IS THE BRITISH PUBLIC SUPPORTING THE BBC FOR THE WRONG REASONS?
A warning to British patriots: This post contains some uncharitable thoughts about the British nation. I hope you’ll forgive me, and I can assure you I have blogged a fair amount of Anglophilia in the past. But the pro-BBC backlash gives me a creepy feeling. It’s the same feeling I got from the pro-Clinton backlash during the Monica Lewinsky affair.
I should say first that the view that Clinton’s sex life is irrelevant to politics and that he should not have been impeached is a perfectly responsible and respectable point of view, probably more responsible than the opinion I myself held at that time, namely that I wanted Clinton impeached, not because I was particularly surprised or outraged but just for the spectacle. (A liberal friend of mine and I wanted to demonstrate in Washington with placards bearing the words “Gore 1998”—why not use Clinton’s impeachment to steer the country to the left!)

But the argument most often made was that, while Clinton’s behavior with Monica Lewinsky was certainly reprehensible, it should not prevent him from serving as president. And this argument seemed to carry most of the American public with it. I say “seemed to” because I suspect there was something else going on, in part because Clinton’s approval ratings went even higher in the months after the scandal than before it. I suspect that a lot of men in particular were secretly applauding the president. That a boy, Mr. President! they were thinking. I wish I could seduce a 21-year-old girl when I was 45! I couldn’t even seduce 21-year-old girls when I was 25! What a stud! There may even have been a few women who were thinking that they would have done the same thing in Monica’s position. (I met one woman who admitted to that thought.) How many married 45-year-old guys would have sex with a 21-year-old girl if they had the chance, and stay faithful for lack of opportunities?

My sister disbelieves this and has an opposite theory: she thinks the public’s disgust was more because Monica was ugly than on moral grounds per se. This is because she’s not a guy. In the pictures I saw, Monica was no supermodel, for sure, but she wasn’t terrible either. Women don’t appreciate how desperate most guys are most of the time, even in our prime, let alone at 45. Of course, we don’t want to commit unless they’re going to get something really good for it. But if we had Monica alone, no fear of commitment, and if you leave aside the moral issue, most of us guys would go for it. I personally wouldn’t leave aside the moral issue. But I suspect a whole lot of guys would. To seduce an intern at that stage of life is actually a pretty impressive sexual achievement—just as, I daresay, nearly toppling the British government by precipitating a suicide and then spuriously implicating the prime minister is a pretty impressive achievement in high-powered spin-driven journalism.

So basically I think Clinton’s approval rating went up because millions of American men would want to do the same thing in his position. But nobody would admits to this. So everybody pays lip service to the goody-goody, upstanding argument, protesting disapproval but saying it was just his “private life.”

In the case of the pro-BBC backlash, I get the same sense. A friend read my post about the BBC, and said that a lot of the British press had attacked the Hutton report. I’d heard about this pro-BBC backlash and tried to find some artifacts on the web, and I probably didn’t get the best stuff. Still, from what I could tell, nobody is really disputing the Hutton report on the facts—that Blair was innocent, the BBC culpable. Instead, by manipulatively pouring out stage-managed emotions, they’re trying to get the facts out of the way so they get back to spinning.

So here are my uncharitable thoughts. Just as millions of American men would have had sex with Monica Lewinsky given the chance, I suspect that the real reason so many Britons are supporting the BBC is because, if they were in the position of Greg Dyke and Andrew Gilligan, they too would have been willing to publish falsehoods in order to topple a prime minister who was risking far too much of Britain’s blood and treasure for someone else’s freedom, who was increasingly showing a religious side which made them uncomfortable, who had suddenly developed a tendency to put his convictions first rather than the opinion of the public, and—worst of all—who was siding with the leader of those cocky Americans, whom it was oh so fashionable and sophisticated to despise. (At this point, it would be appropriate to say that this post would be much better-written if I could momentarily adopt the standpoint of an anti-war Briton and phrase the motives for wanting to frame the prime minister in terms that would make them seem more compelling. I’m afraid I’m incapable of doing so. In fact, do people ever really argue against the war, rather than just giving it ugly labels and applying scorn?)
Of course, all this is speculation. I would be quite happy to be wrong.