Not surprisingly, more rage has been directed this week by the British media at an English historian for what he said than at all the rioters for what they have done.
From the Daily Mail:
Historian David Starkey remained defiant last night after provoking a race storm by claiming the recent riots happened because too many young white people had ‘now become black’.
The broadcaster was branded a racist yesterday after an appearance on Friday night’s Newsnight programme, when he blamed the riots on a ‘violent, destructive and nihilistic’ gang culture, which he said was being embraced by many white and black people.
He stunned his fellow guests on the BBC2 show, writer Owen Jones and black author and broadcaster Dreda Say Mitchell, by placing the blame for the riots squarely with a form of black male culture that he said ‘mitigated against education’. ...
Fellow broadcasters, politicians and members of the public criticised his remarks on Twitter and other social networking sites yesterday, and some even predicted that his television career was now ruined.
Piers Morgan, the chat-show host and Mail on Sunday columnist [a judge on America's Got Talent on this side of the pond, and author of three volumes of his own memoirs], tweeted: ‘RIP David Starkey’s TV career. And good riddance. Racist idiot.’ ...
In a surprise move, the BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston, joined the chorus of disapproval, tweeting: ‘David Starkey’s nasty ignorance is best ignored not worthy of comment or debate.’ As a BBC employee, Mr Peston would normally be expected to be impartial about the channel’s output. ...
Dr Starkey last night denied he had said anything racist and said he stood by his comments, reiterating that in times of economic and political crisis, ‘plain speaking’ was needed.
He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I said until I was blue in the face on the programme that I was not talking about skin colour but gang culture. A large group of whites have started to behave like blacks. I think that is the most unracial remark anyone can make.’
Dr Starkey caused further outrage on Newsnight by claiming that if people listened to David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, on the radio, they would assume he was white.
He added last night: ‘David Lammy does sound white, so does [MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington] Diane Abbott, because they’ve had a white cultural experience. It’s one of the reasons they don’t have any street credibility. They have no contact with the young.’
In an obvious reference to the phone-hacking scandal, Dr Starkey said that critics like Piers Morgan should concentrate on ‘their own legal difficulties’.
Posts
58 comments:
... reiterating that in times of economic and political crisis, ‘plain speaking’ was needed.
Wish I could do more to support this guy.
This guy sounds like he's not backing down. Let's hope it lasts. He could become a real hero to the sizeable minority of Britons who feel they can't voice their opinions.
"Wish I could do more to support this guy."
Agreed. Ideas? I've already asked CNN to drop Piers Morgan--big deal, I know.
Maybe he is a reader and took your advice not to apologize.
Add a comment to the Daily Mail.
rightsaidfred said...
Wish I could do more to support this guy.
You can always buy one of his books.
B.B.
Good for him. I wish Americans had intellectuals with that type of backbone.
Piers Morgan is an imbecile. We should deport him back to Britain.
"A large group of whites have started to behave like blacks. I think that is the most unracial remark anyone can make."
I understand the point he's making, but he's really terrible at phrasing that argument.
Two words: Ali G.
We are creeping toward the new racial culture of no more Mr Nice Guy. Absolute explosion of white racial consciousness is dead ahead. But not among Boomers. History shows that generational groupings take their sacred cows to the grave. They must physically pass from the scene before their nonsense dies out. That means twenty more years of significant but dwindling control of the culture. The rebellion against the boomer retirement funding requirements is going to get nasty and will stoke the resentment of Boomer values in general.
The guy is toast. He's over. And no, its not Boomers behind Racial PC. It is ... White women.
Look at "the Help." By God, do you think any straight guy would see that movie? You could not have a more significant cultural arrow pointing towards the major mover of PC, idealization of Blacks, anti-White guy sentiment, than that movie (or really any TV advertising).
