On the media: Brits miss the point

Spiked-online.com, one of the best British libertarian websites out there, has lately fallen into a very bad British habit. Rather than rely on their U.S.-based reporter (the excellent Sean Collins) to produce their U.S. news, Spiked has begun publishing long, fervent, and absolutely wrong-headed editorials out of their London offices.

The trouble with reporting on America (or on any country) from a distance is that fact-checking is nearly impossible. So is a sense of perspective. When European journals write about America, they tend to base a lot of their ideas on a reading of U.S. media and movies. What they end up with is an unhealthy mixture of mythology and prejudice. Spiked is no exception.

That said, we can all learn a lot from Spiked's bizarre readings of American culture. Here is their latest take on the "radical left's" hatred of George Bush:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5909/

The gist of this piece is that America's "cultural elites" hate George Bush because he represents greed, sloth, and drunken debauchery. And the elites love Obama because he's slim, fit, and gets loads of exercise:

"Now Obama, the teetotal healthy eater, is presented as America’s moral saviour after the cake-scoffing irresponsibility, greed and general drunkenness of the Bush years."

O'Neill's theory is strange in the extreme, given that Bush is a fanatical mountain biker who works out for three hours a day and hasn't had a drop to drink in twenty years.

But then again, O'Neill's sourcing is also strange in the extreme. He's watched the new Oliver Stone movie, W. And he's read through a selection of left-leaning magazines. All of his sources praise Obama for getting regular exercise -- and denounce Bush as a recovering alcoholic.

O'Neill reads this as an instance of the cultural elite's puritanical sensibility. He writes:

"The liberals who made a living from bashing Bush hated him primarily for sinning against their religion: the Church of Self-Denial and Self-Restraint."

But O'Neill is completely missing the point, of course. The left wing does not hate Bush because of his eating habits or his exercise routines. The left hates Bush for invading sovereign states, stripping away our civil liberties, and gutting our social programs, among other things.

Left-leaning commentators bash Bush wherever they can. This is why they attack his drinking, or, for that matter, his mispronounced words. Most people don't really care whether the president likes pepperoni, or how he pronounces the word nuclear -- these are just excuses to take cheap shots at someone we dislike anyway.

But maybe we all need to get over this bad habit. This habit of taking cheap shots.

Why are we so afraid to attack our political leaders for their real sins? Why HAS the left spent so much energy hammering Bush for such nonsense? Why are afraid to stand up for what we really believe in? No wonder foreign observers think that we're all obsessed with food and manners -- those are the only things we allow ourselves to be outraged by.