A wonderful day

Today is the twentieth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's seminal speech by the Berlin Wall:

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!

The key phrase came from a woman I met at a dinner party, and the phrase remained in the speech solely because of Ronald Reagan.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (1)

The BBC and City *ankers

And while we're on the subject of the BBC...Let me flag up this, which a commenter left on a post below.

Here's the BBC's perfectly fine news page on the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall (I'm off to see Alfred Brendel play there on Thursday). Blah, blah, blah, and then - wham:

Should City bankers donate a proportion of their fortunes to causes like the Royal Festival Hall?

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (1)

BBC at it again

From the Guardian:

BBC Hires CBS veteran to target US.

The BBC has hired the executive producer behind the controversial relaunch of US network CBS's Evening News with daytime anchor Katie Couric to oversee a nightly bulletin aimed at US audiences.

Rome Hartman, who is also a former producer on long-running CBS current affairs show 60 Minutes, will develop and serve as executive producer of the 60-minute nightly BBC World News programme, which will air on BBC America and the global BBC World channel.

The BBC said the new US-anchored show was a "major initiative" and would "showcase the best of BBC journalism for American audiences".

Yes. But WHY?

Isn't this just so typical of the BBC's fundamental problem - that it behaves as if it's raison d'etre is to be a global media giant, and to take on commercial media conglomerates?

Commercial success ought to be entirely irrelevant to the BBC. The only case for a subsidised broadcaster is to provide that which the market does not. For myself, I can think of no such market failure. There is literally nothing which the BBC provides which could not be done without public subsidy - and, in the case of its news output, would not be done a lot better if it was denied an income guarantee to carry on with its biased assumptions.

But let's assume for the sake of argument that BBC news is entirely unbiased (unlike, according to this - ludicrous - argument, commercial channels) and that no other channels provide serious documentaries and such like. It is entirely because they are uncommercial that the reason for a subsidy exists. So the idea of a commercially successful BBC undercuts ab initio the case for public funding (the same argument applies, in spades, to Channel Four).

There is one - and one alone - argument for the BBC to divert its attention to BBC America and BBC World - propaganda. That, as with Radio Free Europe or Voice of America in the Cold War, such broadcasting is a vital plank in the war to defend Western civilisation. So I can see the argument for a publicly finded Arab-language news service (although not, Lord help us, run by the Western self-hating BBC).

But in that context, if there is one country and one audience we - and thus the BBC - do not need to target is it the US.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (2)

No there

George Will on Fred Thompson:

Tulip mania gripped Holland in the 1630s. Prices soared, speculation raged, bulbs promising especially exotic or intense colors became the objects of such frenzied bidding that some changed hands 10 times in a day. Then, suddenly, the spell was broken, the market crashed—prices plummeted in some cases to one one-hundredth of what they had been just days before. And when Reason was restored to her throne, no one could explain what the excitement had been about. Speaking of Fred Thompson.

It gets worse:

In a recent speech, Thompson expressed a truly distinctive idea about immigration. Referring to the 1986 amnesty measure that Reagan signed into law, he said: "Twelve million illegal immigrants later, we are now living in a nation that is beset by people who are suicidal maniacs and want to kill countless innocent men, women and children around the world."

Kids, do not try to deconstruct that thought at home; this is a task for professionals.

I have to confess to knowing very little about him. But almost all the people whose opinion I value on US politics have said the same thing to me: there's no 'there' there.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (0)

Rudy cares?

Last month I posted an interesting piece on Rudy Giuliani's state of mind.  Here, on the other hand, is a more positive view.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (0)

WWGD about the tired and emotional...?

The consistently intersting Ben Brogan has a post about Brown, foreign travel, and Sarkozy. Well worth reading. But make sure you also have a look at this video of Sarkozy's press conference. Hilarious.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (3)

Podhoretz, Israel, the US and antisemitism

The Jerusalem Post has a marvellous interview with Norman Podhoretz (my intellectual hero). It's all the more interesting for being conducted by his daughter. Here's an extended extract, on the US and antisemitism:

In your books Making it and My Love Affair with America, you make the point that there has never before been a country as good to the Jews. Given the spread of anti-Semitism in universities across the US, is this haven for Jews now threatened?

I'm glad to hear you talking like a Zionist, Ruthie. [He laughs.] There's been less anti-Semitism in America than in any other country in the world - even Japan, where there are almost no Jews. This doesn't mean there was never any anti-Semitism in America; there's always been some and there still is. But, especially in the two decades after World War II - because people began to understand how what might have seemed harmless anti-Jewish sentiment could lead to something as horrendous as Auschwitz - there was an implicit taboo against its open expression. The anti-Semites more or less went underground, and anyone who revealed himself in public as an anti-Semite was pretty well ruled out of polite political society. But I never took this to mean that anti-Semitism had entirely disappeared.

Then, immediately after the Six Day War, it began to reemerge into the open, mainly on the Left, and especially among radical blacks. Because they were considered the prime victims of American society, blacks were given a license to say anything they wanted - and one of the things the new "Black Power" movement wanted to say was that American Jews, and the Jewish state, were the worst oppressors of "people of color."

I warned then that nobody could predict how far this might go - that once anti-Semitism was released into the air, there was no telling where it would end. And it has in fact grown since 1967. In 1982, during the first war in Lebanon, I wrote an article called "J'Accuse," in which I documented very carefully the resurgence of anti-Semitism not only in the United States but all over the world. In return, many people, including many Jews, accused me of saying that anyone who criticized Israel was an anti-Semite. Of course, I never said that, nor did I think it or mean it. On the contrary, I was very careful to distinguish between anti-Semitism and opposition to Israeli policies or actions - and to show that anti-Semitism was now taking the cover of anti-Zionism.

