THE BBC'S HOUSE MAG

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Off my usual track, next week's Radio Times provides further proof that the Beeb is institutionally biased towards the Left (if more proof were needed).
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This week's Point of View is from Simon Schama, 'Obama: My Verdict'. Schama's verdict is that Obama is great and can do no wrong. He attacks those "plenty of critics, especially on the hard right" and says, after outlining their main criticism (in his opinion), that he, Simon Schama, is "not one of them". (Who'd have thought it?). The complaints of Obama's own supporters are also dismissed, and Schama uses a comparison to Mohammed Ali's boxing prowess to show why Obama knows much better than them what he's doing. Everything's going to work out fine for him. The praise just keeps on coming. The BBC has asked Simon Schama to present a couple of programmes on 'Obama's America' next week. They will doubtless be just as enthusiastic as this piece and just as one-sided (left-sided) as the major series he did recently on American history and it's lessons for today (always vote Democrat being the one of the main ones!).
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A celebration of 20 years of The Simpsons is not free from left-wing prejudice either, with Benji Wilson having a swipe at wicked, right-wing Fox News. Matt Groening's tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the rest of the world shares America's affection for The Simpsons because they 'like seeing stupid Americans' brought this comment from Benji: "Of course, Groening knows that isn't the real secret, because if people simply liked seeing stupid Americans then Fox News is widely available." The BBC never misses an opportunity to have a dig at Fox News. (Should they?)
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Kirsty Young's new series on The British Family is classic left-liberal broadcasting & the RT article reflects that: "Her new four-part documentary series" is "a state-of-the-nation retrospective" that "starts with a bang", according to E Jane Dickson, "blowing a hole in the myth of the 1950s as any kind of golden age for family life." Ooh, what a surprise that a BBC series on the family should take that position! "At a time when 'family values' are once more taking centre stage in political debate, it's fighting talk." (Note the scare marks around 'family values'.) It certainly is. The Conservatives are putting it centre stage, & Kirsty's 'talk' is fighting against them and what they have to say. This obviously risks taking sides on an important issue in a general election year. The fact that it is the Conservatives who are on the receiving end of an attack here is made clear by E Jane's subsequent reference to 'Broken Britain' (in capital letters), a phrase much used by the party. Kirsty Young is then quoted attacking Mrs Thatcher, whose legacy of "melding aspiration and affection...does our children no favours". Kirsty has no time whatsoever for Mrs Thatcher's attitude. Her parents marched with the Red Clydesiders, she proclaims proudly - though her husband grew up in "gin-and-Jag land in Surrey", (a statement that surely says more about her than about her husband or Surrey). Now there is hope here, and a promise from E Jane: "While The British Family takes much of its warmth from Young's personal outlook, a broad spectrum of contemporary views and reminiscence is given equal air-time." We'll see, we'll see.
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Channel 4 will be showing Kevin McCloud: Slumming It. Andrew Purvis for the RT interviews Kevin exults: "Though he escaped cholera, TB and plague in the slum, McCloud has clearly picked up something - a bad case of civic zeal, with a good chance of developing full-blown Marxism". From what Purvis says later, it's fair to assume that he has developed that years ago. In answer to McCloud's ponderings about why we here don't share cars and the public realm, Andrew Purvis opines "Perhaps because we are British, Kevin. Not only is our home our castle, but we value our privacy and use property ownership as a way of exerting social control and raising our social status." Fancy that, someone who thinks that Marxism is wonderful working for the left-wing BBC! (Who'd have thought it?)