BBC Interview--and Bush thinks he has it tough...

Jon_in_london said:
Paxman missed a trick there...

Instead of JP: "Congratulations, Mr Galloway."

He should have said "Sir, I salute you, I salute your indefatigability....."

Galloway would have had apoplexy!! :D :p
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ha ha! yes! :D
 
With regards to Paxman, someone said about him that he may well be a Rottweiler, but what is actually needed is a Bloodhound. Rottweilers aren't too bright.

The truth is if Oona King had been anti-war, she would still have been in power, so her race and gender was neither here nor there. I wonder how King feels anyway, all these white men suggesting she be treated preferentially, given a head start like some loser unable to compete on equal terms, just because she is black, or female, or both.
Would Paxman have asked a tory who knocked Diane Abbott out the same stupid racist question? Bollocks he would.

Paxo serves a purpose...namely creating the impression of a vigorous media that really does weed the truth out of politicians. I used to think he was great. However he is in fact useless. The recent Blair interview proved that to me.

What politicians hate are forensic, specific questions that require specific answers. When ordinary members of an audience accuse Blair of being a liar or a war criminal he can easily get out of it. It comes across as generic abuse which can lead to sympathy for Blair from neutrals not aware of the facts. However ask him about a specific lie or war crime he has committed, using an actual quote, date, time, place etc, and he will struggle. You'd think Paxman would know this.

Yet he asks Blair stupid non-specific questions such as: "have you anything to apologise for", or: "how many illegals are in the country", sometimes repeating them over and again even though he knows nothing will come of it, that no dangerous new information will come to light.
It was incredible. Why ask Blair dozens of times about a situation that is not really his fault when there is much worse stuff going on out there that he is directly responsible for? Yet Paxman barely touched on it.
Instead, how about asking him to apologise for the use of DU or cluster bombs, citing casualty figures? How about asking him why Hoon knew which weapons the 45 minute claim was about and why Blair apparently did not.

I don't think Paxman is thick. If he really wanted to nail Blair, there are so many things to choose from it would be easy, but he doesn't go in for the kill. Instead he leaves his real anger and fire for mavericks like Galloway.

Yet even anti-BBC and anti-Blair papers like the Daily Mail went all masturbatory about Paxmans "grilling" of Blair.
 
Here's the opening of the interview:

JP: We're joined now from his count in Bethnal Green and Bow by George Galloway. Mr Galloway, are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?
GG: What a preposterous question. I know it's very late in the night, but wouldn't you be better starting by congratulating me for one of the most sensational election results in modern history?
___

So a reporter who's job it is to be impartial makes an obvious implication that the political leader present is a racist?

Who are they reporting for - the Sun - right?
 
"Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in parliament?"

Paxman then commented:

"I put it to you that Nick Raynsford had you to a T when he said you were 'a demagogue'."

In the same interview Galloway was described as behaving "inexcusably" and of being a "carpet-bagger" responsible for having "deliberately chosen to...exploit the latent racial tensions" in London.

I have seen nothing approaching this kind of damning judgement from Paxman when he has interviewed Tory MPs - guilty of exploiting racial tensions right across the country. Nor have I seen it when he has interviewed Labour MPs responsible for supporting one of the most mendacious and murderous wars
of modern times. Of course Paxman has been gruff and aggressive, but never this personally damning.

Isn't this a consistant theme in Newsnight reporting - establishment figures are treated with comparative deference and respect, while relatively powerless, marginal figures are treated much more harshly? It's one reason why so many people see the BBC, including Newsnight, as the voice of the
establishment.
 
demon said:
[B
Isn't this a consistant theme in Newsnight reporting - establishment figures are treated with comparative deference and respect, while relatively powerless, marginal figures are treated much more harshly? It's one reason why so many people see the BBC, including Newsnight, as the voice of the
establishment. [/B]
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The government usually fails to provide a representative to be interviewed on newsight which suggests that the government dont agree with you. I noticed that Labour provided a spokesman to newsnight every day during the election campaign but on May 6th no one was available.

Shortly before this interview Paxman interviewed Tony Banks who explicitly condemned Galloway for exploiting the prejudices of the Bethnal Green electorate. These critisisms have also been made by others on the left so I think it was legitimate for Paxman to raise these issues. Having said that Paxman could have been much more effective by being less aggressive.
 
jay gw said:
Here's the opening of the interview:

JP: We're joined now from his count in Bethnal Green and Bow by George Galloway. Mr Galloway, are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?
GG: What a preposterous question. I know it's very late in the night, but wouldn't you be better starting by congratulating me for one of the most sensational election results in modern history?
___

So a reporter who's job it is to be impartial makes an obvious implication that the political leader present is a racist?

Who are they reporting for - the Sun - right?
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Indeed. A classical example of 'begging the question'. An interviewer who opens an interview with a bald logical fallacy deserves to be raked over the coals.