PC is an expression of power. Social, cultural, and financial power by THE most important consumer group out there -- White women. Look at all the commercials with Blacks (at around 12% of the population, about 60% of that urban core/poor). Not aimed at Blacks, but White women. The extraordinary power wielded by White women in the commercial/consumer area is good in many ways (greater wealth is reflected) BUT ... every good thing has a downside:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H4MACTVk0g&feature=relmfu
Starkey is toast. White women won't tolerate any criticism of Blacks. Its why Oprah is so rich.
...Mr Peston would normally be expected to be impartial about the channel’s output.
I can't believe they actually wrote that. Certainly anyone who reads the BBC web site knows that, as an organization, they are not "impartial".
Most interesting amongst the criticism was perhaps that of former political editor Andrew Marr...He said the BBC was “a publicly-funded urban organisation with an abnormally large proportion of younger people, of people in ethnic minorities and almost certainly of gay people, compared with the population at large” all of which “creates an innate liberal bias inside the BBC.”
To support Starkey:
1) Send Starkey himself a supportive email
2) Find the emails or Twitter accounts of those attacking or criticizing him and get in their face relentlessly. Leftists quickly back down if they perceive that a mass of people is just as angry with them as they feign to be with Starkey. 5-10 dedicated accounts on Twitter ganging up on any leftists (RT'ing their past tweets, mocking and jeering them) will really surprise and dismay them, because they're bullies who don't expect targets to fight back. Make it such that trending topics for Starkey is at least 50/50 pro Starkey.
3) Get on the Telegraph and other comments sections and vote up the realist comments, and vote down the leftists
The point is to show strength in numbers. This particular internet debate really is serious business.
" Absolute explosion of white racial consciousness is dead ahead. But not among Boomers."
Not among the majority of them, certainly. It was my misfortune to be born into a cohort of smug, smarmy idiots. I've hated every decade from the 60s on and have spent most of my life wishing myself elsewhere. (I'm sure my non-fans join me in that. Not that I care about the opinions of anyone too stupid to shoot, which is at least 95% of the Boomers whose proximity I've had to tolerate.)
"History shows that generational groupings take their sacred cows to the grave."
They can't do it fast enough to suit me. I hope they take their fashions, music and causes with them, too. What a bunch of mugs.
"We are creeping toward the new racial culture of no more Mr Nice Guy. Absolute explosion of white racial consciousness is dead ahead. But not among Boomers."
The Obama presidency is the Dinkins mayoralty writ nationally. New Yorkers elected Dinkins for some of the same reasons Americans elected Obama -- the hope that a well spoken, educated black leader would inspire better behavior by the black underclass (there were of course other reasons why Obama was elected, but this was a common refrain among white liberals, albeit phrased a little more delicately).
Now everyone knows better.
I recently finished watching the excellent documentary series that features him, Channel 4's Monarchy. In it, he's unrepentantly pro-British, claiming them a bunch of firsts from things like the first "democratic" kingship, even from the 11th century (!), to the first modern system of government in Edward II's Parliament. At first, I was skeptical of those Whiggish sounding claims, in fact I'd have to say I'm still fairly skeptical now, but the force with which he waxes rhapsodic over the history of his country, the sheer passion with which he speaks, convinced me at least while watching that there was something truly modern about English history and government, even in the Dark Ages. Indeed, having seen the series, he doesn't whatsoever strike me at the sort of man to back down from a publicly given opinion, especially on an event that seems to indict Britain's decline. Good for him.
Let me see....
When relatively nicer young blacks try to 'act white'(do well in school and go to college)but are beaten up by other blacks, that is a bad thing. So, MSM tells us.
So, the liberal white dream is for more blacks to act 'clean-cut' and 'nice' aka white... like Obama, which is why libs wet their pants over him.
Using this logic--and the neo-rabbit-proof fence method of reaching/teaching inner-city kids--, blacks need to stop acting black since black culture is decrepit, and black kids need to raised with white values.
BUT, if white kids act black and ruin their lives--and their communities as in UK--, that is not to be condemned.
I'm really confused.
Liberals say more blacks need to act white in order to succeed.
