The BBC has sort of apologised for broadcasting the disgusting anti-Semitic hatred of a halfwit rapper at Glastonbury.
In a statement written by a standing committee of weasel-wordsmiths, the corporation says it ‘regrets’ beaming a pig-ignorant, pigtailed tattooed moron preaching death to Jews into millions of living rooms. That’s big of them.
But there’s a world of difference between regret and admission of guilt.
I often regret leaving the house without an umbrella, even though rain is in the air. It’s not a hanging offence worthy of a public mea culpa. And it’s not as if the Beeb wasn’t aware of this particularly idiotic turn’s previous.
Bob Vylan, for goodness’ sake? Grow up. As Peter Cook used to say dismissively: You can get on the radio with stuff like that. Or, in this case, prime-time BBC iPlayer.
It couldn’t have been more offensive if he’d invited the audience to sing along with his version of the old Guy Mitchell classic: I never felt more like killing the Jews!
Apparently, when he’s not in full-on ‘river to the sea’ Holocaust mode, one of this Ipswich-based ‘poet’s’ party pieces consists of wanting to dig up Margaret Thatcher’s grave.
How brave, how daring. Not even that original, mind you. Been there, heard that.
Apparently, when Bob Vylan’s not in full-on ‘river to the sea’ Holocaust mode, one of this Ipswich-based ‘poet’s’ party pieces consists of wanting to dig up Margaret Thatcher’s grave, writes Richard Littlejohn
Elvis Costello – aka Declan MacManus – was singing about dancing on Mrs Thatcher’s grave 35-odd years ago. Tramp The Dirt Down, it was called, off the Spike album.
I wrote a column about it for London’s Evening Standard, wondering whether Declan would have the ‘courage’ to write something similar about Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.
Obviously not, any more than the latest incarnations of terrorism’s useful idiots would dare to shout about murdering Hamas or Hezbollah. But Jews are fair game at Broadcasting House – and just about everywhere else – these days.
The Beeb didn’t ban Tramp The Dirt Down. Nor did it ever consider that transmitting overt Jew-hatred this weekend was perhaps not a way to behave.
After all, they were more than happy to give a prime-time platform to the ridiculous, balaclava-ed IRA-stooges Kneecap, one of whose members is currently awaiting trial on a charge of promoting Islamist terrorism – which, m’learned friends insist, he denies.
Sadly, the only thing which surprises me is that anyone is surprised. There’s a streak of anti-Semitism which has run through the poison heart of the BBC for at least the past two decades, as I know from personal experience.
Twenty years ago, almost to the day, back when I did a bit of telly, the BBC approached me to make what they called an ‘authored documentary’ on any subject about which I felt especially passionate.
I told them I wanted to expose the resurgent anti-Semitism coming from an unholy alliance between the Far Left and Islamist extremists, under the bogus guise of ‘anti-Zionism’ aimed at Israel.
My plan was that the show would be broadcast on the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, in 1936, when London’s East Enders saw off Oswald Mosley’s fascists
My plan was that the show would be broadcast on the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, in 1936, when London’s East Enders saw off Oswald Mosley’s fascists.
The Beeb ran a mile. Eventually, the project was picked up by Channel 4 and went out in the Dispatches slot, along with a Saturday essay in the Daily Mail.
Since then, the disturbing anti-Semitism in the BBC’s news and current affairs coverage has snowballed. Middle East correspondents take dictation from Hamas and never miss an opportunity to accuse Israel of ‘genocide’ and ‘war crimes’.
So televising a Jew-baiting Tractor Boy on stage at Glastonbury is par for the course.
Only yesterday, a sizeable number of Beeb journalists were complaining about a Hamas-friendly documentary being pulled. They mask this as ‘free speech’, just as the Met Commissioner Mark Rowley justifies giving a police escort to anti-Jewish marches through London every other week.
And don’t get me started on the gormless middle-class chimps at Glasto chanting along with Bob Vylan’s vile lyrics. This is one step beyond ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’.
No, this is about our state broadcaster and the wider political scene today.
When I presented phone-ins at the BBC and London’s LBC, there was a seven-second delay to stop callers dropping the F-bomb on air, or worse.
So why was Bob Vylan allowed to rant for 20 minutes without interruption? In my day, the producer would have cut it off in a heartbeat. We can only assume that whoever was in charge on Saturday considered there was nothing wrong in a no-mark rapper leading a crowd in calling for the death of Jews.
(I’m also told on good authority that while the delay is still in force at LBC, it’s been dropped by the BBC. Why?)
This speaks to far more than just the anti-Israel, far-Left bias at the Beeb. On Saturday, Rod Stewart gave a pre-Glasto interview in which he endorsed Nigel Farage as our next Prime Minister.
Now imagine that Rod had turned up onstage at Glastonbury with a cardboard cut-out of Farage and the crowd had been waving Reform UK and St George’s, not Palestinian, flags.
What if the rather fetching blondes in his backing group had been decked out in Union Jack frocks, like the Spice Girls 30-odd years ago?
And had Rodders kicked off his set, to the tune of Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, with: If you voted Brexit . . . and you want my body, how long do you think it would have been before the producer would have pulled the plug?
Precisely.
Compare and contrast the treatment of Lucy Connolly, currently banged up for posting admittedly stupid and incendiary remarks online after the murder of the Southport schoolgirls, with the apparent indifference of Plod towards the rampant anti-Semitism at Glastonbury this weekend.
The Avon and Somerset ‘Swedey’ studied the evidence for 48 hours before a formal criminal investigation was launched. What was to study? As Creedence Clearwater’s John Fogerty – a standout act at Glastonbury – once sang:
I know it’s true
Oh, so true.
Cause I saw it on TV.
On the one hand we have a frightened and frustrated woman venting unwisely on the internet, and on the other a fashionable rapper calling for genuine genocide against Jews on prime-time television and broadcast across the nation – and indeed the world – by our state broadcaster.
Has Surkeir, the hammer of the Southport-related rioters, ordered the authorities to come down like a ton of hot horseshoes on the Jew-baiters of Glasto?
Curiously not, at time of writing.
Then again, his own Health Secretary Wes Streeting – a particularly ghastly little man, feted by the BBC and the Guardianistas and tipped as a future Labour leader and PM – escaped all sanction for wishing publicly that my dear friend and brilliant Daily Mail colleague Jan Moir should be pushed under a train.
Why isn’t the creep Streeting sharing a cell with Lucy Connolly? And the disgusting Bob Vylan, come to that?
The broadcast watchdog Ofcom has raised an eyebrow, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. As for the BBC’s statement of ‘regret’, that’ll be the end of it.
Unless I’m horribly mistaken, not even deputy heads will roll.
Welcome once again to Surkeir’s Two-Tier Britain, where the far Left always get a free pass and our loyal, law-abiding Jewish friends and neighbours are increasingly treated as second-class citizens unworthy of protection.
As for the BBC’s ‘apology’, to quote former US Vice President John Nance Garner, it isn’t worth a ‘bucket of warm spit’ – or words to that effect.
