Following Hugh’s post on the ‘redneck’ item – I listened on the weekend to the views of that people’s tribune Liz Forgan (Benenden and Oxford) on Any Questions.
Ms Forgan’s career took her from the Guardian to Channel Four and then to the BBC, where she was MD of BBC Network Radio. When she left the BBC she became a Guardian columnist and is now chair of the Scott Trust, owners of the Guardian. Do we see a pattern here ?
Let Ms Forgan speak for herself. Apologies for the illiterate transcriber (I found ‘roons’ for ‘runes’, ‘principle’ for ‘principal’ and ‘electrics’ for ‘electorates’).
On Charles Clarke’s attacking Gordon Brown’s premiership :
“Charles has nothing to lose, he thinks he can do that and encourage real debate in the Party. Unfortunately the consequences of his doing so has been absolutely a lead balloon. Everyone is still under the table, with the tablecloth pulled around their ears …”
On male and female equality :
You know you have a vision of a progressive struggle towards a sensible disposition of society and its work and when people choose to roll backwards from that it makes me really very sad … the problem is not women, it is men … and I think that although it is illegal to ask a woman who applies for a job are you intending to have children and what are you going to do about them I actually think we should legislate to compel employers to ask men when they apply for a job do you have children and what is your intention to look after them.
And on Sarah Palin :
I have been a card-carrying feminist for 40 years and this woman has found somewhere in me a little kernel of sexism. She causes me to make a failure of sisterhood. Sorry Charlie but I cannot stand her candy coated philistinism, I hate her crass creationism, I loath her parading of her family about the place, God forgive me I even hate her teenage hair … I do really fear the fact that she touches something deep in America, something real in America I agree with you about that and that makes me very afraid and the only solution I can see to it is that the principal governors of super powers should be elected by global electorates … There is a ray of hope. History shows that people who arrive with a stock in trade of being pure, innocent and untouched by civilisation often end up having terrible skeletons in their cupboards. And I am really hopeful that the dreadful hacks will find them out.
Ms Forgan, as we’ve seen above, thinks of herself as a left-winger and a feminist. Par for the BBC course. But what we’re hearing there isn’t just hatred of Sarah Palin’s politics. What comes over strongly is hatred of Sarah Palin’s class. An upper-class liberal looks down on a hick from the sticks. God, have you seen her hair ?
Once, within living memory, the Left used to have something of a bias in favour of ‘ordinary people’. Whatever happened to it ?
(Much of the US liberal media shares Ms Forgan’s dismay. The phenomenon’s neatly summarised in this Clive Crook FT piece)
I think all politicians should have their hairdresser vetted by the Guardian before being allowed to stand for power in any other country…
Her comments about Palin’s hair was indeed a jaw dropping moment. If that had been said by a man they’d be up before the judge by now.
What they cannot stand is a woman who has got to the top without riding on her husbands coat-tails (Hillary who)
Going to be pretty funny come november.
Had an interesting little insight into Forgan the gorgon when I called at her place to pick something up. Her unfortunate male lackey was subjected to a ferocious tongue-lashing for not jumping to quick enough. What a charmless harridan!
The left always betrays those it claims to represent.
Champagne socialists never represented the working class and never will. They are people who never rebeled when they were teenagers.
If women, black people or immigrants think the beeb represents you, think again.
Remember, disabled people should be aborted, especially if profiling shows they might turn out republican.
Didn’t they burn cranky old bats like her at the stake a few hundred years ago?
As I pointed out over the weekend, Forgan has been given a nice lucrative sinecure by her fellow class warriors in ZaNuLabour – she’s running the ‘Heritage Lottery Fund’.
Another Marxist who won’t be worrying too much about the price of gas this winter.
Gosh, what a nice woman. She really makes me want to re-examine my views and consider socialism.
And she worked for the BBC, you say? Just shows what fine, upstanding, decent people they all are.
If you want condescension, just mention Margaret Thatcher to a Beeboid.
Sam Duncan writes: “And she worked for the BBC, you say? Just shows what fine, upstanding, decent people they all are.”
She was the former MD of BBC Radio. Which explains rather a lot, doesn’t it?
Sorry – not ‘was’ the former MD. Is the former MD.
