought For The Day is that it doesn't feature many 'red-in-tooth-and-claw' religious types and that the world view on offer is far too limited. They are (with rare exceptions) always the nicest, more liberal-minded representatives of their faiths.

I wouldn't wish to see it go though. It keeps parodists in business and provides a daily puzzle for the listener: 'How on earth is the speaker going to make the switch from talking about, say, Trump's tweets to talking about Jesus?'

Here are some of the latest tweets from TFTD Abridged, still performing the vital task of summarising individual TFTDs into 140 characters or less:

• How to deal with ISIS?  Killing them all won't work, so we'll have to try something else. 
• There's a new really fast car. People like things to be fast. Jesus did things slowly, so slow things are good.
• Nice things are better than scary things. Happy Diwali! 
• There's a lot of kids considering suicide. This is because of social media. Jewish mysticism has the answer: going home.
• That couple who staged a sex act in Lindos remind me of the time I went to Greece and people wore shorts and I took photos.
• Everything is just terrible in Las Vegas right now. Also, Jesus.
• Sleep is important. The Bible says so. People regularly sleep through morning prayers. 
• I had a heart attack.  Also, God. 
• American football players kneeling during the National Anthem is totally like Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.
• Donald Trump's speech reminded me of Manicheism because he said some people are good and some are bad. That's bad.
• The high rate of traffic accidents in Kenya reminds me of Rosh Hashanah. 
• The foster parents of the people accused of the Parsons Green attack are probably upset. This reminds me of the Prodigal Son.
• A joke on the News Quiz has lead me to conclude...nothing much really. But the Bible's pretty good, isn't it?

If only everything was black-and-white

I was listening to Today this morning and, after marvelling at the absolutely masterly way that the Rev. Woy Jenkins pivoted his TFTD talk from being about Chelsea Manning to being about God, heard Justin Webb talking to two former Tory advisors, Danny Kruger and Philip Blond, about Mrs May's brand of Toryism. 

It was pleasant - if you like that kind of thing. 

And, of course, some do, and some most definitely don't. 

The social media reaction to this Tory/Tory discussion consisted of masses of lefties moaning about it being "BBC propaganda" or "a Tory lovefest" or "a studio-wide Tory Party love-in" or "a political broadcast on behalf of Theresa May", etc, etc, whilst righties (in far smaller numbers) have tended to voice their pleasantly-surprised approval, with one regular BBC critic on another blog describing it as "remarkable" and "fascinating" and "reasonably moderated by Justin Webb".

Such responses do make me worry about my own confirmation bias. Do I sometimes react like that too? 

The Corbynistas were also furious at Today for featuring Labour's John Woodcock, the Trident-supporting, Jeremy Corbyn-disliking MP for Barrow-in-Furness (who I could wave to across Morecambe Bay). Mr Woodcock said Labour wouldn't win. 'BBC bias!', they cried.

Well, I'm going to cry 'BBC bias!' at Mishal Husain for her handling of the closing political discussion between a right-winger, a left-winger and a cross-bench peer. That guest selection might sound balanced but, as most of the discussion focused on Brexit and immigration, and two of the guests were Remainers and strongly pro-mass immigration while only one was a Leaver and in favour of controlled immigration, it should have been Mishal's job to either even up the numbers (devil's advocate-wise) or to stay completely out of it. Instead, she kept interrupting and questioning the one pro-Brexit, right-wing controlled immigration supporter from the stance of his two 'opponents'. It made Mishal sound like a Remain partisan and a pro-mass immigration hack rather than an impartial BBC broadcaster. 

Still, if there's one person 'people hereabouts' wouldn't expect to be given a lengthy, unhostile interview on the problems posed by mass Muslim immigration into Europe, it's Ayaan Hirsi Ali - and yet there she was this morning on Today. And a very interesting interview it was too, conducted "reasonably" by Justin Webb.

Thought For The Day

You go for weeks without rain, then it never stops raining. It's a bit like that with posts here sometimes.