Logically, that would mean whites should not act black ince acting black means acting crazy, leading to failure.
But when whites do act black, we are not supposed to call it out as 'black', nor are we supposed to condemn it as pathological. Liberal logic is really something else.
I will say this though...
It's too convenient to lay the blame entirely on blacks. British punk culture and soccer hooliganism were examples of white degeneracy. May 68 was a white thing too.
And look at Vancouver. Whites don't need to emulate blacks to act like lunatics--though emlating blacks do make things worse.
I wonder to what extent this issue is a gay vs black thing. Gays are often intimidated by machismo and thuggery--though there is a section of machomo culture with leather, nazi regalia, etc.
Gays such as Starkey prefer things to be tidy, orderly, neat, elegant, etc(though, I must say, Starkey has a bigger pair of balls than most straight whites today). They don't like rap culture with ugly clothes, dress codes, vulgar signs, savage noise, and macho-thuggery--much of which rants against 'faggots'.
He prolly loves Merry(and fairy)old England, but the arrival of ruffian blacks have made the streets and culture less fairy-friendly. Instead of poetry reading, kids are into rap-growling. Instead of cricket, kids are running with baseball bats to smash stuff.
Gays are also very aesthetic about things. Though politically on the left--and part of the cultural vanguard--, lots of gays are also into classical art, cultural tradition, continuity, preservation of aristocratic manners, and etc. Take Noel Coward: gay but gentlemanly and fastidious. I think the American composer Cole Porter was half-gay and he too composed nice little songs. And in rock, gay stuff--Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode--tend to be subtler and gentler.
Historically, even straight Englishmen came to adopt a kind of effeminate style as refined, civilized, and sophisticated. T.S. Eliot was not gay but he was very prim and proper, with tea and crumpets and all that stuff.
So, gay sensibility of Britain can't find much to love in hang-low-baggy pants thuggery of rap.
There is a gay vs black tension in the US too--despite the political alliance. Tracy Morgan and NBA players got in trouble for saying anti-gay stuff. Rap is notoriously anti-gay. In fact, rap has nothing good to say about any hint of gentleness among males. Indeed, one way black people put down white rock and country music is by saying that stuff is 'faggoty'. And gays are more likely to get beat up in the black community than even in a white conservative one. (It wasn't always so. Blacks used to like guys like Smokey Robinson and Michael Jackson at one time.)
So, lemme see...
according to liberals,
blacks such as Tracy Morgan should be hounded for insulting gayness as something negative.
And gays such as Starkey should be hounded for insulting blackness as something negative.
It's the liberal wetdream of the holy alliance of Ebony and Fairy, but the problem is there are some serious rifts there.
Muscular gays in leather are still pretty effeminate and do the look to get attention. More like women with implants than hip hop hoodlums or guidos.
Oh, come on, people!
If Starkey had said that the problem is that a portion of white youths have been influenced by the gangsta culta popularized by a school of rap that originated in poor black California neighbourhoods (gangsta rap) and certain sections of (obviously black) Jamaican society, nobody would have minded.
But he chose not to say that. He said that the problem is that "the whites have become black", thereby equating blacks with crime and whites with law-abidingness, which is obviously false.
The friendly interpretation of that is that "he's really terrible at phrasing that argument", as TGGP puts it above. A more reasonable interpretation is that he just plain doesn't like black people and thought that now was the time to let everybody know.
It is entirely appropriate that people get hot under the collar about statements like that. But no, of course he is a Defender of Truth and the reaction shows that You're Not Allowed to Speak Your Mind, etc., etc. Get real, people.
If Starkey toughs it out he'll be ok. As we know, it's when they break down and apologise that they are ruined, because an apology is taken as an admission of guilt.
LemmusLemmus: Did you have a point?
Gilbert P.
Simon, how tough is it for a politically incorrect intellectual to keep his job in Britain? My sense is that British society is more tolerant of politically incorrect views (on race/immigration/culture at least) than America.
