Inside the Castle of Dreams
While America has been mesmerized, first by the presidential elections then by the astounding scandals emerging from seemingly nowhere, the British elite has been undergoing its own crisis. The center of the storm is the BBC.
The opening act of the ongoing meltdown was the discovery that one of its “national treasures” — a DJ named Jimmy Savile — had been a vicious pedophile for decades and that he had been just the tip of the iceberg. The corporation was riddled with celebrity monsters. The BBC harbored, in the words of its chairman Chris Patten, a ‘tsunami of filth’. Police investigations were opened. The public awaited the arrest of ‘household names’.
But the second act was yet to come. Since nothing defends better than an attack, the BBC’s flagship investigative journalism program, Newsnight — the very same which scuppered a Savile investigation — prepared in cooperation with a ‘prestigious’ center for investigative journalism a bombshell that would put the Savile scandal in the shade. Newsnight claimed a “senior Tory politician” from the 1990s was a child abuser. They ran trailers for the ballyhooed expose and spread the former politician’s name around on Twitter, virtually convicting him by publicity. But there was one problem. It wasn’t true.
Under the threat of a lawsuit, the BBC retracted, apologized, suspended the Newsnight investigation and dropped cooperation with prestigious center for investigative journalism. Nor did things stop there, the BBC’s recently appointed director general, George Entwistle, resigned after only a few months after taking over previous director general who is taking over management of the New York Times. Entwistle was blamed for allowing this circus to go forward. Meanwhile, his predecessor had gone over to the America to take charge of All the News That’s Fit to Print.
New York Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson is starting his job on Monday amid a widening scandal at his former employer, the BBC.
When the Times hired him in August, Thompson was hailed as someone who could help the company generate new revenue at a time when print publications are suffering from the loss of readers and advertisers.
In recent months, he has faced questions over a decision by the BBC’s “Newsnight” program last December to shelve an investigation into child sexual-abuse allegations against renowned British television host Jimmy Savile, who died last year. That decision was made while Thompson was head of the BBC.
But in resigning Entwistle created a scandal of his own. He took twice the money he was owed under his contractual payout raising suspicions that was being silenced with money. Now Patten, Entwistle’s superior, is himself is looking politically vulnerable.
The BBC scandal has become like a sharp knife over which two political parties are grappling for possession, slicing into whatever it comes across. Faced with the necessity of bringing it under control without appearing to bring it under control, it has left a trail of victims in its wake.
But whichever way the blade cuts its effect is the same: a lessening of prestige in the Great and the Good. It is the equivalent of the Roman Catholic pedophile scandal but this time detonating inside the cathedral of the secular state.
As stories emerge about the “national treasurers” of the state media literally being given keys to hospitals, orphanages, and institutions for the retarded in order to gratify their bestial instincts, a growing part of the public is asking itself: where is my tax money going to? For unlike the churches which the BBC was itself fond of investigating, the Corporation is epitome of national public television and radio. It is what Big Bird would like to be if he could grow up. It lives on a compulsory fee charged to everyone who owns a TV set in the UK whether they watch the BBC or not.
And maybe it’s no better and possibly worse than those it pretends to stand in judgment of. The public is now realizing they’re being raped with their own money. Not that they can put a stop to it though. Unless the scandal grows so large that it topples the entire British Establishment, the storm will blow over. The scandal will be forgotten and the celebrities will rise again.
The men who preceded Mark Thompson across the Atlantic some hundreds of years ago dreamed of creating a society without celebrity; whose government would consist of ordinary men, dullards and uninteresting normal people. From that collection of temporary officialdom nothing special was expected other than that they would be much like those from whom they had sprung.
Today the expectation is the opposite. Societies want to be governed by people who can sing, dance, dissimulate and orate. Abe Greenwald at Commentary notes that “Barack Obama ushered in America’s first large-scale experiment in personality-cult politics.”
“The experiment continues apace. Obama got reelected because he enjoys a degree of personal popularity disconnected from his record. No modern president has ever been returned to office with employment figures and right-track-wrong-track numbers as poor as those Obama has achieved.”
At the center of power is the personality and at the root of legitimacy is the myth burnished by the taxpayer dollar. In the center of the city stands the brazen idol we thought ourselves far too sophisticated to fall down before and worship.
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Very funny scene in a very funny movie, “The Guard,” about an Irish policeman in Galway, played by Brendan Gleeson, who teams up with an American FBI agent played by Don Cheadle to catch cocaine smugglers operating on Ireland’s west coast. In the scene Gleeson meets with an IRA man to discuss a small arms shipment that Gleeson is handing over to the Provos. The IRA man wants to know the whereabouts of a missing derringer that was supposed to be in the shipment. Gleeson, who kept it for himself, feigns ignorance. “What do the Provos want with a derringer anyways,” he asks the IRA man. The later informs him that “It’s for our gays.” Gleeson says, “I didn’t know youse had gays in the IRA.” To which the IRA man replies: “How do youse think we penetrated MI5?”