Perhaps as a result of this I always pay particular attention to the encounters of Jesus with rain in the Bible....

It's Almost Easter

Following Craig’s Bank Holiday Fun, I hope I’m not putting too much of a damper on Mark Steel’s amusing take on TFTD with another “It’s almost Easter” TFTD. (18-4-17) 

John Bell of the Iona Community frequently contributes to TFTD, unintentionally invoking Ivor Cutler.

However, the BBC’s attachment to John Bell is not much of a laughing matter.

Is Iona Community Sabotaging Itself by Embracing Kairos?  by Denis MacEoin 

“There is a role for idealists in limited situations. But problems arise when such do-gooders do not properly understand what lies behind mutual hatred, enduring antagonism between people, and conflicts in the name of one cause or another. And here, the Iona Community falls down spectacularly.” 

[...]“……the community has wittingly or unwittingly stumbled into the grasp of one of the most controversial anti-Israel and anti-Semitic alliances any Christian group could choose to enter.” 

Bank Holiday Fun

There's been quite bit of Mark Steel on Radio 4 over the last two days. Well, two programmes. 

His Pick of the Week made a pleasant change from some recent episodes (from the likes of Liz Barclay and Sheila McClennon) which had made Radio 4 sound like one long, dreary dirge, or like an endless stream of earnest, socially-aware Guardian articles. At least Mark made the BBC's output sound varied, and his affectionately mocking tone made me chuckle. 

Here he is, for instance, giving an example of why he so enjoys Thought for the Day (and who doesn't?):

Hello I'm Mark steel and this is Pick of the Week. Now, as ever when I'm asked to make selections for Pick of the Week I'm impressed by Thought for the Day because about one minute in there's a game you can play, guessing how they're going to jump from talking about that day's news to religion. So this week there'll be one that goes, "Once again at this time of year many children are enduring the somewhat stressful experience of completing their GCSEs and A levels, or hoping for results that will propel them through the challenges of life ahead. And, as they head off with their sharpened pencils, are they on exactly the same journey as Jesus made when he went into the wilderness? For that was a test. Indeed it was God's way of saying to his only son, 'You may turn over your papers and begin now'. Good morning". Now Wednesday's episode was from the Reverend Joel Edwards, and it didn't disappoint:

I was fascinated to read about a young marketing graduate who set up an online English language and cultural course which has gained more than 12 million viewers. ‘English with Lucy’ offers such videos as: “Easily Speak Like a Native!”, “How to Swear In English” and “How To Annoy British Girls In 3 Simple Steps.” Not a verb conjugation in sight. The channel’s popularity points to a form of learning which is shaped by questions from followers from all around the world. It offers a particular kind of authenticity, imparting knowledge which is highly-tailored to consumer demand and firmly sets itself against more traditional courses.

I was thinking, "Ah, language! This is easy. He's heading to the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis. This is a simple one". But then...

And as we have entered a new global village of egalitarian truth-telling, which transfers the onus onto individuals to shop around for their ideal of authority and authenticity. Yesterday on this programme, the Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales unveiled plans for a new Wikitribune. Backed up by a team of paid journalists, the site will aim to combat fake news by offering ‘factual and neutral’ news. As a Christian, I’m thrown back to reconsider the question Pilate put to Jesus: What is Truth? 

Oh marvellous!! He threw you one way and then came the other way - from fake news to Pontius Pilate in half a sentence! I hope he's on again! 

And as it's May Day (probably his favourite day of the year, when, for a change, he goes on a yet another protest march), here's another bit of Our Mark from this morning's Mark Steel's in Town. He was in St. Anne, Alderney, and on fine form:

You don't make it easy to get here, do you? I thought, "There's bound to be couple of ferries a day from Guernsey", but there's two a week, carefully co-ordinated because the Alderney ferry leaves just before the other one arrives - with anything up to a four-day wait. And what I really like is I think you do that on purpose!  

