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So, the BBC is biased against Christians. And Americans. This isn’t exactly news to anyone who has ever paid attention, but at least it’s nice to see it openly admitted:

It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism….

At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.

And one day, if the ABCNNBCBS cabal ever admits that they are similarly biased – as Bill Clinton has already admitted – then perhaps heterosexual men might be willing to pay them some attention again.

What’s particularly annoying isn’t the bias, which has always been obvious, but the way in which tolerance is preached to leverage entry of the anchor baby, then once the gays and other subcultures are inside the gates, they begin acting upon the instutition like a metastasizing cancer.

Tolerance is a trap. Don’t tolerate it.

I don’t have a problem with biased journalism. I have a problem with subjective news that insults my intelligence by professing to be objective. I am also mystified as to why people continue to support institutions that are openly waging intellectual war against them and everything they believe.

It has recently come to my attention that due to a sad lack of appreciation for over-the-top music – one rather doubts the Scissor Sisters will ever be quite as big in the USA as they are in the UK – far fewer people are familiar with the following piece of audiovisual hilarity than should be.

It’s gayer than gay, but a sight to warm Nate’s Union-hating heart anyway. The link is slightly censored, although it boggles the mind as to why they censored those two lines given the rest of the video.

Perhaps the VQPF can inform us if the song is regarded as offensive or not. It’s been a long time since I was last in a gay bar – don’t get too excited, we were an electronic band and almost everyone at the label was gay – but whether it is nor not, I can’t imagine it being regarded as anything except a signature anthem ala Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys because it’s so obviously awesome.

In any event given songs like “Infected Girls” and “There’s Something Very Wrong With Us So Let’s Go Out Tonight”, I can’t imagine that the band much cares what anyone thinks one way or another. I particularly like their libertarian, but gentlemanly take in “I Buy the Drugs“:

I buy the drugs
I light the fire
I am your main supplier
I am your man and I buy the drugs

UPDATE: Okay, that explains it. They were signed to Warner UK, not Warner USA. By the way, guys, they’ll be at First Ave next Friday, so let me know how the show was.

They’ve got the Dixie Chicks, we’ve got Disturbed:

Is she not right?
Is she insane?
Will she now run for her life in the battle that ends this day?
Is she not right?
Is she insane?
Will she now run for her life now that she lied to me?

The little bitch, she went and she told a lie.
Now she will never tell another, a lie.
The little bitch, she went and she told a lie.
Never fucking lie to me!

I kid, of course. This song about murdering a woman prone to deceit is not in the least bit mysogynous, for to paraphrase Amynda: everything is in context. The song is about a form of abuse that is common because of female dishonesty. So, really, it’s not woman-hating but it is very much female dishonesty-hating, and I can see that a lot of women conflate being a woman with being dishonest.

To be honest, it would be impossible for me to care less about the Dixie Chicks, never once having heard any of their songs. Chick pop country? Right. I wouldn’t worry overmuch about finding any cultural or intellectual significance there, any more than one would find logical consistency or rational thought in anything a feminist scribbles.

So, apparently the thought of returning to the White House has occurred to her after all:

Clinton acknowledged that she has thought about running for the presidency in 2008, but said she is committed to running for Senate re-election.

“As you might guess, I’ve been asked that a few times before,” she said of her possible White House aspirations. “I am focused on this election. I am focused on my work in the Senate. Obviously, people are talking about whether I will or should be running for president, and I’m flattered by that.”

The debate was attracting much attention because Clinton, whose re- election appears increasingly likely, is the front-runner among potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidates. Analysts say the debates could be an important dress rehearsal for Clinton as she prepares to step onto the national stage.

Spencer is an ultra-conservative former mayor of the New York City suburb of Yonkers, battling anonymity and a national party that has forsaken his candidacy.

Watching American politics is like watching a whodunit you’ve seen before. The end isn’t just predictable, but it appears more than a little obvious. The Lizard Queen will likely be the next president since the Republican party will forsake its presidential candidate in a manner very similar to the one in which it has forsaken Spencer. The only thing that I can see keeping her out is the public exposure of her obvious sexual proclivities. Very few women understand the implications of ideology, so regardless of their party affiliation they will tend to support another woman as long as she isn’t an overt dyke or a Church Lady.

Throw in a few “for the childrens” and Hillary should crush the Republican selected to lie down for her. Her frigid bitch persona may actually prove a help, not a hindrance, as it will allow the Lizard Queen to pass for someone capable of standing up to America’s enemies as a sort of modern day Joan of Arc or Boudicca. Americans can be relied upon to forget that both of these historical freaks quickly ended up dead and defeated by their enemies.

