It’s so odd to hear a contrarian truth on the BBC that when they do pop up you’re shocked.
After hearing for hours on CNBC, CNN, all the French networks, and elsewhere that the GOP voted down “Bush’s bailout plan” because Pelosi hurt their feelings or because they’re mean conservatives who don’t want to donate billions to rescue incompetent millionaires, it was astonishing to hear the BBC interview two or three Republican congressmen and then have their reporter explain that Republicans were not willing to vote for a bill that did not go through committee and could not be touched in any way by the GOP — but would have piped zillions (my word, not in the Beeb lexicon) into liberal fringe groups such as ACORN. Not one word about Pelosi’s rather inane speech or Frank’s oft-repeated charge that the vote was the result of “hurt feelings.”
The segment ended with the observation, based on Democratic sources, that the same bill, untouched, would be presented on Thursday, by which time Bush and the Pelosi-Frank Democrats will have frightened the nation so badly that it will pass easily.
Seems for once the BBC is getting it right. I guess it’s like monkeys and typewriters. Meanwhile, at Le Monde, the news is “Anglo-Saxon style capitalism’s a goner,” or words to that effect. In Paris, they’re talking about bailing out banks, too, but according to Le Parisien, the bankers aren’t talking. Always a good idea.