But the main way of getting here is from Guernsey on a Trislander plane, and if you're not used to it it's not the sturdiest of jumbo jets.  One of the Trislanders is bright yellow and you call it 'Joey', and it's got a smiley face with a red nose painted on it - which is fun, but shouldn't you take designing aeroplanes a bit more seriously?  

The Trislanders have 16 seats, one of which is next to the pilot, and a bloke from the airport calls each person's name individually to get on the plane.  I though, "Oh no, there's been a mistake. I've joined the RAF!".  

And then this bloke holds the door open so you could squeeze in, and within seconds you forget any fear that you had that this thing is too small as that's replaced by the fear that it's too old.  

And three people have told me, "Did you get the one called 'G-BDTO'? That's fun. It's got a leaky roof".  A leaky roof! A plane! 

On my flight there was a bloke hanging onto the door handle, and when we arrived I said, "Were you a bit nervous, mate?", and he went, "Oh no, I know this plane and the handle comes loose if you don't hold on". 

I'm not joking, it was terrifying!

I bet there are Red Arrows pilots who go, "Sod that, I'm not going on a Trislander!" At least when smoke comes out of their planes it's on purpose for a display.  

I think this is how you encourage people to live here, isn't it? You make it really hard to get here but once they're here they're terrified of ever getting the plane back.  

I think you like the old planes with the face because you're like an island of big kids in Alderney. They suit you. 

That's why I love the airport here - the way you pretend that it's like a big airport. Because when you land here the baggage man opens the boot of the plane and he gets out your bag, stood right next to you, but instead of just handing you pick up your bag he takes you to the little rolling rack thing and he puts it on there, but it's broken, so you just pick it up and take in straight back again.

False analogies and stupid comparisons

A bit late with this, sorry. Let’s take a quick look at Sean Spicer’s infamous blunder. He said something like “even Hitler didn’t sink to using chemical weapons” . Well, who hasn’t stopped themselves just before saying something stupid? 

Out it came. Too late. Instead of retracting it immediately he dug himself deeper into the pit by adding “against his own people.”  

At first the media decided to focus on the lowest-hanging howler: “Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons”.  Somehow or other, clutching wildly for a superlative to convey the extent of the Syrian leader’s malevolence Hitler’s extermination of six million Jews, mostly by gas, had slipped Sean Spicer’s mind. 

He was only trying to articulate his disdain for Assad, or “Ashad” as he blurted out in a desperate lurch from brain to voice. After all, it was nothing but an impromptu attempt to find a colourful comparison that would best communicate the extent of the Syrian leader’s malevolence. 

Do bear in mind the difficulties the poor chap has with expressing himself. And he’s got to live this down.

‘Against his own people’ carries the implication that Germany’s Jews were not considered Germany’s ‘own’, which, in itself, is an unforced racist slur. Perhaps the media weren’t too sure about that themselves.

Every rationalisation made matters worse, an all too familiar behaviour pattern. The curse of inappropriately invoking Hitler. At least Sean Spicer apologised. Unlike the other practitioner of Godwin’s law, Sean Spicer did it by mistake. 

Of course there was the panicky reference to the “Holocaust centres”, perhaps momentarily confusing them with tourist attractions with cafes and souvenirs. Well, he was flustered. Make allowances. Just as he blurted out “Ashad” instead of Assad, he temporarily forgot the phrase ‘concentration camps’. Brain fade. It could happen to anyone. 

It does seem quite unusual to hire a press secretary whose whose mental agility deserts them when faced with the press.  At first it seems like the opposite of logic. But then, people with speech impediments frequently speak on the radio, people with ‘radio faces’ are always on T.V. and reporters accidentally misreport stories or leave out whole chunks of them. There must be some hidden benefit to it. 

*************

I heard someone called Martin Wroe on Thought for the Day  comparing Saffiyah Khan with Tank Man. I did that myself recently, but I was being sarcastic and he wasn’t.  Yes, she’s the cute Muslim girl whose ‘smiling stand-off’ picture ‘went viral’ .The snapshot was meaningless and misleading therefore the analogy was false. She is no Tank Man.

