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Sophisticated

I’m going to recommend another egregious lefty entertainment product to you: A History of the World in 100 Objects. It’s one hundred handy fun-sized fifteen-minute BBC podcasts based around objects in the British Museum and it’s very cool.

The series ran daily for twenty weeks starting way back in January of 2010, but the whole thing is still available (at the link) for downloading. Also, have a look around the website — it’s cool, too, and includes much more than a hundred objects, in part because they solicited listener submissions. I’ve talked about this series before, but I’m currently re-listening to it from the beginning.

The objects are awesome, but the bias is unmistakable from the beginning. The narration was written and read by the curator of the BM, a lefty cunt-whistle named Neil MacGregor.

Take the above object. It’s a little sandal tag carved out of hippopotamus ivory for Den, one of the earliest Pharoahs of Egypt. Wikipedia says: “Den is said to have brought prosperity to his realm and numerous innovations are attributed to his reign.” Which is the sort of observation we used to make about kings.

MacGregor says this object shows that powerful men have used war and the propaganda of war to control their own people from the beginning of civilization. He called it sadly familiar. To support this contention, he brought in an editorial cartoonist (bound to be from the Guardian, though I was too lazy to check) who said yes, indeedy, he also sometimes drew important people larger than ordinary people. So there you have it.

I’m not reading too much into this, I promise. 2010 was Peak Butthurt over the Iraq War, and he was very clearly calling out Bush’n’Blair.

The BBC is all but unavoidable in this country. We often bitch about it, Uncle B and I. The steady drip-drip-drip of cynical lefty worldview gets into your head no matter how hard you push back. I think it was Melanie Phillips who first described the modern Left as an auto-immune disease: us bad, not-us good. Over and over, all day long. It works its way into the dispirited bones of the unwary.

To this day, they can find a George Bush joke in the gardening program.

Just saying. Listen to the podcasts anyway. Despite everything, there are some wonderful objects and fascinating facts in there. And fifteen minutes is the perfect chunk size for doing doing chores.

Comments


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: July 14, 2014, 11:37 pm

The Bush jokes that are the weakest and most obnoxious are the ones from the naughties by comedians in stand up. They just would throw out the worst, lamest stuff to get easy laughs by mocking Bush. And they weren’t even mocking Bush, they were mocking this nonexistent straw man Bush they invented just to get cheap laughs. The stuff wasn’t objectively funny even if it was true, it was just the kind of thing than angry bitter leftists would giggle at, especially with a few drinks down the chute, because it kicked their hated enemy in the pills.

Its one thing to have some worthless hack throw out cheap lines for an easy laugh, but it was almost universal. Even guys who really are more talented than that like Bill Burr were doing it. He’s smarter than that, he knows better, and he usually has more integrity than that about comedy but there he is in old stuff making fun of how Bush says the word “terror” except he didn’t say it like that and its just sad and tired.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: July 14, 2014, 11:52 pm

I may be wrong but I think that superb ‘auto immune’ observation was by Janet Daley. It is perfect, whoever said it: self-loathing destroying the host.

As for Macgregor, The Weasel was too kind. He is utterly obnoxious.


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: July 15, 2014, 1:58 am

Sometimes, om stormy nights. I dream about what the press would beclike if OBama were elected as Republican.

I mean there’s sooooo much material being wasted there.


Comment from Timothy S. Carlson
Time: July 15, 2014, 4:14 am

Oh good lord. “lefty cunt whistle”. I now have small chunks of chicken and carrots, possible a pea, and most likely a noodle lodged in my nasal cavity because you made me snort my soup out of my nose.

Another reason why I moved out of the US – I don’t speak tagalog, so I don’t understand most of what people are saying around me and on the radio or TV. Hard to get indoctrinated when you are ignorant of the language.

Excuse me – I have to blow my nose…


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: July 15, 2014, 6:02 am

It is truly astounding how much people in entertainment are utterly ignoring the massive material Obama provides for them. Its just pathetic to watch them squirm and pretend they can’t find a thing. The only president in human history that simply provides NOTHING to goof on? So sad.


Comment from mojo
Time: July 15, 2014, 3:19 pm

Agreed, the Comedic Community (if I may be so bold) is falling down on the job. Their mandate is to mock, regardless of who is in power.

Back when shows like SNL had guts, they would have had a running bit, “The Obamas!” or whatever, every week, with corny jokes and tired old sitcom memes (Michelle and Valerie look at each other behind Barry’s back, roll eyes. Que “wah-wah-wah” sound.) as their easy meat.

It is truly pathetic.


Comment from Deborah
Time: July 15, 2014, 5:06 pm

When I talk about
Obama, I like to
break up my speech
patterns into little
teleprompter sound
bites to mock
the President.
It’s more fun than
Talk Like A Pirate
Day. I also use the
pointy finger
(or a fist like Nancy
Pelosi)
as much as possible,
to punctuate my remarks.
I encourage the rest
of you to do the
same.


Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: July 16, 2014, 2:55 pm

cunt-whistle

Ah, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard that term. Still sounds as lovely as the first time, too. Australian, innit?


Comment from drew458
Time: July 18, 2014, 3:05 pm

I try to not consider 15 minutes of “doing doing” as a chore.
Although if I were to get one of those memory foam mattresses, there wouldn’t be any springs to make that “doing” noise.

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