I hope people step forward and support him. He's a patriot and I wish we had people like this in the United States.
In a world full of bastards like Tony Blair, George Bush, and Rahm Emamnuel.... David Starkey is what you Brits would call a "good chap."
David Starky's comment reminds me of what Thomas Sowell argued well in his book "Black Red Necks and White Liberals".
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1594031436/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1313323079&sr=8-11
Ann Counter never apologizes and she is thriving, unlike James Watson, Trent Lott, Michael Richards, or Don Imus.
LemmusLemmus: Did you have a point?
I think he did; his point is that Starkey's word choice was very poor. In his own smart-ass manner, LemmusLemmus said in better way, i.e. less apt to be sensationalized, what Starkey meant. But he didn't get it entirely right:
...which is obviously false.
Not really, in the 'what Starkey actually meant' sense: Blacks are disproportionately criminal, and too many Whites now exist in the same milieu that's associated with black criminality.
It's worth saying that the people condemning Starkey also know what he meant. They also know that he's right. Which makes their opportunistic hypocrisy -- trying to score PC points by bashing him -- all the more contemptible.
Not all Boomers accept the standard PC-integrationist view of race. Certainly not the group I grew up among.
Anon:
"Simon, how tough is it for a politically incorrect intellectual to keep his job in Britain? My sense is that British society is more tolerant of politically incorrect views (on race/immigration/culture at least) than America.
I hope people step forward and support him. He's a patriot and I wish we had people like this in the United States.
In a world full of bastards like Tony Blair, George Bush, and Rahm Emamnuel.... David Starkey is what you Brits would call a "good chap.""
Funnily enough, I happen to know (via a cousin who worked for him) that personally Starkey is not a nice guy at all - that's probably why he's got the guts to stand up for himself! But he's certainly a patriot.
I would agree that Britain is less intolerant of politically correct views than is the US. The crust of genuine PC-adherents is much thinner than in the US, largely confined to the metropolitan elite and parts of the state sector lumpen-intelligentsia (eg most teachers).
For instance Whiskey's claim above that Starkey is toast because of 'white women' might make some sense in a US context, but in the UK the Daily Mail is the mainstream white woman's paper. Most English women don't feel any particular need to abase themselves before blacks.
That said, women do show greater sensitivity than men to the dominant cultural paradigm, IME they are more likely to go with what's 'fashionable', whether that's Thatcherism or New Labour etc.
The riots were a game changer. The decent majority of this country has moved on. If what David Starkey said was racist, then so are we all.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100100911/if-david-starkey-is-racist-then-so-is-everybody/
'"A large group of whites have started to behave like blacks. I think that is the most unracial remark anyone can make.’ '
He does have a point here.
I wouldn't mind these studies in culture vs race if they were to compare something other than relative criminality.
"My sense is that British society is more tolerant of politically incorrect views (on race/immigration/culture at least) than America."
No, saying wrong thing is illegal in UK. It's a 'hate crime'.
"He said that the problem is that 'the whites have become black', thereby equating blacks with crime and whites with law-abidingness, which is obviously false."
But if he had said Englishmen have become 'Russian', meaning corrupt and disdainful of the law, there would have been no problem.
Or, if he had said Englishmen have become 'German' or 'Prussian', to suggest they've become mechanical, overly anal, and authoritarian, there would have been no problem.
Problem only occurs when you equate blackness and Jewishness with negative stuff.
Btw, if you believe casting negativity on blackness as a whole is wrong, would you say it's also wrong to cast positivity as a whole on blacks? But Afrophilia is not only tolerated, it's encouraged. Bono and his ilk would have us believe all those Africans are wonderful salt of the earth.
Where was the Left when Susan Sontag said stuff like 'white people are the cancer of humanity'?
Where were white liberals when Tim Wise denigrated the entire Greatest Generation?
How come Richard Dawkins gets to trash ALL religious people but keep his career?
