Punditry

I know a guy who appeared on some BBC political show in London the morning after Bush won the last election. He was the American Republican on the panel. The guy who was all "I think it's a good thing Bush won."

But he wasn't a pundit. And I happen to know for a fact that he'd had some kind of major falling out with the Republicans in London, and knowing him I can guess it was pretty much a big bust up which resulted in him and them not being on speaking terms. (I know this because I'm no longer on speaking terms with this person for a different bust up.) But all the real Republicans were all off partying somewhere or sleeping off their hangovers or calculating short positions in the stock market or something, and he was the only guy the BBC could find on a Friday morning in November.

How they stumbled upon him, I'm not sure. But he had a big email list and he'd supplied Americans for the audiences of other political shows (I went to one myself) and maybe he was on some kind of shared tv researcher list.

Anyway, it's a mystery to me how anyone gets one of these pundit gigs. I mean, I have an opinion. I clean up pretty good. I have a fair bit of public speaking experience. I'm not without wit and some charm, but I've never been a pundit on British tv. (The Vol-in-Law has been a pundit on British web tv. Is that close?)

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It was early Sunday afternoon and we were watching the news channels prattle on about South Ossetia and here comes this guy defending the Georgian position. And he was drunk and sweaty. And he was in chavvy sports wear. One of those ridiculous Ralph Lauren shirts with the giant polo logo like this - only bigger, I swear.










Photo credit: Hello, my name is douchebag by T'shane on flickr.

I've met more sober, more cogent Georgians* in London bars.

And you know what this guy said? Well, shit. He said a bunch of drunk shit. Democracy. Autonomy. Blah, blah, blah. A lot like the Rowley Birkin character from the Fast Show.



I know they have to come up with guests on short notice and can you name one famous Georgian living in the UK? But really. War in the Caucasus, the sleeping Bear wakes up angry, the return of the cold war and that's the best the BBC can do?

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*And I mean Georgians by the Black Sea Georgia, not Georgians from down I-75. I've met some of those in London bars, too but they were pretty drunk and blathering on stupid stuff about Dawgs.

Great Leap Backward

This morning on BBC Radio 4's Today Show, there was a feature on a Chinese family and their privations under the new economic system. The reporter told the very sad story of a family with multiple health problems and the struggle to make ends meet. They were separated by great distances and the father was working in the precarious black economy in order to keep bodies and souls together.

But the reporter kept going on about how this family were the victims of the new China, the losers in China's booming new economy.

I'm not saying that this family weren't suffering. I'm not even saying that a little bit of socialist intervention might not have made their lives a little easier (like, you know, socialised health care or universal access to good education, or even an agricultural extension agent). But let's not compare the realities of present day China with the rosy, lies of China's Maoist past.

Sure the dad might be working all the hours coming in a Chinese boomtown and Granny might be gleaning wheat from the side of the road. But in the Great Leap Forward, they wouldn't have even had that much to eat. During Mao's time there wasn't even the freedom to travel to the city of your choice to have your labor exploited. China's Communism didn't even attempt a proper welfare state - it was just grinding, totalitarian misery.