LIZ ‘Guardian-BBC-Guardian’ FORGAN, is already propagandising her latest UK ‘multicultural’ project in:
“Liz Forgan to chair Cultural Oympiad’s Stories of the World Project”
[Extract, from official source]:
“The Cultural Olympiad will celebrate diverse cultures across the UK and will start over the weekend of 26-28 September 2008, running right through to the end of the Games in 2012.”
There’s the political left’s magic phrase ‘DIVERSE CULTURES’, which is code for cultural relativism, code for relegation of British indigenous culture, code for promoting mass immigration into the UK.
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART57780.html
I was discussing this with my American friends and we were recalling the last election when Pinter, ‘Lady’ Fraser and there lefty cohorts called up some voters in Middle Ameica to tell to vote for Kerry.
Forgan is EXACTLY the type of English upper middle class snotty lefty bitch that Americans despise.
My friends weave between outrage that these fools dare to say such things and laughing so hard that they are in danger of blowing a kidney.
Do these people have any idea how ridiculous they appear in American eyes?
Forgan’s views are not important. Let’s face it, she made her name as a senior employee of a corporation which has the mass manufacture of trash entertainment as its main business. Of course trash entertainment is a saleable commodity, but then so are alcopops, burgers, porn mags and cigarettes, and we don’t see people on Question Time who made their name in these other sordid business areas.
Hey, stop ragging on burgers and porn mags. You don’t know what you’re saying.
And so the BBC’s casual political bias it goes on: cheeky chappie Eddie Mair of Radio 4 ‘PM’ has just repeated, without criticism, some of Russell Brand’s insults to President Bush, made on TV in the USA; Mair didn’t bother to mention BBC’s Brand advocacy of Obama again. No, the BBC does not apologise for Brand’s insults and propaganda in America: it’s just a joke to Mair. A pro-Democrat joke, that is. (You can get it on i-Player; time of item: about 5:20 pm UK time today.)
I do really fear the fact that she touches something deep in America
This is the key sentence. She hates America and fears that the real America will chose Palin
Tell your American friends! Alert as many Americans as you can to the disgusting BBC!
Forgan is just another jealous left-wing bitch.
Forgan thinks she is superior to Palin. Left wingers all consider themselves superior, it is part of the definition of ‘Left Wing’ SUPERIOR ACADEMICS. Only left wingers can criticize others. Do it to them and its bias, racist or what ever else they can think of.
Forgan is not superior to anyone. She was head of BBC radio, which is mainly a broadcaster of pop music to teenagers of all ages. Big deal.
A caller to the feedback program after the Saturday repeat on radio 4, attempted to redress her tirade but was put down by commissar Dimbleby.
Another caller attempted to pun on female canine regarding Palin and was allowed to repeat the joke twice ! whilst commissar Dimbleby obviously embarrassed wallowed in dead air !
Where is the editorial control? They knew this joke was going to be made.
300 million people will exercise their god given democratic right in the forthcoming election.Some may even vote for the Negro messiah.
Unlike China and India/Pakistan where theocratic serfdom,patriarchy and illiteracy skew the results.
I have noticed that the Democrats and their leftist/socialist media agitators are pushing the fact that Palin doesnt believe in AGW/MMCC quite often now.
What they fail to realise(and its so obvious to normal people)is that every time they do this the Republican support gains thousands more votes!
The leftists/Democrat AGW/MMCC believers have had an unopposed stranglehold on media propaganda for so long that they actually believe that the majority of voters believe in global warming too, this is a perfect example of how detached they are from reality!
Most ordinary people(the actual US voter)dont buy the warmist/alarmist claptrap anymore, most people are starting to see the ecomentalist scam for what it really is.
I hope the Deomocrats keep on bringing up Palins stand on the issue so central and dear to the hearts of the socialist leftist democrat elite, its almost as if because they believe in something enough then the ordinary masses will believe it too? Mind you the ecomentalists have had a media monopoly for years to spread their lies but all the media in the world cannot stop the cooling planet can it? That is why the leftists will fail in their attempted sabotage of the western world!
Ah c’mon guys.
Muzz Forgan is an inter-leck-chal, like all Lefties.
They’re nicer and cleverer than us Rednecks.
I’ve just checked out Liz Forgan’s hair. Reckon a barber did that mop.
The BBC keep wnaking on about Scandal with Palin, but fo rall the hot air, there isn’t a lot around is there?