The next big wave came in 1990, during the run-up to the first Gulf War. That was when people like Pat Buchanan - the leader of the "paleoconservatives" - charged the neoconservatives with trying to drag the US into a war against Saddam Hussein only because the Israelis wanted us to. Here, then, was another stage in the exfoliation of the new anti-Semitism - new in that Israel, the Jewish state among states, rather than the Jews among the gentiles, became the main focus. In the process, all the charges that had been made for centuries against Jews in the Diaspora were translated into the language of international affairs and then directed at the Jewish state. Actually, the new anti-Semitism didn't even bother attacking Diaspora Jews - until, that is, the latest wave that was triggered by the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when American Jews began to be openly denounced as de-facto agents of Israel. That's the bad news.

The good news is that there are traditions and mechanisms in America that will prevent anti-Semitism from going too far. For one thing, anti-Semitism is not in the American bloodstream to the extent that it is in the European. In fact, the Pilgrims and the founding fathers of America were all very philo-Semitic. The early American Christians identified with the ancient Hebrews, and even saw themselves as "The New Israel."

Though this was a long time ago, it's a strain that has persisted throughout American history, and it's still there, acting as one of the countervailing forces against whatever anti-Semitism is also present. And then, of course, you have democratic politics, which makes it very difficult for anything like anti-Semitism to flourish in the United States. Jews are a tiny minority - maybe two and a half percent of the population, maybe less - but they are considered part of the majority. And there's some justification for that. American Jews are very prosperous. They are very successful in practically every area of life, except maybe professional sports [he laughs].

Furthermore, there are many millions of Evangelical Christians who are even more pro-Israel than the Jews, and because of their great numbers, they are a much more powerful political force than the universities or the media. Speaking of which reminds me to emphasize that there's been a real reversal of roles where anti-Semitism is concerned. Once upon a time, and especially in Europe, anti-Semitism mostly came from the Right. But today, the forces most hostile to Israel tend to be on the Left, and in America they have found a home in the Democratic Party. Yet despite the fact that these forces are extremely influential within the Democratic Party, all the Democrats running for president in the primaries this year - from Hillary Clinton to John Edwards to Barack Obama - are tripping over themselves to demonstrate how pro-Israel they are.

So much food for thought in that one answer, with imlications way beyond the US' shores.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (1)

Fatuous gestures

Purlease,,, Gesture politics at its most empty. What a load of *%$@! I will make sure to turn on every light in my house between 9 and 10pm on Thursday week.

Mind you, this extract from the piece reminded me of a lovely story:

The politician-turned-climate campaigner, whose surprise hit film An Inconvenient Truth warns of the imminent dangers of global warming, had hoped that his gesture would be as emblematic as that made by he actor Will Smith when he coordinated people across the world to click their fingers every three seconds during the Live8 concerts in 2005 to convey the frequency with which children were dying in Africa.

Bono starts clicking his fingers roughly every three seconds. This goes on for what seems to the crowd as ten minutes. Eventually Bono steps up to mike and says that "everytime I click my fingers a young child in Africa dies of starvation". Right after that profound statement a member of the crowd shouts to the front stage "stop ****ing doin' it then".

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (0)

London's Mayor

This is what the Guardian describes as Ken Livingstone being "in fine form":

What, I wonder, did he learn from the Finegold episode? "That you've got to stand up to reporters - particularly reporters in league with the Tory party and the Evening Standard, and the Board Of Deputies [of British Jews] who are trying force you into an apology." No regrets at all, then? "No. Because the moment I allow newspaper editors to determine my behaviour, I'm no longer any use to Londoners. Every now and then you hit something, and they ratchet up the pain to intolerable levels. But the moment you give in, they'll find your breaking point, and they'll go straight for it every time in the future.

"Finegold is by no means the worst, but when you're dealing with reporters, sometimes the things they say to you would send almost anybody into a violent rage. I've had people say to me, 'Do you have to pay £5 when you enter your partner to make her pregnant?' That was Virgin Radio, outside my house, just before the congestion charge came in. That kind of thing is said simply so you'll smash them in the mouth."

And this what the Mayor of London was actually asked by Mr Fingegold:

How did tonight go?

In fact, here's the complete 'conversation' between them:

Oliver Finegold: "Mr Livingstone, Evening Standard. How did it ..."

Ken Livingstone: "Oh, how awful for you."

Finegold: "How did tonight go?"

Livingstone: "Have you thought of having treatment?"

Finegold: "How did tonight go?"

Livingstone: "Have you thought of having treatment?"

Finegold: "Was it a good party? What does it mean for you?"

Livingstone: "What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal?"

Finegold: "No, I'm Jewish. I wasn't a German war criminal."

Livingstone: "Ah ... right."

Finegold: "I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go?"

Our city is shamed by its Mayor.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (4)

The sheer horror of it, my dear

I confess to being unaware of Paris Hilton's oeuvre. But I was struck by this sentence in an account of her return to prison, and the reasons why she had been let out in the first place:

Friends said that she was not eating or sleeping in jail, and that she had been crying a lot. Some reports suggested that this was because she had not been allowed to wax or use moisturiser.

Ah, that explains it. Insomnia, tearfulness and an inability to moisturise are surely, in anyone's book, clear gounds for early release from jail. 

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (0)