. . . Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be the administration that was so in tune with the international community that they’d make us popular around the world again? So far, it doesn’t seem to be working, at least where the UK is concerned; Barack Obama has been doing a good job of ticking off our (historically) closest and most reliable ally since his second month in office, and now his (overmatched) press secretary, Robert Gibbs, has just made matters worse. Apparently Gibbs didn’t know that deliberately antagonizing Fleet Street is a bad idea, or he wouldn’t have said this:
“I want to speak generally about some of reports I’ve witnessed over the past few years in the British media and in some ways I’m surprised it filtered down,” Gibbs said.
“Let’s just say that if I wanted to look up, if I wanted to read a writeup today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I might open up a British newspaper,” he continued.
“If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I’m not sure that would be the first stack of clips I picked up.”
Mind you, that arrogant, petulant little tantrum was in response to a single article in theTelegraph. One article, and he can’t take the heat. I hate to see what Gibbs would do if his boss ever had to take the volume of abuse, calumny, and slander that Sarah Palin gets.
Not only does this not speak well about Gibbs’ emotional maturity and ability to deal with criticism (and perhaps that of his boss, for that matter), it says very bad things about his judgment. Actually, what it suggests is that he’s gotten so accustomed to the craven, supine submission of the OSM that he takes that as his due, and thinks everyone should cower before him likewise. He reminds me rather of Prince Rabadash, actually:
Then Rabadash rolled his eyes and spread out his mouth into a horrible, long mirthless grin like a shark, and wagged his ears up and down (anyone can learn how to do this if they take the trouble). He had always found this very effective in Calormen. The bravest had trembled when he made these faces, and ordinary people had fallen to the floor, and sensitive people had often fainted. But what Rabadash hadn’t realized is that it is very easy to frighten people who know you can have them boiled alive the moment you give the word. The grimaces didn’t look at all alarming in Archenland; indeed Lucy only thought Rabadash was going to be sick.
Unfortunately for Rabadash Gibbs, the British press are the Archenlanders in this scenario, and they aren’t about to be cowed, as the Telegraph‘s James Delingpole made abundantly clear with this response to Gibbs’ comments:
Your treatment not just of the British media but of Britain generally smacks of a risible ineptitude. First, you let President Obama send back the Winston Churchill bust. Then, you insult our visiting prime minister with a dismally low-key reception (worthy of a minor African head of state, not your closest and most loyal ally) and shoddy gifts (those DVDs). Then you compound the insult by having one of your monkeys declare, Chicago-politics-style, “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.” OK so we know Obama’s not much interested in foreign affairs and has a special loathing for Britain because it roughed up his Kenyan granddad during the Mau Mau insurrection. But don’t you realise, that one of your jobs as his press secretary is to make out like he loves us so much even his underpants have a union flag on them? . . .
We know we’re not angels. We know we can go over the top sometimes. But unfortunately that’s a much bigger problem for you than it is for us. You see, while a lot of your mainstream media will hold fire on stories which they think may reflect poorly on your wondrous Obamamessiah—what his half-brother has been up to, say—we have fewer qualms about telling it like it is. So far, you’ve had a pretty easy ride. . . . But just you wait till we start showing our teeth. . . .
A lot of Americans know this. They appreciate our irreverence. They enjoy our frank criticisms of all the myriad areas where Obama is getting it so badly wrong—everything from his disastrous cap and trade measures, to his brutal treatment of Chrysler dealerships which didn’t support him, to his pork barrelling, to his failure to do anything that looks remotely like rescuing the US economy. That’s why they come to read us online: because they can and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
If Delingpole opted to hit the press secretary and his administration low, Nile Gardiner decided to swing high:
Can you imagine Gibbs making these remarks about The New York Times or The Washington Post, or NBC, ABC or CBS? This would never happen. The British press, especially the Telegraph, has been singled out because they frequently publish articles critical of the Obama administration and are not afraid to take on the status quo in Washington. Increasingly, millions of Americans are turning to online UK news websites for cutting edge reports on American politics and U.S. foreign policy that the mainstream media refuses to cover in the States, especially if it is unflattering to the Obama White House.
Robert Gibbs’ completely unwarranted rant against the British press is an absolute disgrace, and the President should disown his views. An unreserved apology by Gibbs is also in order.
For all its talk of “raising America’s standing” in the world after the Bush years, the Obama administration is doing a spectacularly bad job of reaching out to its allies. Unfortunately this is the new face of America’s public diplomacy, which will only serve to alienate public opinion across the Atlantic. Congratulations Gibbs—you’ve just made an enemy out of the entire British media, quite an achievement for the man in charge of selling the President’s message.
Even given Gibbs’ previously established (low) standard of competence, this is a most remarkable fiasco; but the most remarkable thing is that no one at the White House seems to recognize it as such. Barring a groveling apology from the administration to the British media (and Britain more generally), I think we’ll have to conclude that the solipsism and self-absorption of this administration is so great that they really honestly don’t see the harm in antagonizing the Brits. If that’s in fact the case, it’s going to come back and bite them in the end. Badly.