I saw that couldn't help laughing at the Daily Mail take on it
"We trust the 4 million Americans who come to London each year are made of sterner stuff than the U.S. Air Force."
While you can understand why the order was given (locally at Mildenhall and Lakenheath) it doesn't do much for sensitivity and confidence.
There seems to be talk that the order might reversed.
Personally, I'd like to stay of London as well, but that's just because I'm lazy and would rather stay at home than go to work...wait a second I shouldn't be typing this kind of shit.
Yeah, thought it would be just an "on the day of the bombing" thing. Shame on their PR bod though - dangers of how a slack response can lead to a Mail front page. Who would want our job...?!
Almost any response can lead to a Daily mail front page once they've lined you up in the cross-wires of their prejudice blunderbuss.
However had s/he mentioned 'not getting in the way of the emergency services' and it being only a primarily Thursday/Friday-oriented thing then the PRO would probably have got away with a Page 3 and an Editorial headlined 'US Troops Refuse to Help London Relief Effort', sub-head 'Commander says they have more important things to do than help Londoners'.
Some columnist would then have mentioned the blitz, and the way the US always joined wars late except when they started them and then complained about everybody else joining late (Korea) or not at all (Vietnam).
Meanwhile in real Daily Mail land at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/dailymail/home.html?in_page_id=1766
... see how over half of all women between 25 and 45 will have plastic surgery...the correct response to this is not phwoarrr! by the way guys BECAUSE... IT'S VERY UNLIKELY TO BE TRUE...
Reminiscent of that f**kin' bonkers Times front page last week saying that 1 in 10 schoolkids carried a gun...
I feel a horrible pistol in pocket analogy coming on but recent news reports force me to restrain my desire to to offend.
However, lets face it, kids do not need plastic guns to be dangerous and we do not need to pretend we are in South Central to feel that there are issues in some of our schools....
But what was really disturbing about the madness of the Times was how the pro-Gun lobby dived on the story, lamenting how poor benighted 'law-abiding citizens' in crazy old Britain weren't 'allowed to defend themselves' by carrying guns and why this was an argument AGAINST firearms control in the US - no, really, its true...
Actually, I didn't get this story from the Mail - I heard it on the World Service news late last night, then Googled it and found the Cambridgeshire local news piece which I linked to. Also, the ban wasn't announced on Thursday, it was announced on Friday when the government was already telling people to try to return to normalilty as much as possible. The "we were trying to stay out of the way" line sounds like a cheap excuse (particularly if you read the extended version on the US forces site, stripes.com). I wonder whether they would have retracted this order as quickly as they did (only four days! Wow!) had the full sarcasm of the British press not rained down upon them.
Besides, what exactly were they staying out of the way of? How many US Airmen habitually spend time hanging out in closed-off tube tunnels 40 metres below ground?
Dan, Dan, don't be Soooo serious. I was just looking at it from an intra-PR viewpoint as Nick was.
Basically some middle ranking prat panicked and said whhoooha hicks stay out of the scary places (and not altogether unreasonably and perhaps more to the point keep your wives and families out too); its a non-story. You're probably right about the timing of the rescind but like who cares?
On the one hand its good that we've found a way to be reflexively anti-American about even this, because after all this is what returning to normality is all about. On the other hand I DON'T CARE and its in fairly bad taste, because after all to be fair to the yanks their outrage was worse and perhaps they were judging ours by that standard - which in a perverse way is kind of generous as discussed yesterday by Jemima Lewis in the Indy article: Infatuated with the myth of stoicism
Crikey, now I've defended the US military, whatever next, I must have been taking those copntrarian pills Christopher Hitchens told me were smarties again...
Oops, sorry Chris, that was just my self-justifying reflex action kicking in. You're absolutely right, of course, but... damn! Isn't it good to have an excuse to knock the Americans again?
The Daily Mail is a better target and it really deserves it.
Not only is it's schizoid attitude to women (yes day what jeans to buy, naturally six women in jeans with naked torso clutching their breasts...and this helps decide on the pair that best suit you how?).
Don't get me started, to quote the paper's own oft use cry of indignation: "Has the world gone mad".
9 comments:
I saw that couldn't help laughing at the Daily Mail take on it
"We trust the 4 million Americans who come to London each year are made of sterner stuff than the U.S. Air Force."
