Monthly Archives: January 2007

Rob Schneider wrote on 2 January:

Natalie,

In tonight’s BBC news Matt [Frei] was reporting on ex-President Ford’s funeral in Washington. He said (and I can’t remember the exact quote) that “He was a popular president. But he pardoned President Nixon and the country never forgave him.”

That is simply not true and misrepresents history.

Ford became president on 9th August 1974. He announced his decision about President Nixon on 8th September 1974. That was approximately one month after assuming office. He hadn’t achieved any level of “popularity” during that month. Instead, the country was still reeling from events which lead the resignation of President Nixon. There are vast numbers of people in the country, while regretting that such a pardon was necessary, but still understand that it was the right thing to do. The “country” never considered the issue of “forgiveness” as that’s not really the issue.

Surely the pardon could be on many people’s thoughts as they voted in 1976, when Ford lost to Carter. However there were many other issues, including the economy (it was a period of high-inflation), the remants of the Vietnam War, Republican vs. Democrat (the Republicans had won the two previous elections), etc.

–rms

I can’t claim to know a great deal about the events in American history that Mr Schneider describes, and I have no strong opinion either way on whether the pardon was a good thing. But Matt Frei’s statement that “the country never forgave him” is contradicted by the many recent articles covering Ford’s death saying that the pardon turned out to be a good decision. These articles did not just come from right wing or Republican sources. Here, for instance, is a leading article from the Guardian. If that does not count because it is not an American newspaper, here is another from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. There were many others.

Pounce comments on one of today’s front page stories at the BBC:

Skin bleaching cream couple fined

A couple believed to have earned £1m selling toxic skin lightening creams were ordered by a court to pay nearly £100,000 in fines and costs. Yinka and Michael Oluyemi sold banned bleaching concoctions from their two cosmetics shops in south-east London.

[snip]

The church-going couple, who lived in a £725,000 house in Sydenham, have three children, including one who is studying law.

Pounce writes:

Ok help me here. Why is the fact that these people go to church (thus pointing out they are Christians) in the story?

Pounce goes on to say that there are numerous BBC stories that pointedly don’t inform you of the faith of non-Christian criminals or alleged criminals, even where it is much more relevant than that of the Oluyemis. One such, the plumber charged with terrorism offenses, Kazi Nurur Rahman, whose mastery of the mysteries of the U-bend is always considered worthy of mention when other more relevant aspects of his life are not, has become an in-joke here. When I went looking for a comparative story to illustrate Pounce’s point I knew my search would not take long. In the event it took about ten seconds. Also on the England front page this morning was a story concerning the murder of his wife and four daughters by Mohammed Riaz. This crime took place in Accrington last November.

A search for “Accrington” and “Riaz” on the BBC news website got fifteen relevant results (the one at the bottom of page 2 refers to someone else). Only one of these fifteen, this one, mentions that Mr Riaz was a man who “did not socialise much, other than at his local mosque.”

Note that I am not saying that the murder of his family necessarily had anything to do with Mr Riaz’s religion. The possibility of a so-called “honour killing” was raised widely in the press and explicitly not discounted by the police, but eventual investigations pointed to the most likely prime motive being something to do with the breakdown of the Riaz marriage. We’ll never know. However the likelihood of religion being a factor was higher than for the vastly lesser crime of Mr and Mrs Oluyemi.

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A Happy New Year to all our readers and commenters. It may take a while for posting to get up to speed – but here’s a new open thread before the old one bursts a seam.