However, lets talk about Osama. Plenty of smelly stuff surrounding him, but of course the BBC wouldn’t dare investigate him would they?
Love the newspeak “ordinary people”. Leader of Unite used it four times in as many minutes in an interview. There used to refer unashamedly to the “Working Class” but those people don’t work any more, and those that do work don’t fit the marxist model, so now its “ordinary people” who need help, who are the victims of whatever.
Who exactly isn’t “ordinary” I wonder? Liz Forgan Beneden and Oxford,for a start. Card -carrying feminist for forty years, = I have long lost the ability to think. Pick a card, any card…
Sarah Palin is (going to be) guilty of two offences against the sensibilities of lefty elitists (yes, I know it’s a tautology).
As a direct result of her impertinence in daring to allow herself to become the Veep as a Republican she will not only preclude a Democrat from being the first woman VP and, later, President but also stop the possibility that the democrats would have the first black Pres.
A notable double whammy.
I still cherish the fury of the oh-so-enlightened socialists that the party of feminism was beaten to the punch by those reactionary Tory neanderthals in providing the first female Prime Minister. The fact that she so comprehensively stuck it to the socialists thereafter was the cherry on the top.
I think the coke-sniffers and shirt-lifters at the BBC love Obama because they assume that, as he has black skin, he is, how should I put it, “well-endowed”, if you know what I mean.
I can’t think of any other reason.
Variations on a theme, which seems to relate to the political attitudes of many Beeboids/Guardianistas, and seems relevant to air, as 9/11 draws near:
“Fatuous leftism: some of the hostile responses to Andrew Anthony’s book exemplified the very attitudes the author aimed to expose” (Bella Thomas).
[Extract]:
“Anthony’s book is framed by two triggers which forced him to confront himself. The first, 9/11, revealed the staggering silliness of many of his colleagues and mentors in their ‘US had it coming’ responses. Of course, the ‘process of changing one’s mind is seldom a conversion of Damascene rapidity. There’s usually too much intellectual pride, and too much social or professional investment suddenly to dispatch long-held ideas to the conceptual waste bin.’ But by the time of the Danish cartoons affair (the second trigger), the feeling had sufficiently distilled for him to resolve that it was necessary to write a confession of how he shed guilt and assumed realism.”
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9938
“Sorry Charlie but I CANNOT STAND her candy-coated philistinism, I HATE her crass creationism, I LOATH her parading of her family about the place, God forgive me I even HATE her teenage hair (APPLAUSE)”
hate hate hate.
that is what the left do.
just look at the left’s reaction to Sarah Palin.
someone ,if i dont – get that quote over to Hugh Hewitt or Denis Prager. they’ll love it. this is PRECISELY what those guys having been saying about the left for YEARS…
Re: Liz Forgan:
Back in 1990, at which time the Guardian kept the names of those who sat on its its unique journalist-dominated board, the Scott Trust, very much to itself, three peers (Baroness Cox plus two former broadcasters: Lord Wyatt of Weeford and Lord Orr-Ewing) introduced an amendment to the then 1990 Broadcasting Bill in order to strengthen the legal requirement for broadcasters to exhibit “due impartiality” in the reporting of political controversies.
The three peers claimed that the then current law was inadequate, and that broadcasters routinely flouted it by omitting viewpoints and facts that favoured the conservative perspective.
To prevent such bias by omission, they came up with a form of words for a new clause for the new broadcasting code, the ITC Code (to be implemented by the forthcoming new regulator, the ITC) which would make inclusiveness a legal requirement.
The new clause required, of commercial broadcasters:
In dealing with major matters of controversy, licensees must ensure that justice is done to a full range of significant views and perspectives during the period in which the controversy is active.
This precise wording would make it difficult for broadcasters to omit significant perspectives without risking complaints and Judicial Review.
The Left, which enjoyed their ability to ignore views and facts they didn’t like, just like they do now, recoiled in utter horror. A campaign of opposition began, led by Liz Forgan and championed by the Guardian.
The Guardian gave full voice to the Forgan-led “independent” opposition to the new clause at every opportunity, including the MediaGuardian Edinburgh TV Festival, which she and her ilk characterised as ‘censorship’ of broadcasters (i.e. the opposite of what it really was • the outlawing of broadcasters’ censorship).