Who watches the watchers?
One of the reasons there is so much political corruption in the US is the partisan unwillingness of the media to look into ‘one of their own’ and by one of their own, I mean the leftist elite.
There is not and will not be a parallel system on the other side of the political spectrum. It will rot until the whole rotten edifice collapses. To the detriment of everyone and everything (ie our culture).
Clueless Yurps wander around NY wearing Obama t-shirts. They expect gratitude.
Societies want to be governed by people who can sing, dance, dissimulate and orate.
Nothing new about that.
It may be one of the most awkward failures of Marxism if they ever pretended otherwise, it’s hard to argue that in any democracy or republic those skills have not been highly valued.
Abe Greenwald at Commentary notes that “Barack Obama ushered in America’s first large-scale experiment in personality-cult politics.”
Oh please, he has the personality of a ghetto used-car salesman. Greenwald is off-base here. Greenwald is right that Obambus is not judged on qualifications or results, but “personality” in no way captures the right elements.
Now, now Josh. You simply don’t appreciate his charm. As someone I knew once said when I gagged on something he gave me to sample, “you’re just not accustomed to quality”.
Marketing gurus have long learned that you pander to taste. Or better yet, you sell the public on the idea of what tasting good is like. Can you remember the guys in high school who used to impress all the girls with their fake erudition or, when appropriate, some line they picked up from a joke book?
Did you roll your eyes in astonishment? Or did you as most of us did, don the tight, pointy shoes, the paisley shirt and mullet haircut and try to get with the program only to discover the lack of the secret element X, the talent for for hamminess, the instict for fakery that alone distinguishes the true Svengali.
This is the problem with the GOP. They are torn between wanting to be like Obama and not wanting to be like him.
W raises and dismisses the possibility of eliminating the tax which supports the BBC. Or making the tax apply only to those who listen to or view it.
But could the blogosphere raise enough citizen interest to make a (Tory?) voting or election issue to stop compulsory funding of the BBC by those who are disgusted by it or othehrwise don’t want to use it? Is GB so far gone that eliminating a tax for a repugnant entity is not supported by a majority of its voters? There are other radio and commercial channels.
One could argue that the Sultan holds onto power at any cost so he can maintain his harem and boy servants. It appears just as likely that the Left conflates political power with sex as in vote your lady parts, vote your right to abortion, though it is not threatened, vote for acceptance of your sexual deviance. They is truly a polymorphously perverse lot and will not achieve satisfaction until they screw everyone who wants to be left alone by the government.
BTW, I have noticed here in LA that the public broadcasting stations that used have annual, bi-annual or quarterly fund raisers are having them pretty much daily now. This is on top of the first 10 minutes of the hour being devoted to advertising. The best I can hope is that they discover capitalism before it is too late.
“Oh please, he has the personality of a ghetto used-car salesman.”
You give him too much credit. A ghetto used-car salesman would at least be colorful, and funny. To me he comes across as a prissy, preachy, boring academic; a moralizing scold.
The paisley shirt, yes; the mullet, never. NEVER.
When a species dominates its niche, sexual selection trumps natural selection. More resources go to displays and plumage. Drab but effective survivors are marginalized.
“the mullet, never. NEVER”
Oh please, crappy puffy haircut then.
Wretchard 5,
The major problem with the GOP is not vacillation in emulating 0bama. It is spinelessness, lack of recognizing right-from-wrong, and lack of character to challenge wrongdoing. A recent Breitbart/JudicialWatch survey of election day voters showed that the vast majority of voters are concerned about government corruption, and remarkably that “more voters had confidence in the ability of the Democratic Party to limit corruption than the Republican Party. And by “a 2 to 1 margin (50% to 25%), young voters aged 18 to 34 had greater confidence in the ability of the Democratic Party, rather than the Republican Party, to clean up corruption. These findings are dramatic.”
This is entirely consistent with my own experience with the refusal of my local congressman to have clearly crooked military contracting investigated on the merits, rather than covered up. He did not have to take a position, only to have it investigated. He wrote a letter to DoD, which was never answered. My spineless congressman made no follow up to being substantively ignored on the merits. I wanted nothing but to stop this crooked contracting which had come to my attention.
My congressman lost his re-election bid by a few votes. I voted against him. Over almost 50 years, I have always voted in each election. And in all those years I have only voted for a Democrat on two occasions, each involving dissatisfaction with that specific Republican’s specific behavior concerning government corruption which I knew about in detail.
Instead of taking the opportunity to satisfy voters by opposing government corruption, my Republican congressman took a pass. Convincing just 1 out of 150 voters that he opposed military competitive contract corruption would have ensured his re-election. Instead, he earned his own Democratic “Golden Fleece” award of defeat.
Republicans need to find candidates who have the character and fitness to be recognized as more trustworthy than Democrats “to clean up government corruption”, or they will remain the permanent “stupid party”. Its a very low bar, but they manage to limbo under it.
