An attempt at clarification from a Briton or How We Came To Love Our Collective Liberal Media

[Vicar In A Tutu]

This is to address some of the utter crap being peddled by the right-wing (ie - dominant, just as it is there) British media and a few of their friends in big business and the Conservative (ie - Cunt) party.

As you all know VERY WELL, the right wing shout really fucking loudly. That's why I find some of the comments here disappointing "fuck the Brits blah blah limeys blah blah bad teeth" etcetera, etcetera. Moronic statements, as moronic as those who would take one look at a bus full of Sarah Palin fanatics and say "Yep...that's the real face of America. Fucking retards". Or me deciding to go all jihad on the USA because Americans have destroyed my favourite football team. Yet I do understand, firstly because I make more moronic statements than most people on this planet when I'm angry and secondly because, well, this disaster is an exceptional case. So I really cannot blame people for reacting in a volatile manner.

Here are, as Rafa Benitez would say, some 'Facts' :

1) BP is a global company. It's registered in Britain and it started as so, but nowadays it's essentially as American as it is British. Here's a short article pointing out just how preposterous the "patriotic" right-wing bullshit is: http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2010/06/11/just-how-british-is-bp/

2) Obama has erred in calling the company, from time to time, "British Petroleum". That's the only way I can fault his response with regards to Britain. There has been no "Britain must pay this!" because that would clearly be illogical. I don't demand that the United States government pays for my iPhone is it breaks when I'm on holiday over there, I'll send it back to Apple. As I said, it's not "British Petroleum". Any reference to that is either Bush style dog-whistling designed to dupe the uninformed or an honest mistake. As one who has great respect for President Obama, I hope it's the latter. Other than that, can't blame him.

3) The right-wing press is as dominant here as it is in the United States, but only in print. As far as television goes, we have the BBC to offer sanity. Here's an article from Mark Mardell, the corporation's North America Editor on the "ANTI-BRITISH SENTIMENT" the right-wing press have concocted out of rusty exhaust pipes, broken lightbulbs and frantic masturbation: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2010/06/no_wellspring_of_britbashing_i.html

4) Keep this in mind: The British right-wing press ALWAYS want a Republican President. Always. Anti-Obama sniping has been going on for the last couple of years now. His popularity with the general British public scares them for some reason. They serve the Conservative Party, and the Conservative Party heart the Republican Party. See: Arnold and McCain coming over to speak at their conferences in recent years.

5) Any sane person must clearly see the priority as plugging the fucking leak and helping to repair the lives shattered by this catastrophe. The more I think about the people suffering, let alone the beautiful wildlife and natural resources, the more my absolute fury at the media's politicking (on both sides of the Atlantic) grows. How can the trivialisation of beauty having a stake rammed through its heart not lead to anger, regardless of what part of the world you're from?

6) Obama was, last time I checked, elected President of the United States of America, he didn't seek to combine the role with that of British Prime Minister on a part-time basis. Therefore, who would anyone expect anything but for him to look out exclusively for his own country's best interests in this very difficult situation? Other than, you guessed it, our beloved and oh so consistent media.

Now, if I may speak personally - I have incredible fondness for the United States and have spent plenty of time there in recent years and hopefully a lot more in future. If someone dropped 500k at my door, I think I'd swap permanently. I've seen your preposterous itwouldbefunnyifitwerenotsodepressing media, I've seen my atrocious media. I'm ready for whatever they throw at me but I guess I just wanted to help cut through the utter bullshit you've almost certainly been hearing. Don't ever think that you're alone in having a media full, mainly, of right-wing bastards. You might be surprised at how bad it gets elsewhere...the only difference is that you'll have to find most of ours in print... :)

[flamingdem]

1. What we need is solidarity xox nt

[Vicar In A Tutu]

2. Thanks!

It's a sad situation. Falling into the points scoring trap right-wing politicians and their media allies salivate over would make it just a tiny bit sadder. No one needs that.

[flamingdem]

3. They use divide and conquer methods, both media and the elite

Time for confirming our common interests and uniting across the pond.

