Monday, August 25, 2008

Those Cute and Cuddly Taliban Guys

Just this morning El Inglés coined the phrase “deranged altruism” to describe the suicidal impulse to do good things, even towards evil people, with destructive consequences and with no discernible benefit to oneself or one’s countrymen. Since deranged altruists are by and large atheists, their actions don’t even accrue any benefits to their immortal souls.

There’s nothing like the BBC when it comes to yoking together derangement and altruism, and the latest madness from the Beeb, as reported by today’s Daily Mail, is a classic:

TV Reporters Are Not Showing the Taliban’s Humanity, Says BBC Presenter

A BBC presenter has attacked coverage of Afghanistan’s ongoing war, claiming TV reporters are not covering the ‘humanity of the Taliban’.

Lyse Doucet, a presenter and correspondent on BBC World News, was speaking at a discussion of TV reporting of the war in the country.

Doucet, who has been at the BBC since 1983, also spoke out against the nature of the reports on Prince Harry’s deployment in Afghanistan.

The veteran correspondent and presenter, who played a key role in the BBC’s coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, told the Edinburgh International Television Conference: ‘What’s lacking in the coverage of the Afghans is the sense of the humanity of the Afghans.

I have to disagree with Ms. Doucet. I think the news coverage of the Taliban has more than adequately exposed their humanity; it’s just not the sort of humanity that the BBC prefers to contemplate. If one subscribes to Rousseau’s view of human nature, the evil and darkness of the soul can be ascribed entirely to the pernicious effects of civilization, and man in his natural state is as sweet and guileless as a little child.

So the Taliban, obviously more primitive than the average BBC reporter, must therefore have a more wholesome spirit than any of the Brits. Therefore we have not been revealing their true human nature, and we must do a better job of it!

The article continues:
- - - - - - - - -
‘In the Prince Harry coverage for example, there were all these people out there but you never really saw them.

‘You knew that the bombs were dropping in that direction and the guns pointing in that direction but you never got a sense of how Afghans are as a people.’

Asked what was missing in British coverage, she added: ‘It may sound odd but the humanity of the Taliban, because the Taliban are a wide, very diverse group of people.

Aha! They’re a diverse, Multicultural bunch of terrorists!

The BBC obviously needs to apply some affirmative action to its coverage of Afghanistan, so that the people who appear on the screen “look like the Taliban”, and not like those nasty unwashed creeps who put their women in burkhas, kill aid workers with their AK-47s, and keep goats and nancy boys with them in their mud-walled compounds. Those aren’t the real Taliban. The real Taliban are… well, they’re just like BBC reporters, only with turbans and lice.

‘Some of them would like to talk to the British Government. Some of them don’t want to be fighting British troops. Some of them would. This is the ideological Taliban.

‘We never have the ability or sometimes the desire to present this in a different way, so that people would be interested… it’s a regret.’

She told the conference: ‘In a country which is as complex, and as difficult and dangerous as Afghanistan you can’t really cover it properly and get the full picture unless you are there day in day out. Unless you are living there and feeling and eating the heat and the dust.’

I don’t know this particular reporter. Can any of our British readers tell me how much time Ms. Doucet has spent in the heat and the dust of Afghanistan? And I don’t mean a suite in the Kabul Hilton, either; I mean the real Afghanistan.

By the way, I don’t know if it makes any difference to her attitude, but Lyse Doucet is from Canada.


Hat tip: VH.

9 comments:

Whiskey said...

This is typical among left wingers. Men and women romanticize the foreigner simply because he is foreign.

When that lefty Brit journalist (who was attacked later by the Taliban in Afghanistan) met with and interviewed Osama he used words just like TE Lawrence used to describe Faisal (himself a syphilitic, polygamist thug with royal pretensions, Al Capone in the Desert): lean, "hawklike" presence, nobility and suchlike garbage.