The only serious difference in the Lizard Queen’s two upcoming elections, of course, is that the presidential sacrificial lamb will be too openly liberal for the electorate, whereas Spencer appears to be too conservative to win a statewide election in New York.

The more observant among you may have noticed that Rowena finished the cover of the forthcoming third novel. We don’t have a ship date yet since it won’t be sent off to the printers for another week or two, but you can place pre-orders at K&B Booksellers, which is the only place you’ll be able to buy it in the USA for the forseeable future.

In case you’re interested what the book is about, here’s the back cover text:

There is war among the Fallen. As the dread daughter of Moloch cuts a broad swath through the demon princes of Europe, the long-conquered Faery Kingdom of Albion threatens to rise against its dark master. Treachery and intrigue are the order of the day as evil battles evil and jackals lurk amidst the shadows to devour the defeated.

And though the angels of the Most High God take no part in these Fallen struggles, they are well aware of the dangers they pose for the millions of souls over whom they watch. For Moloch’s fearsome spawn seeks nothing less than another fiery human holocaust.

But in places where angels may not tread, a mortal is not always forbidden entry….

It’s no highfalutin’ romance between an intelligent, beautiful, independent woman and the ruggedly dangerous were-seal who respects her or anything, but it may be of some small interest to a few of you.

On a related note, the Original Cyberpunk has an essay in the latest Smart Pop book, this one devoted to CSI. Since I have never seen the show in any of its various iterations, I have nothing to say about it, except that I’m sure the OC’s contribution will be the funniest of the bunch.

These sad nutcases don’t even qualify as media whores:

Every morning, Tammy Haddad, executive producer of MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” hears from more than 100 aspiring commentators. They each explain why they’d be the perfect guest to spout off on the issues of the day. “We call them ‘street meat,’ ” says Ms. Haddad. “They’re always available, walking the streets, waiting for your call on their cellphones.”

They are the minor-league pundits — political consultants, professors, activists, actors, journalists, bloggers and opinionated civilians — and they’re using 21st-century stunts to troll for airtime. Some try to break out of the blogs by repeating particular phrases in their written rants, designed to pop their sites up when TV bookers search for keywords online. Others are buying air time on AM and Internet radio stations to practice their punditry. And many are turning to media advisers or partisan training programs, where they learn new rules of engagement, such as how to use food to bribe producers. The ploys can work, as networks like CNN regularly survey the field, looking for new contributors.

Most of these wannabees are, like the high-profile courtesans they aspire to be, selling nothing but themselves. Very few have any actual ideas or much intelligence, and it’s amusing to read how at least one of the women was picked out because a media exec was “impressed by her looks”. Why not just do what Bill O’Reilly and Howard Stern do and go right for Jenna Jameson?

“News” has become an utter joke. And yet producers always have a hard time believing that I have no interest in selling myself to help them sell whatever it is that they advertise on all those radio and television shows that I don’t watch.

You don’t need to pay attention to any of these things to stay informed, in fact, I argue that doing so is more likely to leave you misinformed. Radio and television are very poor mediums for information transfer, especially in comparison with reading books and the Internet.

Further to the non-citizen soldier discussion:

The Roman army was still the most ruthlessly proficient in the world, and it had to be: frontiers needed guarding. To finance it, a vastly increased bureaucracy was in place. The provinces – stretching from Hadrian’s Wall to Iraq, from the Rhine to the Atlas Mountains – were now thoroughly Romanised and demanding a say in imperial politics. A single emperor simply could not handle the workload. So in 295 Diocletian created a system of emperors and sub-emperors.

One important result of all this was that decisions were now taken in the great imperial palaces that sprang up all over the empire (Ravenna, Trier, Split, Constantinople, etc). The city of Rome was too far from the action. The Senate still met there, but was a shadow of its former self.

I find this dispersion of decision-making power to be interesting in light of the way in which the Executive branch has usurped power from the Legislative and Judicial brances in order to enact virtual legislation through its administrative “courts”.

Like other aspects of cultural decadence, this isn’t a direct cause of societal collapse, but it is a good indicator regarding which way things are headed. Especially since Western civilization is again facing great migrationary pressure from the barbarians.

And the men they hire to break up with their boyfriends:

German women who can’t face dumping their lovers are hiring a man to do it for them….

