WHAT HAPPENED TO HOPE?

Anyone catch Andrew Marr’s “Obama; what happened to Hope?” elegy for President Narcissus on BBC2. Loved the casual demonisation of the Tea Party.  Had to laugh at Marr’s references to “the old magic” ……I can only hope that if Romney wins, grief councillors will be on hand for the distraught BBC.

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57 Responses to WHAT HAPPENED TO HOPE?

  1. Roger says:

    Yep, no prizes as to guessing who Andrew Marr and the BBC are rooting for. Disgraceful socialist bias using our money!

       27 likes

    • Framer says:

      Watched the end of the programme and Andrew Marr, unusually and expectedly, seemed to be writing Obama’s political obituary.
      New Hampshire may be the only swing state Barry wins.

         9 likes

  2. Redwhiteandblue says:

    As somebody who is currently undecided who he would support in the US election (if I had the option of voting), I have a different take on this programme. It struck me that the Republican critics were given very generous airtime with many of their criticisms not put to Democrats to answer. The general premise of the programme (we loved him, he disappointed us) is decidedly pro-Obama, but I felt the programme makers had if anything overcompensated for this inbuilt bias in the way they distributed airtime. Overall I thought it was more an attack on Obama than an apologia.

       13 likes

    • Miss DG says:

      That is most certainly the impression i got…

         2 likes

    • Prole says:

      Totally agree. But some people don’t listen!

         3 likes

      • The reaper says:

        Drugs are available on prescription to help all you Leftards/Beeboids who are so out of touch with the real majority who are taxed disproportionately to their income, both here and in the USA. The TEA party are just trying to protect their standard of living. So how are they different to BBC employees like you?

           12 likes

    • Jim Dandy says:

      I didn’t watch, so can’t comment in detail. but The title of the programme and of Marr’s written companion piece (shrivelled hope) suggests you are right and David is not. But then to admit that would see a crack appear in BiasedBBC’s guiding dogma on the bbc’s Obama coverage. Given the level of support for Obama in the uk, I think the BBC has been pretty fair in giving both candidates equal billing. I would expect to see the BBC’s election night coverage include a lot of Republican voices, as it did last time. But no doubt this site will be crimson with rage at the terrible bias. Nothing the BBC will do will prevent that.

         4 likes

      • Guest Who says:

        ‘I didn’t watch, so can’t comment in detail.’
        I seem to recall recently a one-liner from you or a fellow flocker, in a self-appointed moderating capacity on a site ‘everyone ignores’ (daily, and in multiples, it appears) that any lack of total commitment to the end of the credits were grounds for any commentary being dismissed.
        Guessing therefore that the several paras you go on to write are somehow granted a unique dispensation to such ‘rules’ not accorded others?
        Which would seem… apt.

           6 likes

        • Guest Who says:

          Ah, yes… here we go…
          Jim Dandy says:
          November 2, 2012 at 11:03 am
          Then you’re in no position to comment.

          To a person who had watched to a point, and then merely said what they had seen was enough to conclude its value.
          You, however, appear to feel that a small essay is warranted having not watched anything.
          These extra standards, do they come free or are they charged options?

             11 likes

      • lojolondon says:

        “Given the level of support for Obama in the uk”
        It is frankly amazing, how anti-British Obama is and yet how much our media supports him.
        Perhaps in the lefty-beeboid-paedo culture, to love someone guy, no matter how many times he spits in your face, is a sign of how enlightened you are??

        One small positive out of this – Obama clearly detested Brown, and treated him like absolute crap – full credit there!

           10 likes

        • Guest Who says:

          As even Brown seemed to loathe Brown, yet the BBC supported him to the bitter… so very bitter… end, there appears a certain level of ‘commitment’ more to ideology no matter what in who they throw their troops behind.

             5 likes

      • David Preiser (USA) says:

        Jim, best to withhold judgment on how balanced the BBC’s coverage will be until you see not the guest talking heads they allow on, but how the Beeboids themselves behave. If it’s anything like 2008 or 2010 (both the US mid-terms and the UK general election), the bias will be obvious.

           2 likes

  3. Dave666 says:

    I turned it off after two minutes.

       2 likes

  4. Scrobs... says:

    Andrew Marr is just a third rate interviewer, with the smug ‘I’m with the BBC’ attitude, which turns off most people.

    He actually demeans anything interesting in politics on the beeb, which is so dreadfully biased towards its socialist mates.

    We, at The turrets, just turn over, and pretend that one day we’ll get a radio/tv service that responds, instead of trying to indoctrinate.

    Waste of the fee/tax, and perhaps, petty soon, now I’m an old age pensioner, I may get up on my hind legs, and say ENOUGH!

       21 likes

  5. Reed says:

    BBC News HQ on Wednesday – if Obama loses…

       9 likes

    • chrisH says:

      Wonder if the BBC will mortar shell those employees that don`t emote enough when Barak is eviscerated?
      That would at least save us the cost of levelling the ground in Salford for the News of the Worlds relaunch!

         17 likes

    • chrisH says:

      Brilliant!Thank You!

         6 likes

    • Span Ows says:

      So very cruel…so very funny!