“It wasn’t true.”
Wow. Things must be changing. Lack of truth has never stopped the BBC or any other news organization in the past.
0bama was elected thru Treachery and the biggest most powerful propaganda machine known to man, 0bama and his team were jokes! if our News media would have been doing the job of investigative journalism 0bama would never have gotten elected in 2008! very little “skill” was used other than collusion by the media in total black out of the truth. Just as the BBC hunted the Christians while performing the worst of evil’s. Yes Western culture is evil, God has turned his back on us all, we have those we deserve and we receive what we have earned, the darkness is only starting.
“Oh please, crappy puffy haircut then.”
Bingo. I’ll cop to that: helmet hair. With long sideburns.
The chicks dug it, man.
“The chicks dug it, man.”
Hee hee. Long side burns… got it!
Throw a ‘stash in there and I’ll match you.
The stash came and went … and came and went, repeatedly.
FBI Deemed Petraeus Affair Part of Criminal, Not Intel Probe
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fbi-deemed-petraeus-affair-part-criminal-intel-probe/story?id=17696177#.UKF8M4a3WW9
The paisley shirt, yes; the mullet, never.
Quite.
And the shirt, worked.
I studied the method rather more than that, actually. Making it work for you is another matter, but I can describe it to three decimal place accuracy! Actually, when it does happen to work for me, I feel embarrassed. Has to be something you’re born with, or train long and hard for. So to speak.
But certainly, a ghetto used car salesman would have to dress a lot snappier than Obambus, I was being polite. Though Barry would probably go Nation of Islam anyway, with the snappy bowtie.
Expect no repercussions to the BBC either for being a pedophile playground for a couple of generations [and you can bet your (pick vital body part of choice) that some of the management of the BBC itself was surely indulging in the same sexual assaults if it went on that long.] or for trying to set up the Tory politician. They control the news, and the focus on the news, and can kill a politician’s career even more unilaterally than our Journo-List 2.0 media. And as Wretchard notes, the new CEO of the New York Times is the one on whose watch the BBC tried to cover it up. That is not a bug over here, it is a feature. This shows the Left that they will be able to do anything and the NYT will have their back.
As far as getting rid of the BBC tax, or even forcing a real investigation into the sexual assaults, not gonna to happen. The British people have less input into their governance that even we do. Mind you since the election was stolen a week ago, we are catching up fast. As an example in Britain, for over a decade Brits have been demanding a plebiscite on EU membership. Polling on the demand to vote on the EU being overwhelmingly popular. Much closer, but still holding the majority position, is withdrawal from the EU.
All three major parties [Conservative (Tory), Labour, and Liberal Democrat] recognize this and have the plebiscite in their equivalent of a party platform. All three have run the government since it was added to the platform. All three said, once in power, that there would not be a plebiscite.
And the Brits can do bugger all about it.
They are serfs. And we are becoming so.
Josh
Your lack of faith in the Divinity of Obama is going to be disquieting to Ministry of Love. Mind you, you are not going to be alone. Just in case you did not see it, I left a note for you at the bottom of the First Emperor thread.
Subotai Bahadur
I’m with SB on the stolen election.
I’ve come to the conclusion that USA elections are completely unvalidated. This leads to the conclusion that they are managed; fabricated. If this is true then you may be surely assured that not one tiny thing will be done about it, much less _said_ about it. Except in a cone of silence chamber like my statement here.
Computerized poll machines make it worse, unless there is even a slight attempt at providing collatoral of the outcome. Yea, there is none. Just reams of paper possibility filled out by a voter, possibly only once and never validated, sustantiated, audited. How about every voter received a copy or printout of his vote, or as is clearly the case, their voteS.
Brings to mind the famous quote from Ray Donovan, Secretary of Labor under President Reagan, after being tried and acquited for larceny and fraud in connection with the construction of a NYC subway line, “Which office do I go to get my reputation back?”
@5 Wretchard
Now, now Josh. You simply don’t appreciate his charm. As someone I knew once said when I gagged on something he gave me to sample, “you’re just not accustomed to quality”.
And that reminds me of something. Back in the 1980s, a Chinese guy wanted me to write some software. He took me to a Chinese restaurant to talk over a possible deal. He said, “I’ll order, OK? Since I’m familiar with the dishes.” I said, “Of course. I wouldn’t have it otherwise.” After he finished speaking with the waiter (entirely in Chinese), he turned to me and told me what he had ordered. One of the items was “sea slug.”
The stuff arrived. The sea slug looked like large chunks of dirty brown jello. The guy said, “Go ahead and try a piece. You may like it, although some people don’t.” I tried it. It was like diving to the bottom of a bay with your mouth open (and not closing it when your face hit bottom).
We never did conclude a deal, but it wasn’t because of that. I found out he was from Communist China and was trying to get the software “to help the Chinese people.”
Our old buddy Whiskey has an interesting post (http://whiskeysplace.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/obama-balco/#more-1059) on how the election might have been stolen.