The Aged P

When the conservative UK Spectator began it’s Americano blog about the 2008 election I really thought it would travel well beyond the Toby Harnden type re-hash (see Daily Telegraph) of the latest from WaPo/NWT/AP. After all, why in this day and age should the DT bother paying loadsadollars to such hacks for regurgitating this stuff when we in the UK can read the US media online in real time? Maybe, at last, we would get some in depth, sophisticated reporting that really came from between and behind the lines – what a hope! Almost all UK commentators (even the so called Conservatives) can’t be bothered to operate outside the zone when it comes to Palin and as for Alaska – call for Borat…

It is clear that Americano’s James Forsyth is not only a Harnden clone who can’t really be bothered to operate outside the zone but he has also made no attempt to try disentangling the details of politics in Alaska…par for the course, I suppose – nevertheless, so disappointing. Still, here is a primer to get you started, James…

I suspect that their sympathies lie with the pet conservatives who are allowed to grace the columns of the NYT – David Brooks, anyone? – who view Palin with disdain because they perceive her as some trailer trash rube from the boondocks who was shoved on to the ticket at the last minute to shore up the hillbilly vote, so dim she thinks she can see Russia from her front room and had to answer “which one” when asked about the Bush doctrine (Ruth Lea on the BBC’s QT a day or so back)….

Well, they underestimate her at their peril. She has rough edges, still has stuff to learn and, of course, would be so out of place at any Beltway dinner table but she is savvy, catches on very quickly and, above all, she is a conservative who connects with ordinary, everyday Wal-Mart people – just watch how they respond to her at her rallies – and as Mayor and Governor her achievements outrank any failures.

It seems unlikely that McCain will win and he will join Gore and Kerry in the pantheon of losers – but Palin will not sink out of view. As the Obama supporting feminist icon Camille Paglia wrote “This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.”

She might well use the next four/eight years to become the focus of a new manifestation of Republican Populism, possibly mixing conservative social values with an anti big business platform, maybe an updated version of the Contract with America but much more than Newt 2…much more even than the Gipper……think Bull Moose…think Teddy Roosevelt….

BTW, re Ruth Lea – the Governor’s “nearness of Russia to Alaska” remarks, so often parodied, were attached to other comments about Russia that somehow ended up on the ABC cutting floor (I wonder why?)…and I would love to have heard which one of the five interpretations of the Bush doctrine did Lea have in mind…..

How on earth did those bankers get embroiled in the subprime market – it’s a dirty word now, of course, but a few years ago some people had a different perspective. Watch this and then ask yourself why the big media in the USA and here have not tracked right back on this issue…………

Fascinating story circulating in the US blogosphere here about a possible link between Obamas guru David Axelrod and an anti Palin vid on youtube – what is more, since the story emerged everything has been pulled….mmmmmmmmm…interesting to see if the big media picks up on it….

The trouble with sites like ConservativeHome is that the vast majority of posters are party political trainspotters obsessed with the minutiae of our niche fetish and/or the Westminster Village Commentariat. Now normally that is fine and, like the Collectors of Car Tax Discs, we can pursue our little hobby with all the fury and intensity of your regular anorak. However, when something as out of the box as the David Davis resignation comes along we struggle to fit it into our Weltanschauung because it it transcends the parameters of party political discourse – it’s the sort of thing one would discuss in a seminar as part of a Political Science degree…hence the bewilderment of hacks like Robinson and Crick – if they can’t understand it then it must be either a “stunt” or part of some sort of conspiracy.
Fortunately this issue is now beyond the village and the anoraks and and is in the hands of those ordinary, everyday folk who are not political hobbyists. These are the people who we often claim to represent and love but who do sometimes display an annoying tendency to make up their own minds and ignore our sage and well informed advice…..

“Military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al Qaeda”

So says The Washington Post in a recent article headed “The Iraqi Upturn”. Now the WaPo is the Bible of the Beltway, the parish magazine of the East Coast chattering classes, the Court Circular of the Democrat elite so when it starts to say this it must cause consternation at the BBC, The Guardian and The Independent where the concept of the Iraq “quagmire” has been deeply embedded as a self evident truth.

But, more worryingly, it must also be causing concern at The Daily Telegraph which, over the last few weeks, has been peddling a rather curious line about events in Basra and Sadr City, portraying the current offensives in a rather negative light – and it raises again the issue of the DT Editor Will Lewis and his relationship with Gordon Brown. The sudden spate of articles from Mary Riddell have been very defensive of Brown and it just makes you wonder if “Private Eye” is on to something when it describes a degree of “cosiness” between Lewis and the Brown coterie…..perhaps someone should tell those Barclay boys……

Channel 4 is risking fresh controversy over a film that portrays Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker, in a sympathetic light says The Daily Telegraph.

“Hunger” premieres at the Cannes Film Festival today and is directed by Steve McQueen, the Turner Prize-winning artist.

It recounts the 1981 IRA hunger strike inside Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison which Sands led for 66 days until his death.