[Denzil_DC]

9. Absolutely

K&R

[DRoseDARs]

4. To be clear USians aren't anti-British; bunch of smoke being blown up everyone's collective arse.

Though, few will know or be interested that BP has evolved beyond an evil British corporation to an evil global corporation. It's more about the oil than the soil anyway. Americans still feel a subconscious kinship with with the UK and our siblings in Canada and Australia and that will remain true so long as all speak English, so this little dust up is nothing more than dust being kicked up. If it were a truly foreign corporation (as in one that does not share a common history with the 4 of us) like say China or Saudi Arabia then yeah, there'd be some anti-foreign hate going on.

[depakid]

5. Don't kid yourself

Americans have a pronounced America-centric and xenophobic streak that doesn't take a lot "provocation" to ignite- though as you note, it's "easier" when the foreigners are browner, have different eye shapes- or speak a different language.

Fact is that a majority know next to nothing about other nations- how they live or what goes on there- and when it comes right down to it- could care less. This is why most of you knew nothing about the huge Montara oil spill in the Timor sea- and many still don't know, even though the consequences of ignoring it have come back to devastate the nation.

Indeed, I'll go further and say that when push comes to shove there's no one- and not one country that most Americans will gladly screw in order to "get their pound of flesh" or preserve their "non-negotiable" excessively wasteful and unsustainable lifestyles. Something that the Bush era brought home loud and clear- and recent events have confirmed.

[area51]

6. Trade ya.

I'll take living in a first-world country with a right to health care any day over the U.S. system of you get health care if you can afford it.

Each day, 273 people die due to lack of health care in the U.S.

We need single-payer health care, not a welfare bailout for the serial-killer insurance agencies.

[Vicar In A Tutu]

7. That's why I'd need 500k dropped at my door.

For all of the wonderful experiences I've had in the US over the years, having a family it's not a move I'd countenance making on a permanent level unless I had a great big back up fund for health care in case things went wrong a few years down the line. I don't want to say too much on this because it's not the point of my thread and I wouldn't want to seem pious or superior, because I'm not, but for all of the flaws our NHS has, the paltry amount taken by the government from my wages each month is indespensible. In your country, my observation is that the right-wing seems to have so many people so convinced that it would be a tremendous waste of their money and the oh-so-evil witchcraft that is "socialism"...it's sad. I've had this debate with Americans who subcribe to such theories and it never ends well. Some good people who are completely and wilfully oblivious to the fact that they've spent their lives being ripped off.

I think you'd need the left to become as powerful as the right in business and media, aided by maybe 30 unbroken years of increasingly left-ist Democratic Presidents so that they could, in tandem, stealthily tear the current system up and start over. But sad to say, barring such an unprecedented chain of events, I think the boat has gone...I think you'd have needed to install it by the 50s or 60s. The ugly, monolithic health "industry" is now more than powerful enough to crush anyone who'd want to substantially lower its profit margins.

[Jennicut]

8. I love the British people, I detest BP. I think most people on DU do too.

Some of it is anger and frustration. Most here can see that Obama has criticized BP, not England.
Also, I did not know until recently that the name was changed to BP either.

[LeftishBrit]

10. Good post - says it all!

Our press is AWFUL, most of it. About half of it is owned by King Rupert, and the rest by people similar or worse.

As I've been saying all along, our tabloids are just the British version of the American RW talkshows; and even our broadsheets can be decidedly untrustworthy.

I'm not a big CT-er in general, or given to the-global-elites-are-conspiring-to-divide-us-all theories in particular, but on this occasion I *do* think that King Rupert et al might be deliberately trying to get the Brits and Americans to quarrel with each other, instead of joining in fighting the system that enables corporations to operate with little regulation. The corporations and the likes of King Rupe are bringing us *all* down. As I said on another thread: To quote a famous American revolutionary against the British: We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately. This time, it is not a single king of a country that we must join in opposing, but the power of unregulated global Big Business.