It’s a tough job, trundling through BBC’s Editors Blog (did Goebbels have something similar at his Propaganda Ministry?) but two items are worthy of note.
Firstly a tear stained piece from Jeremy Hillman, editor of the BBC News business and economics unit. Jeremy was soooooo upset about George Osborne suggesting
the BBC’s approach to reporting the economy was relentlessly to focus on the bad news and the most gloomy statistics.
Hillman went on to produce a fistful of examples in an attempt to derail Osborne’s case, par for the course for any BBC suit when faced with accusations of bias. Then he sits back smugly thinking he has proved his point.
Actually Sarah Montague, despite Hillman’s spin about consciously downplaying Padoan, did indeed home in on the Padoan remarks so obviously she didn’t get the memo.
But we all know what Osborne was really getting at – not that they ignored positive items about the economy from third parties but the whole question of tone and emphasis which is why he used the word “relentlessly”. Ever since the Coalition took office the BBC’s overarching leitmotif has been CUTS rather than savings and one only has to watch any QT audience to see how successful that campaign has been.
However the good news is that Osborne’s comment touched a nerve. I guess that this issue has been raised at several North London dinner parties recently because Hillman and his pals realise that Charter Renewal is beginning to appear on the horizon and they cannot afford to upset a senior cabinet figure. Let’s hope that other government big cheeses start getting under sensitive BBC skins on a regular basis.
Then this abject apology re the Israeli Dog Stoning story from Nathalie Malinarich, world editor of the BBC News website
We failed to make the right checks. We should never have written the article and apologise for any offence caused.
Don’t worry, luv – we know why you failed to make the right checks…..while you were all busy filling in your expenses forms a breathless young graduate trainee rushed in and blurted out “those crazy religious bigoted Jews – as well as murdering helpless innocent Palestinians they are now going after helpless dogs…”
It fitted into the BBC’s anti Israeli narrative so perfectly you just couldn’t resist it…c’mon, Nathalie…is the Pope catholic? Those Jews, aren’t they evil?
Our friends at the BBC (you know, the ones who we pay for out of money extracted by force from our pockets and purses) do love to travel in style at our expense but they are not so keen on we ordinary mortals doing the same, especially by road.
Hence the doom laden announcement on the BBC website about the opening of the M74 extension in Glasgow.
True there were positive quotes from the Scottish Infrastructure Secretary Alex Neil and Glasgow City Council leader, Councillor Gordon Matheson but you can always tell where the BBC love really resides when you see the quotes signing off at the end of any website article.
“A fraction of this vast sum (£692m) could have delivered major public transport improvements, and to make the city easier to cycle and walk around.”
That from Glasgow Green MSP Patrick Harvie plus an equally funereal warble from Stan Blackley described as chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland (yes, you’ve got it, FoE, the organisation that’s generously funded by EU taxpayers)
So, Stan, you won’t be driving your VW Campervan along the M74 any time yet?
As someone who regularly drives westward I have often reflected that, if we were in France, there would be a dual carriageway A303 all the way to Exeter and an M30 threading through Devon and Cornwall (one of the poorest counties in England)…..but, being a realist, I just know that the Stan Blackleys of the world would have a hotline to the BBC and, within seconds, there would be the second coming of Swampy ordering us all to “get on yer bike..”
The bully picking a fight with the wrong man is probably one of the most repeated scenarios in storytelling from Jack the Giant Killer through David and Goliath into modern day film and TV but it never fails to give us that oh so satisfying tingle down the back of the neck.
In the 1955 film noir “Bad Day at Black Rock” Spencer Tracy, as a one armed war vet, gives a nasty surprise to a vicious thug.
I was 14 when I saw this film in South London. For the rest of the week I was down in our cellar giving karate chops to imaginary villains.
It’s an atmospheric movie, a classic of the genre. Tracy was always spot on as the modest man of immense moral authority and Robert Ryan’s face was the perfect fit for the cowardly weasel who always manages to find some bonehead to do his dirty work for him.
It was also one of the very few Hollywood films that attempted to address the uncomfortable issue of the treatment of Japanese Americans during WW2
My wife makes the scones, then we spread them thickly with butter then top them with a big blob of fruit jam…..delicious!! Of course, if we really want to be decadent instead of butter we use thick clotted cream – then wham on the jam…..