Jan Younghusband, the Channel 4 commissioning boss, said: “I feel it is the right moment to be revisiting and reconsidering the ideals of these young men who put themselves and others through a great deal for their belief that they could make their world better.”

Laudable indeed – but why does it always seem that Jan and her media buddies use a sat nav that only seems to take them in the direction of those who support the maiming and murder of innocent civilians as well as British soldiers and police officers by bomb and bullet? Or is that what she means by saying these young men put “others through a great deal”

Perhaps Jan would next commission a film about the IRA bombing of Belfast’s Abercorn Bar restaurant on a Saturday afternoon in March 1972 which killed two young Catholic girls and maimed many others including a young bride to be who lost both her legs yet months later walked up the aisle on her artificial legs, so determined was she to put her life together – but then perhaps she might see the bomber (who was never identified) – as another young man who put himself through a great deal for his “belief that they could make their world better.”

The Jan Younghusbands of this world are straight out of the world of Tom Wolfe, they are the Radical Chic, the beautiful (and wealthy) people of the media elite, our new ruling class who despise the ordinary plodders of the suburban world and prefer, as one commentator said, “to identify themselves with what they imagine to be the raw, vital lifestyle of the lower orders.”

What next from Jan, then…………… Reinhard Heydrich – Violinist?

‘NatWest Three’ face jail for Enron fraud says The Daily Telegraph reporting the probable result of a plea bargaining effort by their lawyers which might see them jailed for thirty seven months instead of a possible thirty five years after they agreed to admit to one count of fraud instead of four.
The DT then explains out that the three men were extradited to the USA “amid much public protest”……what the paper fails to point out was that the “public protest” was mainly cheerled by the DT itself. Over a period of several months we were drip fed a skilful PR campaign of sob stories and family photo ops portraying the three as innocent victims of an American witch hunt.
This didn’t cut much ice with many of us who realised that a lot of UK suits (some of them well known to the media on this side of the Atlantic) who sailed a little close to the financial edge were terrified that, instead of the ponderous investigation and genteel slap on the wrist usually given to “respectable”fraudsters by British courts, they would face an American judicial regime which acts swiftly and hands out draconian prison sentences and massive fines……………

How can they sink so low? “Servicemen from Headley Court rehabilitation centre near Leatherhead were about to begin their weekly swim at Leatherhead Leisure Centre, which helps with their therapy, when they were verbally abused by a group of regular swimmers” reported the Leatherhead Advertiser on November 21st.

Apparently a number of regulars objected to them using a roped off area of the pool claiming that they paid to use it and should have prority. The leader of the Headley Court party withdrew the group from the pool to avoid further confrontation. It would have been gratifying to hear that the Leisure Centre staff had told the men to get back in and banned the complainers from using the Centre again but this is England 2007 – the reaction was supine and clearly the complainers felt vindicated………….if ever there was a justification for a tabloid “name and shame” this must be it…….

This BBC item http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6964403.stm reports reaction to the Brown governments plans to “crack down” on gun crime with an amnesty, drop off zones etc. It then refers to “an independent charity”

“Meanwhile, an independent charity has suggested that Home Office figures show the numbers of children killed in recent years are falling. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies found 63 children aged from one to 15 were killed in England and Wales in 1995, compared with 31 in 2005/06.
The director of the centre, Richard Garside, said the figures differed from the common perception, but it was too soon to say whether the recent spate of child killings would reverse the downward trend. He said the most significant rise in killings was among the 16 to 49 age group, up from 429 in 1995 to 513 in 2005/06.”

Now at first glance this appears to be a slight dash of cold water on the Tory reaction and the words “independent” and “charity” give the impression of detachment and neutrality but a quick google of Richard Garside produced this nugget http://pommygranate.blogspot.com/2007/05/fisking-richard-garside.html

Then have a look at The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies website and its publications http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/ccjs/pubs.html
…are there any little bells ringing?

I feel sorry for the McCann family and anger for whoever has inflicted this on them but have no patience with the media induced frenzy or the sick opportunism of celebrities who have jumped onto this bandwagon to gain some PR points.
The trouble is that around this Portuguese resort there are scores of UK hacks milling about with nothing to do. Now the average intelligence level of journalists is more or less on a par with an earwig so they have to post whatever comes into their “mind” to keep the editors happy and justify their expenses. Hence the speculation about Robert Murat (looks suspicious so must be guilty) and, even better, a Russian IT expert. Add the usual ingredient of local police (foreign so must be incompetent), photogenic middle class family, a slow news week or two and you have the recipe for a perfect media frenzy.
Above them all you have the satisfying spectre of the pedophile stranger – such an attractive demon which conveniently helps us to ignore the fact that the vast majority of incidents of child abuse are perpetrated by family or friends of family.
Simon Jenkins has been a lone voice of reason here http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2082505,00.html but in general the media have been at their worst – they don’t do fairness or reason very well at all but they love to do “I feel your pain”……