Let’s look at the image. The girl, much taller than the ‘EDL thug’ is smiling down at him, and he is ‘facing up’ to her with an aggressive look. 

That’s all it is. A snapshot; a meaningful moment, encapsulating smile-power - all you need is love. 

But she’s not in any danger. There is no tank. The police are there to escort her off safe and sound, smiling insouciantly all the while. It is alleged that she did not go there to pay her respects to the victims of terrorism. Martin Wroe got that wrong. The reality is quite different. The girl is a Muslim, yes, but a ‘punk’ version. No hijab, just piercings and a denim jacket. A ‘moderate’ perhaps? Someone who embraces tolerance and goodwill?  Or not. She’s part of the “Free Palestine” movement. A student, maybe and a provocateur. Next day she’s interviewed on the Victoria Derbyshire programme to represent ‘smiling and love’.

 However, she’s wearing her Free Gaza / Free Palestine  T-shirt. Did the BBC know she’d be wearing propaganda?

What does “Free Palestine” even mean?  Free, as in ‘free from?’ Free from Israel? Free from Jews?

Does it mean “Our aim is a ‘Palestine’, (a region, not a state) free from Jews ‘from the river to the sea?” Is that it?

Free Gaza? Gaza is already ‘free from’ Jews. Perhaps ‘Free Gaza’ means ‘Release Gazans’. Let them do as Hamas (and Fatah) would wish. Overrun Israel; drive the Jews out and create a totally Muslim Middle East. A caliphate. “An ideal world”

Sorry, but Saffiyah Khan is not a symbol of love, and her smile does not say to me ‘Love Trumps Hate’. The exact opposite.

Anyone with a shred of empathy...

Totally like Hillary

TFTD Abridged, about which I've enthused before, continues his sterling work of condensing every edition of Radio 4's Thought For The Day into less than 140 characters. 

His tweet on Today's edition, featuring the go-ahead Bishop of Leeds, The Right Reverend Nick Baines, runs as follows:

That's a surprisingly spot-on summary. 

That said, it did make me pause for thought (BBC-related pun intended). The Rt Rev Nick started wondering about what was going on in Hillary's mind after losing the election. He noted that she'd "spoken about wanting to curl up with a good book and not go out of the house" after losing. "Anyone with a shred of empathy, whatever their politics, must be able to comprehend this", he said. 

Now, I will confess that when I heard that Hillary had said that my first thought was, "Jesus wept! Well, if that's how she reacts to losing, how would she have reacted as president in a major international crisis? Would she have curled up with a good book and not gone out of the (White) house then?"

I must be somewhat lacking in empathy, obviously. 

Anyhow, Bishop Nick was there to confront me with my humanity and tell me that Hillary is, indeed, totally like St Paul...and to encourage us all "to snatch hope from the jaws of defeat".

Forgiveness; DIY

BBC Watch has blogged ‘walls’. We blogged them the other day as well. 

The matter of fact way the BBC describes walls constructed by various countries to separate their citizens from undesirables or illegal migrants differs in tone from the suspicious manner they adopt when referring to the security barrier, often called the apartheid wall. They imply that Israel’s ‘excuse’ is disingenuous; not really for protecting Israelis from intruders with malicious intent, they imply, but for land-grabbing. 

I’m only mentioning this again because yesterday the rev. Lucy Winkett delivered a ‘forgiveness‘ themed sermon on Thought for the Day.  She has a thing about walls.

I was wondering if I could truly forgive her for teaming up with the smarmy Stephen Sizer whose six month ban on anti-Israel internet activity must have expired by now.  

Could I forgive Stephen Sizer for being a manipulating sanctimonious antisemite? I suppose that would be the Christian thing to do, taking the lead from Vincent Uzomah who forgave his assailant because he’d very likely been brought up with violence and that was all he knew. Lucy was full of admiration for Uzomah’s Christian attitude.

