The emails, texts and comments flowed in an unstoppable flurry all last night and today. The reaction to having Debbie Schlussel (from blog debbiedoespolitics.com) on WHYS has been quite astounding. Complaints, yes, from all over the world for giving her airtime (even a few threatening never to listen to the Beeb again) but many showing their support for the lady or congratulating us for representing different sides of a topic that riles people greatly.
I was thrilled to see she had blogged the experience and appreciated her extended airtime compared to the minutes callers usually receive due to the fast and furious nature of the show. The comments were very fierce and anti-Beeb, as one might expect, but I was interested to read from her description and the comments left by her fans that there was no distinction between those who listen to the BBC (the 'Beeb-ers' so called) and the BBC corporation itself.
I've only reletively recently come across the notion held by US right-wingers that the BBC is leftist and anti-American. This seems quite strange to one who's grown up with the BBC and as a teenager regarded it as rather old school, stuffy and conservative.
I was also pleased to see Debbie had quoted my last blog post, so the google spiders are finding me somehow. She even linked back to the paedentry blog, which is very good etiquette. However, I did see a naughty misquote where the start of a paragraph beginning ("I regret that...") was cut off so as to look as I regretted her treatment on air. Actually I was regretting that we spent so much time on the topic meaning that the Lebanon strike wasn't given the time it perhaps should have been.
Also, I must point out that I'm not an 'idiot producer' (one of her commentators, not the lady herself) at the BBC - at least not a producer yet (my idiot status I learned all by myself). I'm working at the BBC on a placement. And before everyone starts huffing about the BBC taking liberties with a work experience girl, I'm very well qualified with a pretty good C.V and lots of producing/researching experience, so there.
We had a Debbie montage and email roundup ready to go today, but unfortunately we had so many guests on Bush's State of the Union address and gay adoption that it was passed over. Although, we don't invite her on the show quite the once a week that was quoted in her blog, I am tempted to bring her in on a pro-Israeli as we always get a glut of people criticising the state.
It's interesting how people make assumptions. Americans complain about the rest of the world assuming they're arrogant or pugnacious. Right-wingers complain about the BBC being leftist. I wouldn't automatically describe myself one way or the other. I think the average right-winger would be surprised about some opinions I hold as I'm sure I might be wrong about many of the easy assumptions one might make about the so-called right.
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Update - after further research I learn that using Ms. Schlussel picture without her permission is not advised, so I've knocked up a photoshop interpretation.
3 comments:
"Right-wingers complain about the BBC being leftist."
There you go again with your label gun. It's easy to label people. It doesn't require you to think.
"I'm very well qualified with a pretty good C.V and lots of producing/researching experience, so there."
Newsflash: What you do doesn't take a great deal of training.
"I've only reletively recently (sic) come across the notion held by US right-wingers that the BBC is leftist and anti-American."
So much for your much-vaunted C.V.
To summarize your skills: Bragging about your C.V., being able to use Google, and labeling people.
When dreck like this (http://www.publicserviceschallenge.com/wp-content/uploads/interimreport.pdf)comes from your "Conservative" party, is it any wonder?
Look, as far as the average American is concerned the overlap between the two countries consists mostly of an overlap in our root languages. The languages have probably diverged far less than our cultures have.
The expulsion of British rule 200 years ago wasn't about our trying out radical new forms of government, it was about discarding what was regarded as threatening new innovations. Earlier still, some of my ancestors arrived here as religious refugees from a country they felt had grown morally lax. So, yes, we see all of Britain as leftist. Not just the Beeb.
Anti-American? That's a newer thing. I suspect it started with WW II, the simultaneous fall of the Empire and rise of American hegemony, total collapse of any serious cultural challenges to us, 50 years of U.S. troops on British soil stationing nuclear weapons wherever we damn well feel like it, etc.
Not that I'm apologizing for any of it - it feels good to be on top. Just ask your grandparents.
Michael - of course you're making apologies, and they did indeed try a new form of human relation when they left the kingdom of "perfection and light"... They acted on the enlightenment that Europeans actively ignored and also perverted in the French Revolution.
It's no wonder that a century later federalism figured into each colony of any meaningful size when they became Dominions as was the case with Canada and Australia.
To say that the quarter of the BBC WS' output isn't about the US and doesn't cast virtually all of that coverage with the same tinge is to act in a state of denial. It is so repetative, peevish, and obsessive that it's impossible to hide.
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