How come affirmative action penalizes ALL white people when many whites in American don't have ancstors who owned black slaves? And even ones that did were born long after end of slavery.
And why is it okay to say the Muslim world, on the whole, has a problem. Christopher Hitchens never lost his job for saying so.
On the whole, there is a problem in the black community as a whole. It doesn't mean every black person; it means what mainly passes for black culture. Why can't people say this?
NY Times says white southerners as a whole have a problem with 'racism'.
Jews say Poles, as a people, have a problem with antisemitism.
Feminists often bitch about all men.
Leftists whine about 'dead white males' being 'racist', 'sexist', and 'patriarchal'.
Black people openly denigrate blacks who act white as 'oreo' race traitors.
Black people often say 'white people are like this', 'white people are like that'.
So, the real problem is liberals have been raised to see blacks as a saintly holy race when, in fact, there is a rottenness in the wholeness of contemporary black culture.
Btw, if Starkey had said rap culture instead of black culture, I'm sure a whole bunch of liberals would have said, 'BUT NOT ALL OF RAP CULTURE IS CRIMINAL AND THUG-ORIENTED AND BLAH BLAH. SOME RAPPERS SINCE ABOUT PEACE AND DRESS DECENTLY.' They play this game forever.
British liberals... from whigs to whiggers.
LemmusLemmus: Did you have a point?
Yeah, I was scratching my head and wondering whether maybe he was being sarcastic [or facetious?].
"So, gay sensibility of Britain can't find much to love in hang-low-baggy pants thuggery of rap."
For God sakes, what a stupid comment. "Straight sensibility" of America "can't find much to love in hang-low-baggy pants thuggery of rap."
I've got my problems with much of the SanFran gay urban culture living as I do in the area, but to suggest that it takes "gay sensibilities" to react as Starkey does is fatuous.
"Muscular gays ....More like women with implants than hip hop hoodlums or guidos."
I gotta admit--that's the best description of that subset that I've ever come across.
"But he chose not to say that. He said that the problem is that "the whites have become black", thereby equating blacks with crime and whites with law-abidingness, which is obviously false."
Not so-visit any non-elite CA high school. Because the education establishment is going crazy trying to "close the gap" and because any serious attempt to make the schools hospitable to learning by removing kids with horrid behavior is met with howls and law suit threats from the NAACP, the establishment folds and the thuggishness of that group--yes, blacks--grows even more thuggish.
Seriously, visit the schools. Spend some hours walking the halls, going into classes, visiting the cafeteria. It's all there on display for you unless your lying eyes refuse to see.
"In a world full of bastards like Tony Blair, George Bush, and Rahm Emamnuel.... David Starkey is what you Brits would call a 'good chap.'"
What? No mention of Obama? And his Cambridge cop "overreaction"?
Meh, maybe "bastard" is too tough a word for the irrelevant Prez, come to think of it. No one's listening to him and his blather anymore.
TGGP said...
"A large group of whites have started to behave like blacks. I think that is the most unracial remark anyone can make."
I understand the point he's making, but he's really terrible at phrasing that argument.
So how do you phrase that argument, TGGP? Tell us. Post it here.
//////////////
To the Komment Kontrol Krybaby:
Get your own damned blog.
I wonder to what extent this issue is a gay vs black thing.
Huh?
Gays are often intimidated by machismo and thuggery
As opposed to straight people who just adore thuggery and looting and vandalism? Seriously, WTF?
gays are more likely to get beat up in the black community than even in a white conservative one.
Dear God, you're stupid. Just shut up already.
Muscular gays in leather are still pretty effeminate
Why don't you walk up to one and tell him that, dumb-ass?
I get the impression that the typical ISteve reader knows as much about blacks, gays, etc as he has been able to glean from watching TV.
(in the case of Whiskey, this comment can be expanded to include women)
Anon 9:12 AM:
The main point of my post was to challenge our host's interpretation: Mr. Sailer thinks that the reaction was because David Starkey spoke a truth that's deemed unacceptable, and I disagree with that interpretation.