I could say, Stephen Sizer, you’ve been brought up with antisemitism, and that’s all you know, so I forgive you. But how do I know how he was brought up? Perhaps he was educated by the BBC, in which case one might be minded to forgive all the antisemitism that has arisen from the BBC’s legacy of one-half-of-the-story reporting. Forgive them for they know not what they do.

I hadn’t realised Sizer was the inspiration behind Bethlehem Unwrapped. I thought it was Lucy’s project, devised in conjunction with that other chap whose name escapes me.  I was wondering if a nice girl like Lucy would have been so hopelessly open to persuasion, since she was described in, dare I say ‘excessively’ glowing terms in this radio 4 profile, which was, admittedly, constructed before the offending ‘Wall” stunt.

At the end of her sermon she said something like “in order to forgive, one must be able to forgive oneself” So Lucy, have you forgiven yourself for your politically inept, misguided collaboration with the antisemitic Palestinian lobby?  

Thought for the Day

Christine Morgan, head of religion for BBC radio, was on today's Feedback to talk about Thought for the Day. This was how her brief discussion with Uncle Roger went:

Roger Bolton: Christine, I've often talked to you on this programme...so often defending it...let me ask, basically: Any plans to change it? 

Christine Morgan: Not as far as I'm aware, Roger. No. 

Roger Bolton: No? No requests from the Today programme to drop it?  

Christine Morgan: No. 

Roger Bolton: And any possibility of non-believers and atheists presenting Thought for the Day? 

Christine Morgan: Well, I have to start in a different place because what is important about understanding Thought for the Day is that it is in the middle of the Today programme, so obviously I understand the profile of it. But it is a topical reflection through the prism of faith. You know, 'Sport' deals with sport, and 'Business' deals with business and it's no unreasonable to stick to the purpose of the slot. It is a religious reflection. And I think in the three hours of the Today programme that two minutes 45 is actually offering the listeners a really valuable take on what's going on in the world from a different perspective. And it is distinctive. I was really encouraged when the Green Paper was published actually and the national conversation started about the purpose of the BBC and this word "distinctive" came up and I have been using "distinctive" in connection with Thought for the Day for as long as I've been coming on your programme. Roger... 

Roger Bolton (interrupting): Well, and we'll try and use it for Feedback as well. Everybody will be clinging onto that particular life raft (laughing), won't we, in the future?

Christine Morgan: It was music to my ears! I think people like Giles Fraser, who a couple of weeks ago talked about the different theological traditions of Germany and Greece in the middle of all that plethora of coverage of the Greek debt crisis, and we had loads of people writing to say it was so interesting to hear such a different take on it.

Now, it would be easy to make a nit-picking Bertrand Russell-type debating point that, yes, 'Sport'=sport and 'Business'=business but Thought for the Day doesn't necessarily mean A Religious Thought for the Day, but it's pretty clear what she means and it's not an unreasonable point.

And TFTD certainly is "distinctive". It wouldn't arouse so many parody sites (blogs and Twitter feeds) if it wasn't so "distinctive". The platitudes, the forced analogues, the tacked-on topicality, the blandly left-leaning political points (with the occasional hard-left rant from Giles or Iona's John Bell chucked in for good measure), the overwhelmingly liberal religious beliefs (from whatever faith community), the inevitable shoe-horning-in of God towards the end....these all make it "distinctive". 

That little list of mine, however, points to its main flaw. It embodies the spirit of what might be called 'BBC religion' - safe and generally liberal (in the modern sense of 'progressive', 'socially liberal' and 'left-leaning' rather than in the classical sense of the word). 

And as the feature is meant to be topical and often refers to major political issues of the day (including terrorism, mass immigration and the economy), having people who overwhelmingly all sing from the same, cosy BBC consensus on such highly contentious issues (i.e. mass immigration is good, Islamic terrorism is in no way connected with Islam, global capitalism is a problem) results in a seriously unbalanced hub of bias right at the heart of the Today programme.

Well, that's my biased take on it anyway.

*****

P.S If you were wondering, the Giles Fraser talk Christine Morgan was praising there can be summarised as follows: "The Greek debt crisis can be explained by Greeks and Germans belonging to differing versions of Christianity."