Two-thirds of Dressler’s clients are women. They tend to call early in the week, after another miserable weekend or holiday. Are women more cowardly? “I don’t like the word cowardly. Women are more diplomatic. They don’t like confrontation. There tend to be all sorts of hidden messages in what they say that men don’t pick up on. Several of my clients were in relationships which they’d personally tried to end several times. But their boyfriends would give them that look — men can make the tears flow just as much as women — promise that they’d change and they’d be back to square one.”

Actually, this sounds like a reasonably good deal for both parties. I don’t know if it holds true for everyone, but it seems that many people see their emotional development going from the desire to avoid being the one dumped to the desire to avoid being the one responsible for the failure of the relationship.

Derbyshire rightly goes to the source to criticize Stanley Kurtz’s enthusiasm for signing up foreign troops:

The youth of fifth-century Italy, said Gibbon, “trembled at the sound of the trumpet.” To keep the armies manned, the later Roman emperors therefore hired in Germans. Look what happened. Same with the 9th and 10th-century Arab Caliphs, though they insourced Turks instead of Germans. Same result.

Or one could look at the Ottoman Turks and their experience with their Janissaries. Once a nation’s government becomes dependent upon foreign soldiers, it is only a matter of time before the foreign soldiers begin to rule over the nation.

If American women hadn’t slaughtered millions of American children or if America’s leaders were willing to abide by George Washington’s advice to avoid foreign entanglements, this would not be an issue. But it is, and it seems clear that the political elite is determined to walk the old path of Empire.

At least those who are historically literate have the advantage of knowing how the story ends. I’m primarily curious to know if the increased pace of modern society will have an effect on the time frame or not. America isn’t about to collapse, to the contrary, history suggests that it’s approaching an expansionary phase that will be accompanied by increasingly authoritarian rule.

This trashy bitch appears to be significantly brighter than the economically-challenged one with the PhD, her affinity for romance novels notwithstanding.

Smart Bitch regular runswithscissors, in the comments to my “It’s not what you’re like, it’s what you like” post, mentioned a George Eliot essay entitled “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.” And as I read Eliot’s barbed descriptions of the trashy novels of yore, I realized plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

I’m rather sympathetic to Eliot’s perspective myself, especially given the way that female writers and editors appear to be Hell-bent on destroying the science fiction and fantasy genres as we know them. While some of the finest authors in the fantasy genre are women, including Tanith Lee, Theresa Edgerton, Katherine Kurtz, Susan Cooper, Pat Wrede, I can’t think of a single female science fiction writer other than Lois McMaster Bujold, Joan Vinge and occasionally LeGuin who is even halfway readable.

But a more serious aspect of Eliot’s criticism that is applicable today is the way in which the same female silliness has pervaded and destroyed the educational system. Women now make up the majority of college students and college graduates, but instead of making up for centuries of “oppression”, they appear to be intent on demonstrating the wisdom of their former oppressors in refusing to allow them to have anything to do with governance.

It’s amazing how much celebrated female achievement is of the talking dog sort, wherein the accomplishment is not what has been said, but the fact that the dog can talk at all.

But to get back to that damn mob of scribbling women and how they’re ruining it for all the smarteywomens out there: I’m still not convinced that reading, writing and enjoying silly novels is an accurate indicator of intelligence. The market is glutted with silly romance novels, but it’s more an indicator of how capitalism works than the IQ of the average romance reader. Making that sort of assumption engages in the same sort of obnoxious discourse that allows cheap provocateurs like Vox Day to make his pronouncements about why women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, for example. A bad book is a bad book, and at most you can say that the author is exceptionally bad at her craft, and that her publishing house needs a healthy infusion from a bottle labeled Standards, Dear God Any Standards, Please.

She’s absolutely correct about the responsibility of capitalism, although there is certainly an anti-capitalistic PC factor that must be considered as well. Still, I totally agree with this plea for a much-needed infusion of upgraded literary standards, especially after dutifully slogging through dreadful novel after dreadful novel on behalf of the Nebula committee. Ye cats, but there was some howlingly bad stuff there… the seaside romance with the were-seal was the absolute nadir.

I think, however, Trashy Bitch makes a mistake in confusing my habit of taking superficial shots at silly women who are able to vote with my actual case against female suffrage. To see merely the cheap provocation is to miss the deeper point, since the danger inherent in permitting the security-at-all costs crowd any influence in government is real, historically demonstrable and deadly serious, and I have yet to see anyone even begin to make a convincing case against it.

Indeed, the vast majority offered nothing beyond a childish appeal to fairness, which takes us right back to Eliot and her condemnation of silly women.