You seem to have me pegged as some U.S. lefty; I'm neither and I don't see why I should defend affirmative action at Harvard or what Susan Sonntag said.
You raise the point that some groups are deemed "worth protecting", while others are not. I agree that that's a problem.
Thing is, David Starkey knows that, of course. I've watched the clip twice, and whatever one thinks of his remarks, it is obvious that the man is intelligent and eloquent. Also, he had laid out what he was going to say. He knew what he was doing.
If you haven't actually seen a recording of the show, hats off: He did mention rap, and you described the reaction almost perfectly. It was pointed out that rap lyrics are quite diverse. That's correct, of course. If you don't want to run into that defense, simply say "gangsta rap", because if it's not misogynist and glorifies violence and crass materialism, then pretty much by definition it's not gangsta rap.
Anon 10:05 AM:
I don't really see how California schools fit into an argument about the proper interpretation of what Brits said about another Brit's statement. If you're saying that there are no influences on people's behaviour other than race, I would disagree with that.
On the whole, there is a problem in the black community as a whole. It doesn't mean every black person; it means what mainly passes for black culture. Why can't people say this?
Actually, a black guy said this to me in Berkeley in '96. A fight broke out in a basketball game, and guy next to me goes, "black people are messed up, man."
Not all Boomers accept the standard PC-integrationist view of race. Certainly not the group I grew up among.
The 60s fucked the Boomers all up.
For instance Whiskey's claim above that Starkey is toast because of 'white women' might make some sense in a US context, but in the UK the Daily Mail is the mainstream white woman's paper. Most English women don't feel any particular need to abase themselves before blacks.
Nope. It's an either-or thing. Whiskey's stuff is "in the blood." Human nature. Written into the genes. Otherwise he's just describing cultural factors and that's not at all the impression I get. He can correct me if I'm wrong. But if I am, that brings cultural programming, social engineering, and the power of the media into the argument and my impression is those are Whiskey's Kryptonite. That's why he concocted his grand theories in the first place - to protect the disproportionately Ashkenazi American media and culture-creating elite from criticism.
Most of the muscular gays are on steroids.
What? No mention of Obama? And his Cambridge cop "overreaction"?
Meh, maybe "bastard" is too tough a word for the irrelevant Prez, come to think of it. No one's listening to him and his blather anymore.
Barack Obama is pretty irrelevant at this point. There are forces more powerful than him that drive what happens in Washington DC. The man came in with a lot of hype and ambition to do something, but now he's just filling a seat.
I actually sorta felt sorry for the guy after AIPAC and Netanyahu slapped him around a few months ago... while the Democrats competed with the Republicans to see who could outapplaud Netanyahu's speech.
Really I think Obama just seems tired and weary. So I lay off the poor old chap.
Why don't you walk up to one and tell him that, dumb-ass?
I get the impression that the typical ISteve reader knows as much about blacks, gays, etc as he has been able to glean from watching TV.
If a gay guy dresses up in leather and a skin tight pink thong, then shakes his booty everywhere during the gay pride parade.... he's effeminate. Doesn't matter how much muscle he has. Gays, like women, are highly exhibionistic and and narcissitic.
The scarcity of gays in professional sports is a good indicator of their feminine side. The muscles they build are not to look tough tough or macho, but to pick up men. That's a reality.
Piers Morgan is an imbecile. We should deport him back to Britain.
No please dont, we dont want him back.
Anon said - Liberals say more blacks need to act white in order to succeed.
WEll yes and no. Mostly they pretend that there are no differences.
This last week has been a rolling MSM denial that there are any differences.
"Gays are often intimidated by machismo and thuggery
As opposed to straight people who just adore thuggery and looting and vandalism? Seriously, WTF?
gays are more likely to get beat up in the black community than even in a white conservative one.
Dear God, you're stupid. Just shut up already."
Chortle..chortle!
