Whenever I call a friend of mine who is a Middle East expert, he never answers the phone. I leave a message and invariably he calls me back within seconds. His explanation is always the same, “Sorry, I thought you might be the BBC.” It turns out when you call someone from an NR phone, it comes up “unknown” on caller ID, just as it does when someone’s calling from the BBC.

I now realize that my friend isn’t unusual–that an epidemic fear is gripping the conservative movement.

The other day I was standing in a colleague’s office when his phone rang. He refused to answer it. In response to my puzzled look he said, “It might be the BBC.” A few moments later, my cell phone rang–caller ID: “unknown”–and I answered: it was the BBC, looking for my colleague, who began waving his arms in don’t-tell-them-I’m-here gestures.

Why the fear? As far as I can tell, it’s because the BBC is relentless, clueless, and anti-American. Conversations with its producers tend to be long and pointless, and no media appearance is as unsatisfying as one with the BBC, since no one you know will hear you and you will make no head-way against a tide of maddeningly conventional leftism.

This morning I was trying to get out of the house, when my phone rang. ID: unknown. As you know, that might be the NR office. But as soon as I heard the accent and the, “Oh, hallo,” I knew I had lost a desperate gamble: it was the BBC.

I had brought it on myself. They have been harassing me for days over “March of the Penguins.” Apparently the film is just now coming to Britain. They are doing a piece on the “controversy” over the film. I made the mistake of having one conversation with this–perfectly pleasant and polite, I should say–woman at the BBC about it, since I love the movie, but I have been showered with messages from her since then. Today she was calling about what, I’m not sure. I think to see if I would say on air that penguins are God’s instruments to pull America back from the hell-fire, or something like that. As politely as I could I told her, “Lady, they’re just birds.”

So I’m off the hook on the penguins, but I will never answer my phone with quite the same confidence again: It just might be the BBC.