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from The Telegraph.co.uk
Posted By: James Delingpole
May 29, 2009
Memo to US Press secetary Robert Gibbs
1. Congratulations. Your presidential regime has managed to secure the most supine, slobbering, spineless, unquestioning media coverage since Enver Hoxha's Albania. A report last month by the Center for Media and Public Affairs said Obama has received more coverage than his two predecessors combined. On ABC, CBS and NBC news the majority of evaluations - 58 per cent - have been favourable. (Compare GW Bush - 33 per cent; Bill Clinton 44 per cent - in first 50 days of office). More importantly, you have Pravda. Yes, no less than 73 per cent of all evaluative comments in your chief propaganda organ - aka The New York Times - have been favourable to Obama.
2. Sure your congenitally libtard Mainstream Media were probably biased that way anyway, but you have played your part. Your combative style - which led you to dismiss the entire British print media just now in one glib, sneering phrase - has earned you the nickname "The Enforcer." You have a reputation for coming down hard on any media outlet which doesn't follow your approved version of reality. "I work the referee a little bit," as you once put it. (A reference, perhaps, to when you played goalkeeper for your college football team).
3. If you are going to make clever-sounding football references displaying your rich understanding of the British press, try to get your terminology right. We call it the "Champions League." Not the "Champions League cup."
4. That's only the beginning of your problems, matey. Your treatment not just of the British media but of Britain generally smacks of a risible ineptitude. First, you let President Obama send back the Winston Churchill bust. Then, you insult our visiting prime minister with a dismally low-key reception (worthy of a minor African head of state, not your closest and most loyal ally) and shoddy gifts (those DVDs). Then you compound the insult by having one of your monkeys declare, Chicago-politics-style, ""There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment." OK so we know Obama's not much interested in foreign affairs and has a special loathing for Britain because it roughed up his Kenyan granddad during the Mau Mau insurrection. But don't you realise, that one of your jobs as his press secretary is to make out like he loves us so much even his underpants have a union flag on them?
5. Insulting the British print media. Big mistake. We know we're not angels. We know we can go over the top sometimes. But unfortunately that's a much bigger problem for you than it is for us. You see, while a lot of your mainstream media will hold fire on stories which they think may reflect poorly on your wondrous Obamamessiah - what his half-brother has been up to, say - we have fewer qualms about telling it like it is. So far, you've had a pretty easy ride. The Obama Kool Aid has proved almost as popular beverage in Britain as it is in the US. But just you wait till we start showing our teeth.
6. A lot of Americans know this. They appreciate our irreverence. They enjoy our frank criticisms of all the myriad areas where Obama is getting it so badly wrong - everything from his disastrous cap and trade measures, to his brutal treatment of Chrysler dealerships which didn't support him, to his pork barrelling, to his failure to do anything that looks remotely like rescuing the US economy. That's why they come to read us online: because they can and there's nothing you can do to stop them.
7. We had a guy just like you over here once. Guy named Alastair Campbell. Did for our now heavily discredited prime minister Tony Blair what you do for Obama: a little light press bullying; professional turd polishing; that kind of thing. We hated Alastair Campbell, really loathed him. But he got away with bullying us because in those days we didn't know any better. We were still going through this sort of dumb-cattle phase where we still had some vestigial respect for politicians and trust that they knew what they were doing.
8. But we don't respect politicians any more. Not our politicians, and not yours either. Imagine how this new strain of irreverence bordering on utter contempt is going to affect our reporting of political affairs. Actually, you've no need to imagine. Just read some of our Telegraph blogs.
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