Of course, I'm not a brit, and, frankly, your politics are hard for me to follow. Maybe it was a deserving question, in context, but I would have a difficult time believing so.
 
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1461621,00.html

"Oona King, the Labour candidate, is getting fed up with Respect supporters bringing up her Jewish mother, although she says it makes a change from the British National Party bringing up her black father."

"Last week, King and a group of mainly Jewish pensioners gathered for a 60th anniversary memorial service for the 132 people who died in the last V2 rocket attack on London in 1945. Muslim youths spat and threw eggs at the mourners and shouted: 'You ****ing Jews.' "

"Galloway's propaganda follows the same pattern. It features a picture of Oona King with a cheesy smile and a low-cut dress. The headline doesn't say 'Decadent Western Bitch', but then it doesn't need to."


This was an election campaign so I dont know how seriously to take this article. I dont agree with the way Paxman broached the subject, but the questions should have been asked.
 
:eek:

Any US politician to spoke like that would be blacklisted at best. It would be political suicide. Do these people seriously win seats in the Parliament? If so, it is the most convincing argument I have heard for a two party system. Not that we don't have our flaws, I assure you. George W. is one of the major blunders we've had recently. And we tend to pass too many useless and silly laws. But wow. I'm flabbergasted.
 
clarsct said:
:eek:

Any US politician to spoke like that would be blacklisted at best. It would be political suicide. Do these people seriously win seats in the Parliament? If so, it is the most convincing argument I have heard for a two party system. Not that we don't have our flaws, I assure you. George W. is one of the major blunders we've had recently. And we tend to pass too many useless and silly laws. But wow. I'm flabbergasted.
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Galloway is very very good at what he does. He also chose the constitunency where he had the best chance of winning. If he had run anywhere else it is highly questionable if he would have got in.
 
http://www.respectcoalition.com/video/george.asx
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4519575.stm#
http://www.geocities.com/inuk_NoWar/audiovisual.htm

Galloway is the best orator in Britain. Whenever I listen to him I want to believe, even though I'm relatively sane. Galloway won one seat of 650. He won his seat in parliament primarily on an anti-war vote, 40% of his constituancy was muslim. The accusation is that it was not a coincidence that he chose as his opponent a mixed race, female, jewish MP. Did he choose this seat because of the (supposed)latent racial tensions, and did his activists deliberately set out to exploit these tensions? These questions will never be conclusively answered but I find it disturbing that a large group of people in a democracy can elect someone with such a tenuous grasp on reality.
 
Ah well. If I have to claim Bush Jr, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find that other countries have their duds....but wow...this guy is something else. If anyone out there is from his district:
1) You should probably move..
2) I feel for you...I really do know what it feels like to have a buffoon representing you...*sigh*
 
A few nuggets of information for those interested.

1) It looks like of Galloway's approximately 16000 votes, a third were ex-Labour voters, a third Lib Dem and Tory, and a third new voters.

2) Labour sent 9 cabinet ministers down to Bethnal Green & Bow to support Oona King, and devoted more resources to it than any other constituency. Even the Prime Minister was going to visit until it emerged that protests were planned - then Mayor Livingstone was sent instead. I'm reliably informed that Labour higher-ups said they would rather give the Tories several seats than allow Respect to win this seat. As a result of this disproportionate campaigning, some decent left-wingers lost seats - like John Cryer. Bob Marshall-Andrews came very close to sinking too.

3) Despite the great deal of hype about "racial tensions" from Paxman and Labour HQ, Muslims make up less than 40% of the population of Bethnal Green and Bow. From my experiences on the stump and outside polling stations, I would say a very large portion of Respect's vote was from white working class voters, probably about a third.

4) The last time a non-Labour candidate won in Bethnal Green & Bow was in 1945, when Phil Piratin took the seat for the Communist Party.

All of which is intended to lead you to the conclusion that there was nothing "easy" in Galloway's win, either because of Muslims or antiwar feeling or anything else. From my own experiences, I know it was a very difficult and strenuous battle, in large part because of the constant blizzard of lies, innuendo, and false accusations from the Labour camp. The vote fraud issue is not over, by the way...
I've seen the accusation repeated in the newspapers, and on some television reports. However, as the police have issued an advisory to the press more or less confirming that the story is untrue, I doubt it will be pursued for long. The only reporter who covered the story for the press, Sean O'Neill, is a remarkable fantasist, a right-wing nutter who tried to claim that the "ricin plots" were a bona fide example of Al Qaeda perfidy: he is also one of the reporters behind several Galloway smears.

Incidentally, while I'm here, I want to note that for all the talk of stirring up racial tensions and a possible "backlash" against Muslims (think about the reasoning behind such a claim), the racist/far right vote in Bethnal Green & Bow actually collapsed.
 
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