In the event, the clause passed into law: not that it mattered, for broadcasters blithely ignored it just like they did the previous law.
Thirteen years later in November 2003 the Guardian appointed Forgan as the chairman of the Scott Trust. The Guardian marked the happy event by publishing her career path • which revealed that between 1988 and 1993 • i.e. throughout the period that the Guardian had voiced her “independent” opposition to the new Act • she had all along been a member of the Scott Trust herself.
So much for her “independent” campaign.
A month later in December Ofcom took over from the ITC; the new Ofcom Code replaced the ITC Code; and the “full range of significant viewpoints” requirement was quietly omitted. The three aforementioned peers who burnt the midnight oil in several heated parliamentary debates would have spent their time better in the pub.
For a detailed account of these nefarious goings-on, digest this Accuracy in Media report from July 2006: ‘Impartial’ News with a British Accent?
Here’s an extract:
As discussed in the April-A AIM Report “British Media Invade U.S.,” the BBC’s claims to be an impartial broadcaster, to show “both sides of the story,” and so on, are, in fact, utterly bogus, and merely a cynical device to facilitate its anti-conservative, anti-Christian, anti-American, occasionally even seditious reporting.
To read the parliamentary debates and Guardian articles, visit http://www.coverup.net
“Uncle Tom | 09.09.08 – 7:46 pm”
they like him because he is a LEFT WINGER. A MARXIST.
nothing else matters. NOTHING.
please do try to understand the enemy.
“Cassandra | 09.09.08 – 6:40 pm ”
read somewhere that a Wisconsin McPalin event happened a few days ago – was expecting a few thousand to turn up.
end total: 25,000.
and its happening all over the place – tens of thousands turning up , regularly, to see the first female president of America (in 2012, hopefully)
The more they attack her, the more they expose themselves
sure does seem like that. the MSM is in meltdown over there.
MSNBC has fired two of its left wing anchors because of the reaction from the public:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080909/ENT07/809090353
(dont you just LOVE free market capitalism? )
“Tell your American friends! Alert as many Americans as you can to the disgusting BBC!
Dr R | 09.09.08 – 5:59 pm ”
email to denis prager just sent.
Dennis@pragerradio.com
i’m telling you folks – this HATE mantra of the left is PRECISELY what he’s been banging on about for ages.
and now he has it from the horses mouth. in quotes.
awesome.
“George R | 09.09.08 – 5:20 pm ”
i walked through a part of north london last weekend.
only that , it wasnt london.
the first english speaking voice i heard was in the tube station.
archduke: Take a walk around the hedges and toilets of Hampstead Heath. You will hear plenty of well spoken beeboid English there.
Usually phrases like “oh yes big boy” or “barebacking for me”
Thank you, JBH – excellent background there and much appreciated.
“..that makes me very afraid and the only solution I can see to it is that the principal governors of super powers should be elected by global electorates …”
I found this the worst of all this outrageously snobby woman said! I read the whole transcript and perhaps I might have a bit of dementia myself, but it did’t seem to be there? Anymore?
The United States of America is a superpower not because of having been forced to the role by despotic leadership, such as Russia, but because of the dynamic of our exceptional people.
How dare this twitch suggest my country belongs to the world and the world should decide how it is led; perhaps the IDEA that is America belongs to the globe, but by God the globe does not pay for it. And they wouldn’t die for it, nor for my freedom. They won’t even die for theirs. Arrogance = ignorance, and this woman takes the cake.
Sarah Palin has struck at the heart of what America is – Mom and Apple Pie – her son leaves for Iraq in 2 days! She reminds me of myself and the many many other women I’ve known in the work place juggling home and children and careers – doing what we were told we could do, and like her we did it successfully. Our husbands and fathers and brothers and sons admire us for it, and they will vote for her, like we will vote for her, because we know what is good and strong and honest and what makes this country great.
Liz Forgan can go straight to hell along with the BBC MSNBC CBS ABC CNN. Sarah Palin will be this country’s president in 2012. Perhaps by 2020, like the number, people like this ancient snob will be long gone, and we will see their socialism in hindsight for what it is; humanity hating, freedom snuffing, myopic and self centered mindboggling blatant hypocricy. Did I mention narcisstic?
I’m sure Sarah hates Liz’s hair too, but she would be too much of a lady to say so.