P.P.S. Did you notice Roger Bolton slipping in a little bit of 'Woe is the BBC!' shroud-waving there?

More followed at the end of the programme as Roger gave another of his loaded commentaries, making pretty clear his own belief that the BBC was forced into the deal with the government, and repeatedly stressing the cuts, the cuts, the cuts. Two listeners were quoted - one defending the BBC against the government, the other attacking the BBC for being a Tory tool. Roger mentioned in passing (about four seconds!) that some wanted the BBC to be given a good going-over but we didn't hear from any of them here.

It's the last Feedback on the run so Roger's shroud-waving is now on hold for a couple of months. He'll be back though, shroud in hand.

Don’t pull your punches

These days people like to believe they’re speaking out courageously. They’re telling truths that others dare not tell, saying the unsayable and boldly articulating what no man has articulated before.

Anyway that’s what Bishop Tom Butler seemed to be trying to do on Today’s Thought for the Day. He had an anecdote for us about preventing extremism, which contained a knowing message, which I took to be:  All religions have nasty, violent and vengeful bits, and before true openness and interfaith understanding can be achieved these unpalatable passages need to be brought out into the open, and preferably rejected or at least adapted to fit civilised society. And Bob’s your uncle. Extremism tackled.

However, the anecdote he proceeded to deliver did not cite or specify the nasty, vengeful, racist bits in the Quran. You know, those parts which  inspire the particular ‘extremism’  that’s causing all the current difficulties.

No. Bishop Butler must have thought we weren’t ready to hear any of that; perhaps he wasn’t quite ready to say it.  Instead he used an analogy. Don’t bother to rack your brains any further, his tale concerned a Jewish rabbi.

  

At some interfaith gathering or other, the particular party game they were playing required all the multi-faith religious leaders to read out an uplifting verse from their own particular sacred scriptures.  But the rabbi was ill, so he had kindly sent his chosen verses (from psalm137) to be read out.

“You devastator! Happy shall they be who pay them back for what you have done to us. Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock” 

“There was a stunned silence. Later I met the rabbi and asked him why ever did you choose that lamentable psalm?” 

continued Bishop Butler, getting into his stride, and recounting the rabbi's reply as follows: 

“All our scriptures have difficult and even scandalous passages, and we won’t make real progress in interfaith relationships until we have the courage to discuss those with one another”

The Bishop followed this with what he undoubtedly intended as his TFTD message, although one might speculate that several unintended messages had already been delivered.

“As a Christian it made me think of the leader of the Jonestown community who, before they committed mass suicide, was fond of quoting to the Christian followers of his extremist sect the words from St. Luke’s gospel. “Whoever does not hate father and mother wife and children, brothers and sisters cannot be my disciple.”
It’s commonly said that people committing atrocities are not real members of the faith they’re dying for or killing for, but that’s certainly not their own understanding. They’re feeding on certain verses on their sacred scriptures or events in their faith history, which encourage them to act in extreme or even violent ways. Well the truth is that any world faith doesn’t have a single colour to its understanding of God and the world. It’s a spectrum of colours.”

Get it? Jews and Christians are potentially violent extremists too. We’ve all got an inner suicide bomber, and it’s still in there somewhere, just waiting to be ignited.

“That’s why it’s difficult to put our finger on real Christianity or real Islam or real Judy-ism, or even real Britishness”

It amuses me when people say ‘Judy-ism’. Punch and Judy are indeed a violent couple. Islam is Punchism, then. Islam is Mr. Punch to the Jews’ Judy. That’s the way to do it.

I see what Bishop Butler is doing here. He wants us to believe that Christians and Jews are inherently as hate-filled and vengeful as (so-called) Islamic State. There but for the grace of progress and civilisation, go we all.

But Bishop, Muslims are not the new Jews. Let’s call a spade a spade. No more moral equivalence. If you must besmirch Jews by bandying about colourful passages from the Hebrew Bible, or if you want to distance yourself from the bad bits in your own sacred verses by citing examples from extreme Christian sects, then go ahead. Be open, why don’t you. 