Men and Women do this, alike. Seeking something in generally, third rate thugs that is lacking in themselves. It speaks to the weakness of our civilization and confidence (ala the Takuan Seiyo piece in Brussels Journal) that so many Westerners look for "meaning" in a thug, instead of say, researchers trying beat Cancer or MS.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Dymphna said...

Mr or Ms Shadowes --

The Baron says he's warned you before about language. Perfectly nice comment, too, if only you'd abide by the rules, thusly:

May I suggest that Ms. Doucet offer herself to the taliban so that they can skin her alive on YouTube, perhaps even the beeb can offer them both a team and a mobile studio for this event and they get to know taliban humanity really close. Perhaps it will finally sink in to these twits that they are actually dealing with evil scum although I kinda doubt it. Morelikely they're going to analyze it ad infinitum. *sighs*

Please adhere to the rules. This is getting tiresome. Besides, many of your comments are fine until you throw in a stink bomb.

babs said...

Heh! Maybe the Beeb reporters don't cover the story thoroughly because they don't want to be killed?
Ever thought of that, you stupid twit?

Sheik Yer'mami said...

Looks like British females have a special affinity for the unwashed, misogynist lunatics and analphabetic primitives who terrorize the Hindukush.

Calling themselves Taliban (students of Islam) only makes their situation even more ridiculous, as if there was nothing more important this day and age then to run around with AK-47's and rocket-launchers to spread their murderous ideology.

Yvonne Ridley set an example of this moonbattery when she was captured once and promptly converted to Islam. She became a Muhammedan agit-prop and a tool in their service ever since.

Anonymous said...

Lyse Doucet is on an old-time Islam admirer. Bfore taking up for the Taliban, she was heaving and panting over the Palestinians for years. I think her reporting was so biased that even al-Beeb had to reassign her. She once advocated that suicide bombings should be described as "honor killings." She is a certified loon.

Proud Infidel said...

What's really pathetic is that many here in the States think the BBC is a top and completely impartial news source, which is very funny to those of us who know otherwise. Of course they want to show the Taliban's "humanity", it's who they're rooting for.

No wonder anti-American feelings are running high in the UK. They don't get the full story and what they get is always slanted. I've read comments by British readers of various UK papers on the 'Net and I'm generally appalled at their level of ignorance regarding the US. And about a lot of things in the world. I'm sure something similar is happening all over Europe. It seems they don't really hear too many dessenting voices in the media.

Can you imagine if they could listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio over there? They would hear stuff they never imagined. I can imagine the exploding veins on the foreheads of elites over there. They would positively FREAK OUT!

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

It was never my intent to insult or offense anyone. I've always had this knack for sarcasm in my blood, sorry, can't help it. Might not be as sharp and witty as that of Edmund Blackadder. Nonetheless, my point was that humanity and taliban is two words that is not compatible in any way. Another thread abot some taliban plans of capturing a british soldier and set him upt to be skinned alive and show it on the internet was my inspiration for that post. I don't know if halalhippies like Ms. Doucet realizes that they are flirting with danger or not. It is however probably easier for people like these to embrace these cultures, since neither politicians nor their mediawhores lives even close to these suburban ghetto hellholes themselves. So maybe the sulotion is to bring these people closer to the cultures they are always praising and protecting. You know, some people is only able to learn the hard way but I'm sorry if anyone misinterpreted in such a way that I seriously wished this womans demise and I don't think I could achieve the same kind of "humanity" as the taliban even if I wanted to.

X said...

No wonder anti-American feelings are running high in the UK. They don't get the full story and what they get is always slanted.

I have been trying to point this out to people for years with little success. Over here most people just get propaganda about the world. America is always evil, islam is peace, BBC is mother, BBC is father, all that rot. The sheer trust people still have for the BBC as an institution drives me potty, and given that trust it's really not surprising that even otherwise sane and well-intentioned people instinctively, reflexively display that anti-american sentiment.