Palinbots, wingnuts, cultists….the list could go on and on – and that is just from some of the comments critical of Palin and her supporters at Hot Air, a leading conservative internet hang out.
From the left, of course, a more nuanced critique of the Palinistas from Chris Matthews
“I don’t think she is a thoughtful politician. I think she’s talking to people who don’t read newspapers, don’t pay attention to serious television broadcasts, whether the Lehrer Hour or anything like it or even this program, don’t pay attention to anything that’s even in the middle, who don’t have any effort at all to learn anything.”
Now as a lifelong student of American history and political junkie I have to confess an interest here. In the early hours of a September morning in 2008, with my wife away on a family visit, I watched Sarah Palin’s speech to the GOP convention livestreamed through my laptop.
I was fascinated.
In seventy years of politicking (well, to be truthful, sixty years as my first burst of activism saw me chanting a party slogan in the school playground during the British general election of 1950) I have never seen the like.
I liked her straight-from-the-hip, head-for-the fight style. I liked her authenticity – I find it embarrassing when so many so wealthy/private school/Ivy League US politicos come down from the big house into the fields and act faux folksy. But I am sure we had met Palin when we drove around America. She had been working a check out at Albertsons – or had she taken my breakfast order at Dennys? Maybe she was the high school teacher in Allentown? At my age memory dims but, dammit, we recognised her.
Dan Riehl (who has not been uncritical of her at times) felt the same
Like many, I had no idea if she would deliver, or crash and burn in just one more bit of political miscalculation by the McCain campaign. Yet, instead, she soared! Sarah Palin delivered what many a sincere conservative wanted and needed to become excited about the 2008 race. And she went right on doing it throughout the Fall – and continues to do it, even now, in many ways.
Unlike the vast majority of British media hacks who never look beyond the New York Times or Washington Post after her speech I googled as much as I could about her career in Alaska and liked her story. Come up the ranks not because she was some suit’s wife or born into a silver spoon family or had contacts from an elite university but under her own steam while raising a nestful of lively kids. What’s more she hadn’t made her name by sitting in a legislature making pretty speeches stroking constituency egos or posturing over her own bravery in voting for this or that motion. She had run a town, helped supervise an energy agency and governed a state – and fought against a corrupt network of backscratching power brokers from her own party…
…..and she had never been to one of Tina Brown’s parties.
Which is why the vicious US media firestorm that followed her nomination initially left me puzzled, especially when in the UK it was repeated across the pages of conservative papers like the Telegraph and Mail….”McCain chooses a former beauty queen”
Did they know something that I, as a mere retired teacher with no journalistic “training” had missed? Were there dark secrets and therefore skilled PR operatives spinning obfuscating webs to cover them up?
I began to feel unsure.
But then I came across another narrative, not, of course from the American media and certainly not from the pathetic fumblings and bumblings of the McCain campaign team. I found it, initially in the wild and reckless alleyways of Free Republic and the slightly more genteel corridors of Lucianne. I began to recognise some regulars drawing swords to defend Palin in the threads at Hot Air.
I was witnessing the emergence of the Palinistas – and, through C4P and Palintwibe and hundreds of other websites they have been fighting her corner ever since, through thick and through thin.
John Nolte, unlike many commentators, has grasped the political implications of this phenomenon
Besides a trial by media fire and a growing savvy when it comes to getting her message out, besides a charisma and personal touch no other candidate comes close to, something else Palin uniquely offers is a mammoth base of fervent supporters ready to fight to the death for her –a base as passionate and motivated as President Obama’s in 2008. No other GOP contender has anything close to this army of supporters and volunteers who are not only standing by but pretty well organized through various “Such-and-such State for Palin” communities.
So who are they, these “fervent supporters” and, more significantly, why are they so fervent.
Oddly enough, though many in the media love to wax eloquently about their shortcomings, pace Chris Matthews, very few have made any serious attempt to check them out. Is it because most of the big cheeses of the media elite prefer to operate within the confines of New York or Washington? Do they now not have enough time or money or experience to expend on Stacy McCain style shoe-leather? Surely it cannot relate to political bias within their ranks – can it?