Most of all, if you want to be seen as a plain speaker don’t beat about the bush.  If you want to say that it’s high time Muslims brought their religion into the 21st century, just say so. 

New Life of Brian

Fans and non-fans of Radio 4's Thought for the Day will have recognised a true master at work this morning in the ever-reliable Brian Draper, for whom everything turns out to be totally like Jesus (unless he disapproves of it - in which case it's not at all like Jesus).

Beginning with Oliver Sacks and his moving New York Times article about dying, written in the light of his terminal cancer, Brian recalled the film 'Awakenings'. This was based on an earlier memoir of Mr Sacks, and described how people were brought out of their catatonic state through a drug, thus (temporarily) offering them 'a new life'. 

That, inevitably, reminded Brian of Jesus, and the power of Jesus to 'awaken' people who are in a spiritual state of catatonia (agnostics and atheists).

Someone on Twitter described this as having "definitely won the prize for most blatant shoehorning of the year so far". (It's early days though.)

Oliver Sacks has previously described himself as "an old Jewish atheist", so I rather doubt that he would draw the same conclusions that Brian Draper drew.

Keep calm and carry on

Laura Janner-Klausner

Rabbi Laura did a Thought For the Day this morning. She reiterated David Cesarani’s point, which was that we mustn’t waver in the face of terrorism.

We mustn’t exaggerate these fears, or make too much of the rise in antisemitism, but we must stand firm and not moderate our behaviour. That’s all well and good. Noble and principled. 

The Paris and Copenhagen terrorists did not only attack Jews. They have a long list of enemies, including journalists, cartoonists, filmmakers and members of other religions, including Muslims and Christians and pretty much anyone or any event that represents difference.

However Janner-Klausner and Cesarani have both taken it upon themselves to align themselves (on behalf of British Jews ) with Charlie Hebdo and all advocates of free speech. United we stand. But since the MSM media has chickened out of unanimously publishing the infamous cartoons, and since our government’s way of standing by the Jewish community amounts to a few guards outside a few synagogues and a bit more barbed wire round some Jewish schools, one has to ask how reassuring this all actually is?

If too many Jewish spokespersons focus primarily on one (anti-freedom of speech) motivating force behind the current spate of terror attacks and downplay the fiercely antisemitic incentive that drives Jihad, then it’s a bit too head-in-the sand for my liking.

Why do we have to have this pointlessly divisive rift?  What harm would it do the BBC’s pet Jews to face the facts? Are they afraid of alienating the left? They probably mean well, but although their attitude might help burnish the ‘Jews’’ tarnished (by the BBC) public image in the short term, I’m not so sure it will be helpful in the long term.

Oy vey.

Totally like 'TFTD'

The one downside with scrapping 'Thought for the Day' would be that the Twitter feed TFTDAbridged would also have to stop. 

Its mission statement reads:

Every day the BBC's flagship news programme Today is interrupted by a couple of minutes of religious moralising. I can get it down to 140 characters or less.

Here's a recent sample:

28/01/2015 - Rev Dr Giles Fraser

Greece's debts should be written off. Jesus says so.

26/01/2015 - Rev Dr Jane Leach

I went for a walk but felt bad about it because I didn't connect with the community. Walks are only good with other people. 

21/01/2015 - John Bell

I met some poor people.

17/01/2015 - Rev Roy Jenkins

The two men who climbed El Capitan and some men detained at Guantanamo Bay are totally like Jesus.

15/01/2015 - Rt Rev Graham James

The British Museum has foreign stuff. I used to be scared of Germans. St Francis of Assisi went to Egypt and met Muslims.

27/12/2014 - Rev Lucy Winkett

I really like live singing. Also, Jesus. And Brian Blessed.

15/12/2014 Rev Professor David Wilkinson

Sports Personality of the Year and the X-Factor winner have been announced. It's important to include people. Also, Jesus. 

Much better than the real thing!