There’s bias everywhere, just ask the Bible bashers
Just as football fans are convinced referees are biased against their particular team, so political fanatics are convinced the media are biased against their particular party or cause. In the past week alone, supporters of Jeremy Corbyn have accused the BBC of bias against Jeremy Corbyn, the Tory MP Peter Lilley has accused it of bias against Tories, and the Vote Leave campaign has accused ITV of bias against Brexit.
Still, the phenomenon is hardly new – as the following brief history of establishment bias shows.
The Bible
Publication of the Bible was marred by furious protests from supporters of Satan, who believed the scriptures exhibited a blatant anti-evil bias.
“The book is a stitch-up by the celestial elite,” said a spokesman for Hell. “The smearing of Satan is relentless. Out of the kindness of his heart he offered Eve a juicy apple – and yet somehow he’s been painted as the bad guy. And all because he dares to stand up for the interests of decent, ordinary evil-doers. The way these apostles go on, you’d think he was the devil or something. “And don’t get me started on Songs
of Praise. Not a single one of the hymns on that programme is in praise of Satan. Typical BBC bias.”
Animal Farm
Today, George Orwell’s allegory is regarded as one of the most important political books ever written. But when it first went on sale, it sparked outcry among the pig community.
“Animal Farm is a work of pure propaganda,” complained Smudge, a six-month-old Tamworth. “Every pig in the book is portrayed in a negative light. Perhaps if Mr Orwell, a so-called ‘journalist’, had troubled himself to leave his ivory tower and listen to the livestock of this country, he’d have realised that we have legitimate concerns about the glass ceiling that prevents even the most talented pigs from being given the opportunity to run their own farms.
“If the internet existed, I’d jolly well start an online petition against him.”
The Second World War
Ken Livingstone isn’t the only public figure to question the conventional wisdom about Nazi Germany. “If you listened to the ‘experts’, you’d think the Nazis were the most brutal mass-murderers in history,” says Adolf Hickler, a 127-year-old Austrian expat living in Argentina. “Actually, the Führer was a decent bloke, popular with his mates, who barely committed a single genocide in his life, to speak of. “Yet the biased academic establishment constantly focuses on the negatives, instead of the positives – like his vegetarianism, or his talent for watercolours. Quite frankly, they’re dragging the Nazis’ good name through the mud.”
It’s an exciting moment for any parent, the first time your son brings a girl home. I don’t think it makes it any less exciting if the pair of them are only two years old. Last weekend, a friend of my wife brought her little daughter round to play with our toddler son. Watching them together was very sweet, although for me, also slightly bemusing. He pushed her around the living-room on his ride-on dog toy, showed her the nearby swings, picked daisies with her on the hill, then took her to the garden to hunt for insects.
“Bee!” she squeaked, pointing in excitement at a little black dot hurrying across a paving slab.
“Not bee,” he explained, knowledgeably. “Ant.”
She looked at him, impressed. “Ant!” she repeated.
Within an hour they were holding hands. When it was time for her and her mummy to go home, he actually blew them both a kiss.
Talk about a smooth operator. Where did he learn these moves? Certainly not from me. At the age of two, the boy is already better with girls than I ever was, even when I was 20 years older. I feel like Philip Larkin in
High Windows, looking on in bitter, middle-aged envy at the carefree confidence of the younger generation, “going down the long slide/ To happiness, endlessly.”
It all seems very unfair. The only revenge I can think of is to write about it in a newspaper column, so I can embarrass him with it in about 10 years’ time.
I never carry an umbrella. This is for two reasons. The first is that I feel it would be hypocritical, given how much I grumble to myself about other people’s; when it’s raining in London you can hardly walk down the street without getting jabbed in the eye by someone’s umbrella spokes.
The second, and probably more important, reason is this. I’m very stupid. As became clear to me during a colossal downpour this week, as I squelched to the station, my trousers clinging soddenly to my thighs.
As I sat dripping on the train, I cheered myself up by remembering a story a friend had told me. One day, about 20 years ago, his great-aunt attended her local May Day celebrations. Also in attendance was her MP, Michael Portillo. Suddenly, the heavens opened. The poor young May Queen got soaking wet – unlike Mr Portillo, standing nice and dry under his umbrella just a few feet away.
My friend’s great-aunt was an ardent supporter of the Tories. Yet, there and then, she decided she couldn’t possibly vote for a man who failed to offer his umbrella to a girl.
I wonder how many other attendees drew the same conclusion. Not long afterwards, at the 1997 general election, Mr Portillo unexpectedly lost his seat.
Since that humiliating night, of course, Mr Portillo has transformed his image, reinventing himself as a genial presenter of BBC Two documentaries about trains. I feel certain that the Michael Portillo we know and love today would have no hesitation in offering a May Queen his umbrella. In fact, he probably carries two, just in case.