Which is why late last year I flew from London (on my own dime, as Americans might say) to join a hundred of these “fervent supporters” for a weekend in Chicago.
Now I’m a fairly cynical soul about politicians and their supporters and couldn’t help wondering if, when I reached the get together it would be a little like wandering into the world of Badlands
How wrong I was. Every one of those people was very well grounded. They weren’t wingnuts (I can spot one at fifty miles) and most of them were not particularly wealthy – but they had been willing to spend several hundred dollars to attend the event. They were young, old, long, short and from all points of the US compass. About two thirds were women (although we are told by David Frum that women don’t like Palin) and many were religious but not in the snake handling holy roller “you’ll all burn in hell” way that the media elite love to stereotype on screen. We drank beer and ate well and they were very kind and welcoming and extremely tolerant of my quirky British sense of humour.
If these people were mad wild eyed cultists who put Palin on a pedestal and knelt in adoration then they fooled me 100%. They were ordinary straightforward everyday folk like the people who shop at my local supermarket. But what was interesting was that a substantial number of the attendees at this political event had never been particularly active in politics before September 2008.
It was Palin who had set them on fire. A woman totally unknown to most of them from a backwater of the USA that hardly ever registers on the richter scale of American culture – until September 3rd 2008.
And they have stayed loyal to her ever since.
“Why?” I asked Heather Hunt, a quietly spoken New Englander who I originally met at the Chicago gathering. She works in business publishing and is as far removed from the Chris Matthews airhead characterisation of the Palin supporter as his own convoluted splutterings are from the eloquence and lyrical enunciation of Alistair Cooke.
She gave it to me straight.
No-nonsense, common sense, constitutional commitment to public service. Clear-headed pragmatism. Ability to find commonalities and unite people to work on mutual interests; even if the parties involved don’t agree on other issues, they can work together on the one issue they do agree on. Track record of prioritizing and focusing on getting a few key items accomplished.
Wait a minute – that is all so practical, so down to earth. Where is the Light Bringer, where is that messianic shining that electrifies all cults?
I asked Heather for three words that encapsulated the essence of Palin. I was looking for those words of worship that sparkled around the halo of Barack Obama in 2008 – words like messiah/brilliant/erudite.
But she wouldn’t play ball
Competitive, loyal, principled
Fine attributes – but not easy to reconcile with her determination to dedicate herself to working flat out for Palin if she declares for 2012. A Tea Party Patriots district organiser in Connecticut (where she was born and bred and where she still lives) Heather is organising for the raising of the banner.
We stand for limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets. We have a lot of work to do here in CT to that end; we’re one of the few states who missed the Red Wave election of 2010. But we’re still in the fight. If/when Palin announces her run, I will most likely step down from tea party responsibilities in order to organize both in CT and in New Hampshire, an early primary state a few hours north of CT.
A born again Christian and regular churchgoer her faith is at the very front of her life.
I believe eternal issues are more important than temporal ones. That’s one reason I haven’t been involved politically beyond informed voting. And will never put all my hopes in a temporary political system or politicians.
Apart from standing on a street corner holding a sign for Ross Perot in 1992 Heather, until September 2008 had been a quiet and dutiful citizen, voting in every election, but not involved in any campaign.
The Perot exception provides a clue to the reason why she, and millions of others like her, are drawn to Palin. Codevilla’s book on The Ruling Class articulated her long held suspicion that the political posturing of the two major parties were in many ways a well choreographed piece of play acting to mask the fact that all the levers of American power are controlled by a self perpetuating elite that only recruits outsiders willing to sustain the masquerade in return for a share of the spoils.
But she believes the USA has now reached a tipping point and, like her fellow Tea Partiers, she pins her faith on the Constitution
We need to restore the checks and balances established at our founding, both within the federal government between the three branches, but more importantly, between the people, the Sovereign States, and the federal government. And the structure is that the most power lies with the people, who then give some power to the States, who then give some power to the Feds. Not the other way around, as it is now, when the Feds put unfunded, unsustainable, and most importantly, unconstitutional, mandates on the States. Remember, the People sent representatives from their States to create the federal government. That is still how the power structure must flow.
