I just heard someone named Michael on Dennis Miller's MSNBC show say once again that he cannot understand why the BBC is viewed so badly because of one error, which in fact wasn't really an error at all as we have seen, blah, blah, blah...
People -- and some journalists -- come on. Mr. Gilligan said something that was wrong and couldn't be backed up. No big deal really. Everyone makes mistakes or gets carried away with hyperbole from time to time. Apologize or ignore it, but just move on. But that is not what this is about. It's about the institutional problems that the BBC had in drawing a line in the sand over an indefensible position and sacrificing their actual integrity for what they claimed was their integrity but turned out to be little more than their personal bias.
Everybody who might read this probably already knows this, but I am sick to death of the mendacious dribble that passes for acceptable political discourse these days. And then, of course, there's the miserable defenses offered for what has transpired in the past year. Dennis Miller is disappointing me by letting Noami Wolf and Martin Short ramble on as though WMDs were the only reason Iraq was liberated (unilaterally, natch), not to mention Martin Short asking why Syria couldn't invade Israel claiming they had WMDs. Well Martin, dear boy, aside from Syria getting it's ass kicked big time if it tried, I think I'm within my rights to resent comparing the US and its allies to Syria, much less comparing Israel to Iraq. Personally, I'd love to see President George W. Bush give a speech announcing that the US, the UK and their allies saved the UN from terminal irrelevance by enforcing its resolutions.
Sigh.