The yids set the agenda - you need to be careful not to let them tie you in knots, says the BBC

Friday, 14th March 2008

Talking in the Guardian about the upcoming joint BBC-HBO Passion series on BBC1, the BBC’s executive drama producer, Hilary Salmon, who is overseeing it, says this:

[HBO is] more sensitive than we are to the Jewish angle. Many of its core audience are Jewish liberals who set the cultural agenda much more than here, so we had a Jewish consultant, as well as experts on the gospels. You had to be careful not to tie yourself in knots though.

I'm not sure what's most astonishing about this - the assumptions which are behind her words, or the simple fact that a senior BBC employee has come out and said that the BBC is not as sensitive to issues relating to Judaism than HBO.

My EISCA colleague Winston Pickett gets to the heart of what's up here:

[ It]startles because of the ethnic-saturated stereotypes it contains, and because it presupposes a kind of wink-and-nod agreement by the readership of the publication in which it appears...
...What I’ve learned from this quote is the following: HBO, an American firm, is more sensitive to Jewish interests than the BBC. So far so good. A frank admission from the Beeb and one that may come back to haunt them.

Then there is the blanket assertion that ‘its core audience are Jewish liberals’. Anything wrong with that?...I’ve not seen any statistical breakdown of HBO’s audiences, but I would suggest that ‘Jewish liberals’, who themselves make up only a segment of an American religious demographic that itself comprises a tiny fraction of the total U.S. population is, in fact not the ‘core’ group of HBO watchers – especially when the subject is Christ the Saviour.

Next comes the phrase, ‘who set the cultural agenda…’, where a certain embedded negative resonance pops its head out for some air. The assertion is almost fictive in its unassailability: of course the Jews set the cultural agenda. We all know that, don’t we? And what exactly does ‘setting the cultural agenda’ mean anyway? Is it on-line? Can I Google it? Or perhaps it is only conspiratorially agreed-upon in a way that Jews, and only American Jews at that – can manage to accomplish – doing what focus-groups, market studies and programme sales simply can’t compete with.

Right. Better pay attention to those Jewish liberals who set the agenda – but not too much. One needs to ‘be careful not to tie yourself in knots’ – semantically, logically or attitudinally. Just hold on to your prejudgements and sally forth.

I've rarely seen such a classic example of BBC/liberal prejuduces at work.