      BUT PLEASE PEOPLE, DON’T COUNT YOUR CHICKENS!

      I’ve already lived through the pain once, in Venezuela last month.

         1 likes

  6. Alan says:

    And if Obama’s hope fails him…there’s always the liberal/black storm troopers ready to riot because the election result doesn’t suit….:

    Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time Friday might have said one of the most disgraceful things uttered during the 2012 campaign season.
    “If you’re thinking about voting for Mitt Romney, I would like to make this one plea: black people know who you are and they will come after you”

    or there’s the Black pastor who refused to vote for Obama on the basis of his skin colour….and got death threats.

    or there’s the people who want a riot if Romney is elected.

       14 likes

    • Reed says:

      Bill Maher used to be occasionally quite entertaining some years ago. Now he’s just a one-note bore who’s resorting to ever increasingly obnoxious comments to garner attention. That comment is one of the worst I’ve seen – close to incitement. If something terrible does happen if the great one loses, I hope this clip is played back for all to hear.

         14 likes

    • Reed says:

      …and yet, according to the BBC, it’s the far right that represents the greatest danger to social harmony…and it’s the Tea Party that is comprised of an extremist fringe of nutters and loonies.

         16 likes

      • Prole says:

        The Tea Party is compromised of nutters. Glad you noticed.

           3 likes

      • Redwhiteandblue says:

        Many of them privilege a literal interpretation of Scripture over scientific knowledge gained two centuries ago. That alone gives good grounds for deep concern. I’m a Christian, and their lack of sophistication terrifies me.

           7 likes

        • Reed says:

          This may be the case in some instances (not all, I’m sure), but you don’t need to be a scientist to understand basic mathematics – that you can’t carry on spending money you don’t have – or to appreciate the notion that the freedom of the individual ought to be asserted over the power of the state. These are the basic principals driving the Tea Party movement, which doesn’t require one to be a sophisticated, metropolitan intellectual to grasp.

          …and their ‘lack of sophistication’ is no worse than that exhibited by those who would vote for a candidate based predominantly on their skin colour.

             15 likes

        • David Preiser (USA) says:

          Yay! Sweeping generalizations based on ignorance! You obviously have no idea about the Tea Party’s origins and have been poisoned by the BBC and Guardian and MSNBC and CNN and the HuffPo and WaPo.

             16 likes

          • Redwhiteandblue says:

            Well, let’s see.
            The most recent poll (Anderson Robbins/Shaw & Co, August 2011) showed that 55% of Tea Party supporters believed the Biblical account of creation over Darwinian explanations of life on Earth.
            But – since I’m feeling generous – let’s overlook that, since a party’s support might not be representative of the views of its most prominent members.
            Only, unfortunately, the evidence suggests otherwise.
            Sarah Palin (from “Going Rogue”):   “But I didn’t believe in the theory that human beings—thinking, loving beings—originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. Or that human beings began as single-celled organisms that developed into monkeys who eventually swung down from trees; I believe we came about through a random process but were created by God.”
            Michelle Bachmann: “I support intelligent design”
            Rick Perry: “Evolution is a theory that’s out there…”  
            Sandy Adams: “I’m Christian. I believe in the biblical terms of how we came about.”
            Paul Broun: “Evolution, the Big Bang… this is lies straight from the pit of hell”
            Ron Paul, Todd Akin, John Thune, Joe Barton… all signed up, to varying degrees, to Intelligent Design and resistance to Darwinism.  I could go on – I’ve barely scratched the surface of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress, and there are many, many more examples.
            The fact is that dozens of prominent Tea Party members are openly suspicious of entirely orthodox scientific knowledge.  As generalisations go, I don’t think it’s a bad one.  

               8 likes

            • David Preiser (USA) says:

              You mean this poll? The one taken from just over 900 people where the under-30 crowd was more likely to believe in some form of Biblical teaching, and a confused methodology? Yeah, that’s real representative of the Tea Party movement. Which is all about the economy and the size and scope and goals of government and nothing to do with religion, no matter how many times people like you try to claim it is, and no matter how many times fundamentalist Christians try to hijack the movement.

              I suppose you will now be against any political movement where a high percentage of people believe in homeopathy or astrology? If you’re going to be like Justin Webb and declare people unfit for public office or untrustworthy on any other issue simply because of a single belief that has nothing to do with much of anything, you’d better be prepared to apply that rule honestly and across the board.

              Paul and Akin and Perry are not Tea Party members. Perry became a favorite for a while because of his fiscal conservatism, but it’s delusional to think that Ron Paul is a prominent Tea Party member, and many in the movement turned on Akin after he made that unfortunate remark about rape. If you think the Tea Party support for Palin or, for example, Herman Cain was driven by Creationist belief, you’re as deluded as Mark Mardell and Jonny Dymond.

                 3 likes

              • wallygreeninker says:

                RWB is a great proponent of the view that Islam is a perfectly respectable religion. It would never occur to him that the widespread denial of Darwinism in the Islamic world is something that discredits the Muslim community politically.
                He’d be right inasmuch as it’s the least of the problems with which their belief system presents us, but he seems to be being a little inconsistent.

