Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

The 4th Doctor: A Lost mine, A phony map are people still falling for that old guff I mean are they?

Doctor Who The Ribos Operation Episode 2 1978 

PM Jim Hacker [on the phone] Oh, yes, Paul. You know you have an airborne battalion on standby in Germany? Never mind how I know. Well, since it’s not being used, I want them to fly straight off to St George’s Island. Sort of between Africa and India. A goodwill visit. Just showing the flag. They have been invited. Yes. Leave in… six hours. Yes, an instant goodwill visit. Tell your press office to announce it at once. No, no, leave me out of it. A routine visit. All right – a routine surprise visit. Well, say they were invited earlier, but the NATO exercise got in the way. Now they’re not needed, they’re going anyway. All right. Nobody knows it’s not true. Press statements aren’t delivered under oath.

Yes Prime Minister A Victory for Democracy 1984

One of the funniest things about the “bombshell” concerning John Bolton’s book (which replaces last week’s “Bombshell” of the Rudy aide) is the idea that anyone not named Mitt Romney is actually falling for it.

Given that we saw this game with the Bush tape, and then with Kavanaugh hearings and then during the Mueller business and then finally during the impeachment hearings the idea that there is some kind of last minute bombshell unvetted unverified “evidence” that the completely non-partisan NYT is promulgating that will convince the world that the President must be removed if ONLY we call the witness they want. That’s pretty funny.

It’s even funnier seeing so many people who have spent decades suggesting that John Bolton is some kind of dangerous mad warmongering demagogue suddenly touting him as a vital reliable witness whose words and options are beyond question (see Lawrence Tribe).

But the funniest thing about the lot was alluded to by Molly Hemmingway concerning a statement by Bolton’s people concerning his book:

Oddly phrased, oddly limited statement. Were people ever suggesting the NYT *colluded with these groups for the purpose of helping launch pre-sales*? Seemed folks were simply noticing the carefully orchestrated leak went live a few hours before launch of pre-sales. https://t.co/74KArhRLSQ

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) January 27, 2020

That’s pretty funny but the corker really comes when you consider who is likely pre-buying these books.

From all the press we’re seeing today the people most likely to be burning up the pre-sales of John Bolton’s book are leftists who have spent years hating his guts and would not normally give a book by him the time of day.

And people are wondering why Biden’s people aren’t denying the contents of the leak?

John Bolton is going to make a lot of money off of a bunch of people who hate him and I think that’s absolutely hilarious, and the backlash that he’s getting by some on our side who haven’t quite caught on is only helping him made a few buck off of the far left impeachment fanatics whose appeasement is what this impeachment process is all about.

You mean to tell me —HA HA HA –that there are people —HO HO HO who —Gasp Gasp— FALL for this stupid surprise?

Cue Ambush Bug

What a joke.

…in 1989. (orig posted feb 10 2010)

Sylvester McCoy, the actor who played Doctor Who for two years in the 1980s, has revealed that left-wing scriptwriters hired by the BBC wrote propaganda into the plots in an attempt to undermine Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.

Shades of the Adventures of Robin Hood circa 1955:

“The idea of bringing politics into Doctor Who was deliberate, but we had to do it very quietly and certainly didn’t shout about it,” said McCoy.

“We were a group of politically motivated people and it seemed the right thing to do. At the time Doctor Who used satire to put political messages out there in the way they used to do in places like Czechoslovakia. Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered. Those who wanted to see the messages saw them; others, including one producer, didn’t.”

And the Doctor wasn’t alone in this belief:

Sophie Aldred, who played Ace, the Doctor’s feminist companion, said a shared contempt for right-wing ideology had inspired “a real bonding process” for cast and crew.

“Thatcher was our prime minister and we weren’t happy,” she said.

Well of course they weren’t, after all you had people like Sakharov repressed not to mention people shot trying to cross the wall. Thatcher had much to answer for, oh wait that was East Germany and the Soviets the people Thatcher was opposing wasn’t it?

Well it didn’t matter after all it wasn’t as if a leftist tilt would kill a British institution that had existed for 26 years…oh wait:

However, ratings slumped from a high of 16m, when Tom Baker was the Doctor a decade earlier, to 3m and the show was taken off air twice: in 1986-7 by Michael Grade, then the director of programmes — who said it had “no redeeming features” — and again in 1989, two years after Grade had left the BBC.

Ah the joys of the left managing to make a British institution so unpalatable that it could not survive. One interesting thing to note, You see that same tilt in a few of the 7th doctor audios such as The Fearmonger. I wonder if this will come up in some of the commentaries?

Update: I just realized that I neglected to give the deserved hat tip to Life Dr. Who and Combom. Very much my bad.