And this is the key to her support of Sarah Palin, this is where one gets a glimpse of the fire that drives the astonishing levels of commitment and support for this woman who three years ago appeared, to most of them, from nowhere. She knew nothing of her until McCain’s announcement. But over the next few days two things made a deep impression on Heather Hunt. Palin’s record as Governor of Alaska – and the vitriolic reaction, not just of the liberal media but many of the so-called pillars of the Republican establishment.
That vitriol, however, has served only to strengthen her conviction that Palin would be a transformative President by shaking up DC
Starting in the White House with cutting of staff and personal expenses, thus setting an example of smaller, smarter government from the top. I think that will extend to her cabinet, i.e., no czars, and to federal government agencies that have no constitutional authority, such as Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, the Food and Drug Administration, etc.
However, I expect she’ll prioritize and focus on a few key issues, such as cutting spending, incentivizing energy development, and meeting regularly with members of Congress. IOW, the exact opposite of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama.
Oh. And Priority Number One? Signing the repeal of Obamacare.
Others I spoke with in Chicago echoed all of Heather’s sentiments. They weren’t looking for Joan of Arc but someone who they felt they could trust even when she had to give bad news or things went pear shaped.
Sure they admired Palin for her positions and record. But there was also a feeling that she was a different type of politician in the sense that she appeared to be natural, not artificial or forced, an impression strengthened by the evidence gathered from the recent e mail frenzy which seems to suggest that what you get from Palin is exactly what it says on the tin.
And maybe that is the connection.
As Dan Riehl said in his moving and heartfelt review of “The Undefeated”
Indeed, while Sarah Palin is by far the central character in “The Undefeated”, the film includes insightful, thought provoking commentary from Mark Levin, Tammy Bruce, Andrew Breitbart and a host of others, all undefeated voices of the Right on their own terms. In a sense, they are as much Palin, as she is them, and all of us together comprise, a common sense, genuine, Reagan conservatism.
That reminded me of one of the most compelling moments in the history of film. It’s at the end of “Spartacus” when the Romans have captured the remnants of the rebellious slave army and offer clemency to anyone who betrays Spartacus, the leader of the revolt.
Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) prepares to stand and give himself up when his closest friends rise up at the same moment, each one saying, proudly “I am Spartacus”. Soon hundreds, then thousands of the prisoners do exactly the same – for Spartacus is not just one individual but the eternal idea of man’s fight for freedom.
So it is with Heather Hunt and all the other Palinistas, not just the ones I met in Chicago. They see in Palin a person from a modest background like themselves who has been mocked and demeaned because of that very fact. But, although their attacks drew blood the woman stood her ground and fought back – and every attack, every insult has become an endorsement, a badge of honour.
As someone on a recent Hot Air thread put it
I see this and all I can say is, if those jokers really wanted to get rid of her, they should have just let her go home to Alaska after ’08, finish out her first term, score a second term and stay up there in the wilderness, where she could still be a voice, but little more. But that’s not what they did.
They held her in the flames and stoked them, thinking she would melt and burn, but instead, she became steel. Worse for them, they gave a woman who was already a quick study a full on crash doctorate in the game of national electoral politics.
For their desired purposes they would have been better off if they’d just left her alone. For our sake, I’m glad they didn’t. Game on.
I would wager that it is the support of the thousands, maybe millions of Heather Hunts who have stood by Palin through this fire that has given her the heart and spirit to fight on as they rise alongside her and say
When rock n’roll first hit Britain in the mid 50s it was a purely American phenomenon. We bought the records and argued Presley v Haley in the school corridors but, in general, the media ignored it and the BBC put it on ration.
We could just about tune in to Radio Luxembourg and AFN and hear the latest hits through fades and whistles but that was it.
British record companies tried to market home grown rock n’rollers but they were pale imitations of the US originals and their bands were often made up of older session men who despised the genre.
However in late 1955 Rock Island Line, a skiffle song by the British jazz musician/singer Lonnie Donegan became a massive UK hit without any marketing hype. For a year or two Donegan and other UK skifflers cashed in on the novelty but the true significance of the trend could only be seen at a deeper level.
the main impact of skiffle was as a grassroots amateur movement, particularly popular among working class males, who could cheaply buy, improvise or build their own instruments and who have been seen as reacting against the drab austerity of post-war Britain.
