British media reacts to visit with hysteria
You'd think the Spice Girls had reunited
Kelly McParland
National Post
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
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No one has ever accused the British press of knowing when enough is enough, so it is probably not surprising that George Bush's visit to Britain this week sent Fleet Street into Full Hysteria.
Not since the Spice Girls broke up has so much hyperbole been lavished on so little news. Mr. Bush arrived on schedule yesterday, was greeted by Prince Charles and headed off to Buckingham Palace. The world didn't end.
You wouldn't know it from the panic-stricken prognostications that greeted Britons over their morning toast. If the Princess of Wales had been found alive, wandering the streets of Paris disguised as a Rastafarian, it couldn't have been treated with less restraint.
Predictably, much of the best hyperventilating took place before the visit even started, since it's always easier to get worked up about what might happen than about what actually has. Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor who in 30 years as a public figure has never once been noted for his probity, kicked it off with an inspiringly lunatic interview in The Ecologist magazine.
"I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen," said Mr. Livingstone. "The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction."
The Mayor was once known as Red Ken for his inability to resist skating along the fringe of common sense on any given political issue. Margaret Thatcher found him so annoying, she abolished the entire Greater London Council largely to get rid of him.
On Monday, he took a break from bashing Mr. Bush to ban pigeon-feeding in Trafalgar Square. Famously anti-pigeon, he once released a hawk named "Squirty" to chase them away.
But if Mr. Livingstone doesn't really expect to be taken seriously, the British Broadcasting Corp. does. Like the CBC, the BBC considers itself the very soul of objective journalism, even as it regularly wanders off into left-wing agendaland.
Reflecting on plans by anti-war organizers to stage a large demonstration to coincide with Mr. Bush's visit, the BBC noted that should the forecast turnout turn out, it would "dwarf the dissent which greeted China's Jiang Zemin or the 1978 state visit by Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu."
Unfortunately for the Beeb, Hitler, Stalin and the spawn of Satan never visited London, so they couldn't be brought into the comparison. Nonetheless, the national broadcaster was so concerned, it felt the need to seek out random Americans to ask if they felt "guilty by association," thanks to the apocalyptic attention such organizations as -- well, the BBC for instance -- were showering on an event that hadn't even taken place yet.
A businessman said no. A "social researcher" said yes. Weird, eh?
When a single elderly protester -- Lindis Percy, a "veteran peace campaigner" from Hull -- managed to scale the gates at Buckingham Palace, it made headlines. (Unknown woman doesn't like Bush! Not fond of fish, either!)
When protest organizers increased the number of marchers they hoped would show up, scribes noted "opposition to the visit appears to be growing" -- as if making up new numbers actually increased the turnout.
Even The Daily Telegraph, a staunch Bush supporter that only days earlier produced an admiring 4,000-word interview with the President, seemed incapable of resisting the tide. Suggesting Mr. Livingstone felt safe in his rhetoric because he assumed millions of "moderates" agreed with him, it added: "He may be right."
Well, not really. Oddly, it took The Guardian, a bastion of the left that has opposed everything about Mr. Bush short of his birth, to burst the bubble yesterday. Clenching its teeth, it reported the results of a public opinion poll it clearly had hoped would turn out differently.
"The survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American, with 62% of voters believing that the U.S. is 'generally speaking, a force for good, not evil, in the world,' " the newspaper admitted.
The poll found only 36% of Britons were opposed to Mr. Bush's visit, that Labour voters were even more enthusiastic than Conservatives, that a majority of "twentysomethings" welcomed Mr. Bush, and that the visit was unlikely to do any harm to Prime Minister Tony Blair's political standing, despite determined suggestions by Britain's punditocracy that it was bound to do so.
It also found "a surge in pro-war sentiment" as suicide attacks in Iraq have increased. Opposition to the war has fallen 12 points to 41%, while support has risen nine points to 47%. Two-thirds of those polled said Western troops should stay in Iraq until the situation is "more stable."
You would think such findings would let a little air out of the anti-U.S. jihad, but they probably won't. Even as the poll hit print, the BBC was offering a helpful primer on the visit, featuring such unbiased questions as, "Isn't this really a political trip?" and, "Given the depth of feeling against [Mr. Bush] and the Iraq war, isn't the timing unfortunate?"
In fact, the invitation was issued 18 months ago, well before the Iraq war. It came from the Queen, who asked Mr. Bush to stay at the Palace, the first U.S. president to sleep over since Woodrow Wilson in 1918.
Mr. Bush has been remarkably cheerful about the furor, suggesting it shows how lucky Britons are to live in a democracy. Somebody must have told him about Fleet Street, which will have forgotten him next week as it seeks out new outrages.
There were rumours yesterday the marriage of David Beckham and his Spice Girl wife, Victoria, was on the rocks -- Posh apparently "issued an ultimatum" that Becks move back home from Spain.
Mr. Bush can only hope it's true.
kmcparland@nationalpost.com
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