Picked up by Instapundit and the Corner as more evidence of wretched BBC anti-American bias, I read the piece assailed by Ann Althouse. It’s an opinion piece, not news reporting, so obviously a little more lee-way for bias should be allowed. And yes, there’s a bizarre assumption that there is no welfare net in America – or that we haven’t just expanded it to cover millions of wealthy seniors, or that welfare rolls haven’t been reduced by almost a half in a few years, and so on. Statements like this – “But the system’s fundamentals – no limit on how far you can fly and little limit on how low you can fall – remain as intact as they were in the San Francisco gold rush” – are so nutty and ill-informed that you have to wonder whether the guy knows anything about 20th century American history. But here are other sections of the piece, which do not seem to me to be anti-American bias:
Speeding along a relatively unscathed motorway between the wonderfully exotic-sounding towns of Pascagoula and Biloxi, I switched on the car radio and heard the tobacco-stained drawl of a southern politician comparing the destruction in his district to that of Hiroshima.
Tasteless I thought. A typical example of American inability to see that suffering in other nations at other times dwarfs anything the average American ever sees.
Then we arrived in Biloxi, Mississippi.
The real question is whether there is going to be a revolution
There are streets where nothing stands, corners where one house or one wall has survived. Everything around it is matchwood.
The destruction is awe inspiring. After 10 minutes in the town, the Hiroshima comparison seems less jarring.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that stand as an example of the BBC criticizing its own knee-jerk anti-Americanism? Glenn Reynolds echoes the judgment that this piece is “unbelievably smug.” Did he read it? Then there’s this:
Charity is part of the warp and weft of American life and it is telling that Hurricane Katrina has encouraged an outpouring of giving on a scale never seen before.
Americans are cross with the government and disappointed with the response from Washington, but they have not sat on their hands and waited for the government to sort itself out. Much the opposite.
Americans have given with unbridled enthusiasm and generosity.
Is that not something governments do? Americans do not think so and never will.
This is unquestionably a source of strength and spine in troubled times, but boy does it put a dampener on revolution.
Well, yes. But there’s a small matter of $200 billion in federal aid. And who on earth thinks ‘revolution’ is now some kind of necessary event in the most succesful, powerful and wealthiest country on the planet? This was a dumb and ill-informed piece. But if you’re going to pick on BBC bias, and there’s plenty of material, this seems pretty milque-toast to me. And it undermines legitimate criticism of the Beeb to single it out.
The Dish 