“Democrats need to learn some respect.
It will be hard. They will have to develop some regard for the values that the middle of the country expresses when it votes Republican. Religion. Unembarrassed flag-waving patriotism. Freedom to succeed or fail through one’s own efforts. Refusal to be pitied, bossed around or talked down to. And all those other laughable redneck notions that made the United States what it is.”
A most excellent article by Clive Crook, very good – thank you, Laban, for the link.
I take issue with Mr. Crook on 2 issues, however – it is not the “Democratic Party” it’s the Democrats. People are not democratics. They are democrats.
Also, “The irony in 2008 is that the Democratic candidate, despite Republican claims to the contrary, is not an elitist. Barack Obama is an intellectual,…”
He is not an intellectual, he IS an arrogant elitist with a messiah complex. His place of education does not make him an intellectual, if that is how Mr. Crook defines the term. An intellectual, by the definition I know, is not an habitual liar; when in a situation calling for exerienced answers an intellectual has the good sense to shut up.
The Lord Obama’s persona exudes a persuasive aura of consideration – uh, uh, uh is interpreted by the media as such. It comes across to straight shooting Americans as the pause of the liar.
GCooper | 09.09.08 – 9:38 pm:
Thanks for that. I trust it aids your understanding…
They really are a bloody dishonest bunch aren’t they? It seems they can’t resist the temptation to posture and lie in furtherance of the Leftist cause.
You’d think that one day they’d realise that if their chosen creed requires such deception and lies to prop it up, they’re actually subscribing to an ideology that’s quite rotten.
BTW nice to see you and some of the old crowd back here too…
Here’s a hilarious extract from an Evening Standard interview of Mizz Forgan a couple of years ago:-
When she first read newspaper columns denouncing her “patronising” manner and her “overbearing Left-wing bias”, she was shocked. “But then you realise it’s a special language only the tabloids use, when they set you up as an Aunt Sally of the bossy Left for their knockabout amusement.” In fact, she would not even consider herself Left-wing. “At [Oxford] university, I canvassed the Cowley industrial estate in the Conservative interest in the company of a Pakistani princess,” she says. “My political trajectory has been all over the place.” .
Who’d a thunk it?
All those years toiling away with the comrades at the Grauniad and the Beeb – and nobody knew she was a secret Tory.
It’s the brazen, shameless way that these establishment lefties cheerfully lie about themselves that puts my blood pressure up.
“I actually think we should legislate to compel employers to ask men when they apply for a job do you have children and what is your intention to look after them.”
The answer is, “Yes,that’s why I want the frigging job!?
“Once, within living memory, the Left used to have something of a bias in favour of ‘ordinary people’. Whatever happened to it ?”
Nah,they have always hated the proles,that is why they bung them in Comprehensive prisons, sorry schools, and make them live is council gulags.
She’s just angry because she was never as MILF-tastic as Palin.
Damm it, hit the button. It’s just another example of where feminism falls down so much of the time. She doesn’t like Palin because she is successful, and feminism can only perpetuate itself if people are convinced that women always have it tough. The fact that Palin has done so well for herself makes feminism redundant.
archduke
I hope things are going well ?
Take care
Every time a US Presidential Election comes around some BBC Chimp thinks that it would be a good idea if the voting were taken out of the hands of Americans and given to a global electorate.
So…………. Americans make themselves the most important country on earth and its only superpower by virtue of thier OWN decisions and suddenly they need global help to choose good leaders.
……………Exactly who voted for UK Prime Ministers during Empire?
The Anti Americans at the BBC (yes you John Simpson and John Humphrys et al) have never recovered from the loss of Empire and never will.
Aging socialists HATE ordinary people, and the older they get the more bitter and twisted they become.
The reason why is that they’ve spent the whole of their pompous, self-righteous, sanctimonious lives under the delusion that they are the savior of the working man, who obviously needs their superior intellect and boundless empathy in order to survive in this cruel capitalist world.
But as they get older they start to realize that the working man doesn’t want their “selfless love” – he wants to own his own house, climb the economic ladder and buy stocks and shares.
Which makes them, in the eyes of aging socialists, ungrateful bastards.
I love this boiler’s idea that America’s leaders should be decided by a global electorate. How typical of a leftist: “if we can’t win the game then there’s obviously something wrong with the rules”