Dishing Mishal

Mishal Husain no less

Sunday mornings just wouldn't be right without a bit of Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. Here he is having a pop at Hillary...and Mishal Husain:

Let’s pillory Hillary

BBC Radio 4’s Today has been running a series about brilliant women who were unjustly eclipsed by their stupid male partners. On Thursday it was the Clintons, with the humourless Mishal Husain lamenting Bill’s fame and Hillary’s relative anonymity. Isn’t that because Bill served two terms as president while Hillary’s greatest achievement was in persuading half of America to vote for a certifiable lunatic in preference to her? And isn’t it more likely that Hillary won the nomination precisely because of her husband’s name? I look forward to Today’s investigation into women and ethnic minorities who have been over-promoted for reasons of social engineering. But I won’t hold my breath.

Sticking up for Hillary

A failure to follow up on stories after the facts change is an abiding sin of journalism and, as we know, the BBC is far from being innocent of it. 

Here's a small-scale but interesting example of that from the US online music and entertainment magazine Paste concerning a BBC Trending article from 2016. 

The BBC article aired complaints from Hillary supporters about Bernie supporters ('Bernie Bros') during the US primaries.

Here's the bit from Paste:

The failure to update the piece to reflect a change of fact and the intrusion of an angle from the BBC reporter (see that telltale word "even") is rather too typical of BBC reporting, especially of US matters, these days.

Incidentally, that same BBC reporter - Jessica Lussenhop, a senior staff writer for BBC North America - was responsible for such US election BBC pieces as the heartwarming article headlined The girl who 'dared' Hillary Clinton to compete. She also wrote feminist-inspired reports about how the media were guilty of sexism over their coverage of Mrs Clinton and one on the Clinton-Trump debates. All appear to come from one particular 'angle'.

Stronger Together

Kim 'n' Hillary. 'Stronger together'

H/t again to DB...

Here's a video of Kim Ghattas standing next to Hillary today - "sucking up, before asking her a lapdog question", as DB so accurately puts it. 

Video: Fawning presstitute "reporters" pose for photos with Hillary as they laugh at her jokes. https://t.co/nwlRRGhBFq pic.twitter.com/yRfdAF0cVb

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 7, 2016

There's a bit of dark humour to be had from the fact that Hillary's fawning bodyguard of journalists (with the BBC's Kim Ghattas as her right-hand woman) is seen posing in front of a plane bearing the slogan 'Stronger Together'.

If ever an image ever spoke much truer than it meant this might very well be it.

"Debate"

I took advantage of last night’s insomnia by switching on the TV and watching two adults acrimoniously slagging each other off for our entertainment. (Not the Jeremy Kyle show)

This morning various organs of the MSM presented their own special selections of the ‘best bits’.

Early on, the BBC chose clips that made Hillary look good, whereas right-leaning media highlighted Trump’s mini victories, such as when Hillary constructed a cavernous own goal, saying something like: “Thank goodness Donald isn’t in charge of the law” to which he quickly replied, “Yes, because you’d be in jail” 

As the day wore on, I think the BBC did become more balanced but I’m open to other ideas on that.

For me, the most obvious take-away was that - for both contenders - it was a damage limitation exercise, in Trump’s case a matter of urgency, since  locker-roomgate was fresh in our faces, while the world has had more time to absorb Hillary’s misdemeanours. 

Hillary accused Trump of ‘deflecting’, which he certainly was - how could he not? - but seemed unaware that she was doing exactly the same. 

At one point she brought up the good advice of her friend Michelle Obama - “When they aim low, we aim high”. A Sky News reporter confused the mere act of stating this virtuous aspiration with actually achieving it, when in reality Hillary continually fired off a number of ‘low blows’ of her own.

Throughout the show, Trump prowled around the arena in a menacing and deliberately intimidating manner, creepy clown style. 

Afterwards Trump supporters remained resolute and unmoved, as did Hillary supporters.

I.Don’t.Care

Donald Trump’s bizarre image must be a liberating thing. If your hair has its own webpage dedicated to its history 1976 -2015, your dignity will realise it has nothing left to lose. 

This absence of self-doubt, freedom from inhibition, or whatever psychological condition Trump enjoys enables him to exult in that ‘anything goes’ abandon that people find so intriguing. 

At least it has enabled Trump to say what many people are thinking, but couldn’t possibly take the risk of saying out loud.

So when they quoted ”Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, and left out  “until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on" they were being deliberately mischievous. They knew what they were doing alright.

The media has its own special way of leaving out the qualification, i.e., failing to quote the vital part of the sentence, phrase or paragraph, which puts the contentious soundbite in a less explosive context. Cherry picking with malice.

They’ve done it with Jeremy Corbyn to such an extent that I actually felt sorry for him at one stage - in particular when he was quoted as saying that Osama Bin Laden’s  demise was ‘a tragedy’. Nice sound-bite, but not exactly the whole shebang. 

The Telegraph has really gone to town with this. It’s beginning to look as if the Telegraph doth protest too muchio. 

They’ve reproduced all those high profile persons’ Tweets and topped the whole thing off with one of those “Who said it:” quizzes like the one they set up yesterday, where the entities pitted against one another were ISIS and Stop The War coalition. (It was impossible to tell). 

This quiz pits Trump against Adolph Hitler. I haven’t taken it; I got 5/10 on yesterday’s quiz by attributing most of them to StWC. They were interchangeable, obvs., and no doubt these are too.

Not that I’m defending Trump. He’s far too ridiculous to be defended, but  'reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive' is too crude a response. Crude responses are all we get from people these days. That’s what so depressing. Political correctness is stifling genuine discussion. We are frightened of Islam and we fear that what we’ve been seeing is only the tip of the iceberg. 

Many an ordinary person is NOT thinking Trump’s plan to put the brakes on Muslim immigration is reprehensible prejudiced and divisive, but rather that Hillary’s Tweet would be much more appropriate if directed at Islam.   

"WORST SYCOPHANTS IN THE WORLD"

Simon Heffer huffs in today's Mail:

On Radio 4 this week, Dame Jenni Murray casually described Hillary Clinton as ‘the most famous woman in the world’. Oh really? What about our beloved Queen? Or William Hague’s big crush, Angelina Jolie? Or, for that matter, the singer Beyonce (and if I’ve heard of her, she must be distressingly famous)?

I am sure Dame Jenni was not party to such a shoddy arrangement, but it is widely believed that the Lefties who run the BBC are lining up Mrs Clinton as their ‘approved’ candidate for the next U.S. presidential election and are keen to promote her cause. Mrs Clinton hasn’t even declared her candidacy yet, so prepare yourselves for disgustingly sycophantic saturation BBC coverage when she does.

This section of his article is entitled, "WORST SYCOPHANTS IN THE WORLD".

I didn't hear that Woman's Hour interview with the sainted Hillary but I did see this tweet from Dame Jenni's Woman's Hour colleague, 'Champagne' Jane Garvey:

Three of my @bbcwomanshour colleagues with a @HillaryClinton selfie. NOT JEALOUS pic.twitter.com/RjhMrRF89G
— Jane Garvey (@janegarvey1) July 4, 2014