September 29, 2009
Marr on Brown Fallout: Something to be Thankful For
Andrew Marr has been getting a lot of grief for asking Gordon Brown whether he “took pills”. This is in response to unsubstantiated rumours that Brown has “mental health problems”, which originated on rightwing blogs and have subsequently built up into a sort of diffused smear-campaign, albeit one propelled by the power of repetition and malice, as oppose to centralised co-ordination.
What’s interesting to note is how hard many people have come down on the “Brown is mental” rumour, and heavily chastised Marr for effectively legitimating it and making it mainstream.
Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy has rightly been up in arms about the matter (and here, where he points us towards journalist Nick Assinder’s criticisms of Marr too).
Liberal Conspiracy is also carrying the story that several journalists have now openly criticised Marr for asking questions about Brown’s mental health with the effect of substantiating and legitimising smear rumours. In particular, Adam Boulton of Sky News has said:
“On the principle point as to, should interviewers be able to ask questions about the physical state or health of the Prime Minister – I think they should. So in that sense I don’t think its gratuitous.
My personal view is that on that specific point, I felt, and I think most of us working at Westminster felt, that question had been asked and answered, and we all felt that on that basis that it had been denied, and on the level of evidence we had, there was no basis to take that further.”
I think there’s something we should all be quite pleased about here, putting aside Marr’s much-condemned foolishness. It comes out if we compare the reaction to Marr’s question to the coverage of the “birther” movement in the USA.
The “birthers” claim – despite clear evidence to the contrary, including a birth certificate – that Obama was not born a US citizen, and hence cannot hold the office of President. The claims began before the 2008 election, but were largely ignored. However, over the past few months the conspiracy theory has exploded, largely because it has been fuelled by those seeking ways to discredit Obama’s healthcare reforms.
Astonishingly, 23% of Americans now think Obama was not born a US citizen, and 18% say they are unsure. In large measure, this is because the “birther” claims have been recycled and repeated by the US 24hour television networks. Some – like Fox News – have undertaken only the barest of attempts to pretend they are doing anything other than deliberately spreading the birther conspiracy. Others have gladly fallen into the lazy trap of reporting the birther story under the guise of “lots of people are saying Obama is Kenyan, we are covering the fact lots of people are saying this”, or, in even more Kafkaesque style, reporting the birther story under the guise that “lots of other TV stations are reporting the birther movement, so we are doing a media story about other media covering the birthers”.
The effect is for a wild and wholly unfounded rumour about Obama to have entered the mainstream of American political discourse, and been accepted by significant numbers. Nobody should doubt that in a nation where patriotism carries so much importance, the suggestion that Obama is not American will have huge impact upon the success or failure of his healthcare reforms. As the birthers and their apologist-enablers know quite well.
So we here in Britain should be very grateful. Our media is apparently coming down on Marr like a ton of bricks, and in the process making clear that the rumour about Brown is mentally unwell is nothing but a rumour, and has no rightful place in our national politics. And far as I can tell, the rumour is being quashed by all mainstream media outlets, including right-of-centre ones like Sky News and the Spectator, as well as the usual leftwing suspects.
Our brothers and sisters across the pond are not so lucky. Let’s feel sorry for them, but be grateful for our own good fortunes.