LemmusLemmus: "Thing is, David Starkey knows that, of course. I've watched the clip twice, and whatever one thinks of his remarks, it is obvious that the man is intelligent and eloquent. Also, he had laid out what he was going to say. He knew what he was doing."
I think you may be suggesting that Starkey is a race realist. That doesn't count as a 'gotcha' around here.
Gilbert P.
It's a bit disgusting that a 66-year-old man with his career on the line just stood up to the entire politically correct infrastructure on British television and the most you idiots can do is start bashing gays.
No wonder conservatives keep losing. Get a clue. Starkey can screw his boyfriend on the floor of my living room, for all I care. The man is a hero.
Good for him and standing up for himself. He's a man's man. Real men stand by their truly held beliefs and don't get shouted or bullied down.
"gays are more likely to get beat up in the black community than even in a white conservative one."
*Everyone* is more likely to get beat up in the black community than even in a white conservative one. Most certainly including blacks.
"The 60s fucked the Boomers all up."
A goodly portion of the Boomers were barely (or not even) teens when the 60s ended.
"The man came in with a lot of hype and ambition to do something, but now he's just filling a seat."
No. He came in full cooperation and had been chosen many years earlier. His only ambition was to denigrate America according to globalist plans--for some reason he hated rthe U.S. even as he milked it for all it was worth.In short: blacks need whites; whites don't need blacks. That psychology is going on in Obama, at a political level and exacerbated by a weird background. It breeds hate.
Obama wasn't elected; like all presidents in recent decades,he was annointed. These things are NEVER left to chance--presidents are selected and B.O. was involved in CIA activities for years. His apparent invisibility at Columbia (hired investigators proved in NY court in May 2009, that he was never a student there) was due to activities in Pakistan where he traveled on an Indonesian passport. He knew exactly what was going on and got money and prestige in return. He doesn't create any policy or do much of anything now (I think he's proven to be even more inept and incapable than the handlers had expected; even Bush II kept up a better front) except read from a teleprompter, make idiotic statements about the Israeli situation, watch basketball and party on the taxpayers' dime. He doesn't have a bad deal. I think their getting tired of trying to cover for him though. Must be exhausting, he and his 57 states. His Atty Holder who only works for "his people." Eew what a nightmare crew. He says this about the country to which he, a Jamaican mixed-race, owes his entire success? They are natural dictators more so than any people on earth. In Africa, whole villages are slaughtered and torched if they don't vote for the man with the most power. It happens all the time.
You want to feel sorry for anybody, feel sorry for the people getting sent to foreign wars. While he doesn't have much power in starting or stopping them, he doesn't give a damn either. But really, only presidents who have been soldiers themselves care as a rule. He's just even more smirky than most for even less reason.
Feel sorry for this deliberate liar?
Obama would just as leave eat you as an appetizer.
Morgan is a hateful character, a known phone hacker, disseminator of obviously forged photographs designed to damage the British military, crooked dealer in shares and a fantasist whose memoirs are full of fabricated material designed to make him look like a friend of the rich and famous (very few of whom can stand to be in the same room as him, I suspect). He is repulsively smug, and essentially a joke figure these days. Peston is a BBC correspondent of some substance but can come across as a self-important buffoon. He is not paid to opine on social affairs or racial politics so I doubt many people will take his pronouncements seriously.
Starkey himself might be described as a blowhard - he is deliberately abrasive and usually gets into at least one bitch-fight per television appearance. Sometimes he expresses strong views merely to cause trouble and get attention (though not in this instance). Don't praise him too highly - on economic matters he sometimes sounds like a heartless neo-liberal to whom people are mere units and national borders an irrelevance. Though I've not heard him express these views for a few years so perhaps he no longer holds them.
I'm confident he will survive this episode and prosper from it - he is "box office" and I don't think this will reduce demand for him on the tv at all. Being gay and now quite old probably shields him a little bit from criticism, but he doesn't make a big deal of his sexuality and it is rarely commented on.
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