Soon many of these youngsters developed into competent self taught guitarists. They became tired of skiffle’s formulaic structure and saved up to buy electric guitars and extended their repertoire to include covers of American rock n’roll. By the early 60s there was a thriving UK locally based band scene.
At the same time in the wake of the payola scandals in the late 50s the US record companies began pushing teen idols like Frankie Avalon and Fabian who presented a less rebellious, cleaner and more romantic image. The consequence was, when American teenagers tastes began to shift back towards a rawer rougher edged sound British groups like the Beatles and Rolling Stones spearheaded the British invasion, often sounding more authentic than equivalent American bands.
For true grit, however, nothing has ever beaten Eric Burdon and the Animals “House of the Rising Sun” Their version of this old American folk song, recorded in May 1964 hit the top of the US charts in September of that year and it remains a rock classic to this day.
Remember how the BBC regularly hit us hard every day with stories about the arrogance and inefficiency of the Bush presidency? So hard, in fact, that you would have thought we had become the 51st (or, according to Obama, the 58th) state of the union. Also how any mistake made by an officer of the administration was the President’s responsibility?
How times change.
Not much from the Beeb about the Gunrunner scandal involving the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) allowing Mexican drug cartel operatives to buy firearms from US gunshops, ostensibly to track smuggling routes.
Some terribly nasty people say that DoJ Eric Holder, who supervises the ATF was really looking for some juicy soundbites to boost the Obama administration ambition of imposing stricter gun controls in the US.
Dear me – how unchivalrous.
Naturally Holder and Obama knew nothing about Gunrunner – just as, apparently, the BBC knows nothing about Holder and the Black Panthers voter intimidation incident in the 2008 election.
Then there are those Congressional concerns about the legality of America’s involvement in Libya’s civil war. Not much at all apart from this classic from the highly professional and even handed Mark Mardell, highlighted by David Preiser recently at bBBC.
However the US media has been fairly slow to unleash much shoe-leather on both these stories, until recently – and it has been said that the BBC takes all its US cues from the New York Times and Washington Post.
So, whatever the reason we all know that it can’t be because the Beeb is still in the tank for Obama……that can’t possibly be the case…can it?
I don’t care what anybody else says only someone like me, born in 1940 and hitting the most awkward and irritating period of youth between 1954 and 1958 at exactly the same time as the world of music was ripped asunder can truly describe himself as a child of rock and roll.
Recorded in February 1956 in New Orleans and backed by some of the best session men in the city Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally was released one month later.
Richard had been irritated by the pop chart success of Pat Boone’s cover of his 1955 rhythm and blues hit Tutti Frutti so he decided to record a song that would be too fast for Boone to cover.
The result was a sax laden raw, driving 12 bar blues that stayed at the top of the r&b charts for 19 weeks but also broke into the top ten pop chart briefly making Richard, with his wild boogie woogie piano and loud screaming voice one of the hottest names in the exploding genre of rock and roll.
By the end of the fifties Richard and many of the other early rockers faded into the background as the big labels in the US tried to push a less brash, more commercial style towards the teenage market. But by then Richard had left rock and roll behind to become a preacher.
He remained popular in England, however, so when he returned to rock in the early 60s he made several UK tours playing with, amongst others, the then little known Beatles and Rolling Stones. Interestingly enough the Beatles made one of the best covers of Long Tall Sally. Slightly slower and less frantic they nevertheless managed a decent fist of his raw, untutored style – not surprising, really, since he had coached Lennon when they had shared several gigs in Hamburg in 1962 when the Fab 4 were totally unknown.
Interesting factoid
Little Richard (real name Richard Penniman ) has had a roller coaster life with many high and low points. But at the end of the 60s, at the height of the influence of Black Power he defied their demands that he perform only to black audiences – fifteen years after he had caused consternation in many southern towns by attracting white kids to his concerts.
posted by david in Music and have Comments Off on That’s What I Call Rock and Roll – Long Tall Sally (Little Richard) 1956