While you can understand why the order was given (locally at Mildenhall and Lakenheath) it doesn't do much for sensitivity and confidence.
There seems to be talk that the order might reversed.
Personally, I'd like to stay of London as well, but that's just because I'm lazy and would rather stay at home than go to work...wait a second I shouldn't be typing this kind of shit.
Oh I see the BBC is reporting that ban has now been lifted.
Yeah, thought it would be just an "on the day of the bombing" thing. Shame on their PR bod though - dangers of how a slack response can lead to a Mail front page. Who would want our job...?!
Almost any response can lead to a Daily mail front page once they've lined you up in the cross-wires of their prejudice blunderbuss.
However had s/he mentioned 'not getting in the way of the emergency services' and it being only a primarily Thursday/Friday-oriented thing then the PRO would probably have got away with a Page 3 and an Editorial headlined 'US Troops Refuse to Help London Relief Effort', sub-head 'Commander says they have more important things to do than help Londoners'.
Some columnist would then have mentioned the blitz, and the way the US always joined wars late except when they started them and then complained about everybody else joining late (Korea) or not at all (Vietnam).
Meanwhile in real Daily Mail land
at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/dailymail/home.html?in_page_id=1766
... see how over half of all women between 25 and 45 will have plastic surgery...the correct response to this is not phwoarrr! by the way guys BECAUSE... IT'S VERY UNLIKELY TO BE TRUE...
Reminiscent of that f**kin' bonkers Times front page last week saying that 1 in 10 schoolkids carried a gun...
I feel a horrible pistol in pocket analogy coming on but recent news reports force me to restrain my desire to to offend.
However, lets face it, kids do not need plastic guns to be dangerous and we do not need to pretend we are in South Central to feel that there are issues in some of our schools....
But what was really disturbing about the madness of the Times was how the pro-Gun lobby dived on the story, lamenting how poor benighted 'law-abiding citizens' in crazy old Britain weren't 'allowed to defend themselves' by carrying guns and why this was an argument AGAINST firearms control in the US - no, really, its true...
Actually, I didn't get this story from the Mail - I heard it on the World Service news late last night, then Googled it and found the Cambridgeshire local news piece which I linked to. Also, the ban wasn't announced on Thursday, it was announced on Friday when the government was already telling people to try to return to normalilty as much as possible. The "we were trying to stay out of the way" line sounds like a cheap excuse (particularly if you read the extended version on the US forces site, stripes.com). I wonder whether they would have retracted this order as quickly as they did (only four days! Wow!) had the full sarcasm of the British press not rained down upon them.
Besides, what exactly were they staying out of the way of? How many US Airmen habitually spend time hanging out in closed-off tube tunnels 40 metres below ground?
Dan, Dan, don't be Soooo serious. I was just looking at it from an intra-PR viewpoint as Nick was.
Basically some middle ranking prat panicked and said whhoooha hicks stay out of the scary places (and not altogether unreasonably and perhaps more to the point keep your wives and families out too); its a non-story. You're probably right about the timing of the rescind but like who cares?
On the one hand its good that we've found a way to be reflexively anti-American about even this, because after all this is what returning to normality is all about. On the other hand I DON'T CARE and its in fairly bad taste, because after all to be fair to the yanks their outrage was worse and perhaps they were judging ours by that standard - which in a perverse way is kind of generous as discussed yesterday by Jemima Lewis in the Indy article: Infatuated with the myth of stoicism
Crikey, now I've defended the US military, whatever next, I must have been taking those copntrarian pills Christopher Hitchens told me were smarties again...
Oops, sorry Chris, that was just my self-justifying reflex action kicking in. You're absolutely right, of course, but... damn! Isn't it good to have an excuse to knock the Americans again?
The Daily Mail is a better target and it really deserves it.
Not only is it's schizoid attitude to women (yes day what jeans to buy, naturally six women in jeans with naked torso clutching their breasts...and this helps decide on the pair that best suit you how?).
Don't get me started, to quote the paper's own oft use cry of indignation: "Has the world gone mad".
Answers on a postcard to the usual asylum.
The last "so-called" comment absolutely defies belief. Has the world gone mad? You couldn't make it up!
(Oops, sorry. That last one © R. Littlejohn. Ahh... except he writes for the Mail too now, doesn't he?)
Post a Comment