                   2 likes

                • Redwhiteandblue says:

                  On the contrary, I think Creationist thought is a worrying throwback wherever it occurs.   And it’s no coincidence that civilisation has been at its most enlightened in Islamic societies when those societies have been open to thought beyond the purely theological.

                     3 likes

              • Redwhiteandblue says:

                I’m happy to concede your point on the poll, it’s not a big sample nor does it look very reliable.
                But my substantive point remains sound.  I never suggested that the movement was driven by Creationist belief or that such belief was part and parcel of Tea Party policy.  But many of the figureheads of the movement are not merely religious, they actively reject science.  I find a political movement populated by so many science-doubters worrying.  And this really isn’t a ‘single belief that has nothing to do with much of anything’.  This is a ‘single belief’ that has led some TP politicians to advocate teaching intelligent design, a doctrine comprehensively debunked by science.  At least supporters of homeopathy and astrology aren’t agitating for the subject to be on the curriculum.  This is a tremendous threat, something that is profoundly anti-Enlightenemnt.
                PS OK, so the TP has turned on Akin.  But both the caucus and his website still list him as a member (yes, yes, I know there’s a difference between the caucus and the movement.  But given the former was founded by Bachmann, they’re hardly unrelated).  

                   3 likes

        • mamapjs says:

          Actually, most of us are small business owners and employees concerned about the business-unfriendly atmosphere the Democratic party has engendered in recent years.

          Religion has nothing to do with the TEA Party (TEA=Taxed Enough Already) agenda.

             10 likes

    • Reed says:

      …and the American right’s most bombastic commentator, Rush Limbaugh, calls a single person a slut and the Republican’s ‘War On Women’ is initiated, a meme enthusiastically explored by the MSM.

      Mr. Maher’s threatening words sound far more sinister to me, but I don’t suppose the media will engage in fevered coverage of the Democrat’s ‘War On Whites’.

         9 likes

      • Redwhiteandblue says:

        Maher was joking. Not that humour is a commodity much traded in your world, judging my your posts.

           2 likes

        • Reed says:

          I realise it was a form of ‘comedy’ to some. My point is that large sections of the media are rather more tolerant of some sources of ‘edgy’ commentary than others.

          Humour is subjective. I once found Maher’s schtick amusing to a certain degree, but the value has diminished with every repeat of the same old themes. He’s now just a predictable bore.

          No need to get personal – I do try to remain civil to fellow posters, even in disagreement.

             6 likes

        • David Preiser (USA) says:

          It’s a joke that would not be allowed coming from the other direction, and he’s not really joking.

             13 likes

        • Stewart S says:

          are you being ironic?

             2 likes

        • mamapjs says:

          This particular “joke” isn’t very funny. There are areas here in the US that are afraid that there WILL be riots when Obama loses. The New Black Panther party are calling for them. Maher sounds like he’s cheering the NBP on.

             7 likes

  7. Mice Height says:

    “I do remember… the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty Paracetamol bottles. I’ll always remember that”

       7 likes

  8. Redwhiteandblue says:

    Maher was joking. Not that humour is a commodity much traded in your world, judging by your posts.

       0 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      So good you wrote it twice.
      I thought New York was in the bag for Obama anyway?
      And again one has to wonder about this ‘your’ sweep.
      Are you really going to suggest that when a darling of one political hue drops a clanger in public all is forgiven by the ‘only joking!’ attempt, in face of a less than consistent level of tolerance when any from an alternative ideology, or their daughter, does so in private and gets shopped by the hut kapo?
      There does seem to be a ‘having it both ways’ bug going around to match the Alzheimers in certain defensive wagon-circles.

         6 likes

    • Span Ows says:

      Imagine the shrieking hysterical uproar from the Left had anyone not of the Left said something even remotely similar but the way around, or about women, or homosexuals? A joke yes but more a “joke”, nudge nudge. Maher is a cunt.

         3 likes

  9. tckev says:

    If Obama looses it’s not fair!

       5 likes

    • mat says:

      Probably not ‘fair’ but by god the attack of the vapours on the left will be hysterical ! see this is why Eddie was so worried about mental health all of a sudden as I think he may know how many BBC types will be greeting the news if Obama-one loses by getting Granddads old N.K.V.D service revolver out or passing away from melodrama and arsenic in the champagne they had got in to celibate with !

         3 likes

      • wallygreeninker says:

        ‘ to celibate with.’ – has there been a sudden cultural transformation in Beeboidworld, while I wasn’t looking?

           3 likes

        • mat says:

          Remember they are now non sexual and teetotal at the beeb that’s why Marr had his hands down that truly disordered woman’s [I’m guessing woman as the pics are crap ?] trousers !

             4 likes

  10. fitz fitzgerald says:

    Let’s hope that they push out that graceless, friendless, charmless, jackass grinning pwick tomorrow …

       2 likes

  11. ThatGirl says:

    Really? Were we watching the same thing? I found the show to apologetically pander to the republican mindset. It certainly didn’t pander in pro-Obama manner. Perhaps the writers of BIAS BCC should stop taking their own bias views into their articles? Hypocritical to say the least.

       0 likes