In case you missed it — CJR Daily caught it live on Fox News — British Parliament member George Galloway yesterday provided some rather heated testimony to a Senate committee, fervently denying charges that he illicitly profited from the UN Oil for Food program.
Galloway’s testimony — regardless of its content — was a welcome break from the droning monotonic debates that dominate Congress. In other words, Galloway, even though he may be a grandstander, said what was on his mind. It was vintage Senate-Committee-meets-British-Parliamentarian.
B. W. Ventril at CrankyRants has more:
What is, perhaps, most striking is the degree to which his presence highlights a clash of political cultures. Galloway showed no deference or respect for the U.S. Senate, but nor would he or many other MPs do so in Parliament. The degree to which his behaviour seems slightly shocking — not just the content of his testimony, but his overall demeanour — indicates how often American politicians evade the hard questions. This is at least partially caused by an almost inertial respect for power, not just on the part of those in political life but also the national U.S. media. Closer to the corridors of power than their British counterparts, American reporters are more easily co-opted.
T over at Spin Dry — the blog that claims to be “Hanging the Fascist Campaign Spin Out to Dry” — caught the testimony as posted on Daily Kos and was quite smitten by Galloway. T’s take: “Hm. Wonder how much press this will get from the so-called Mainstream Media. Sorry, none at all. Apparently, Paris Hilton got naked again. Or something …”
Well, chances are that Paris Hilton did get naked again. Meantime, contrary to Spin Dry’s shocking lack of faith in the American press, Galloway seems to be making the rounds of the news cycle. Since we saw his testimony live on cable news, we’ve run across coverage by the AP, the New York Times and CNN. (Around here we like to call them the corporate media, but we’re pretty sure that’s the group that T was referring to.)
Damian Penny at Daimnation! is a bit less taken with the whole spectacle and is instead bothered by the Associated Press’ coverage of Galloway. He writes, “In a story on George Galloway’s evasions and insults before a U.S. Senate committee yesterday … the Associated Press swallows Galloway’s line that damning documents found by the Daily Telegraph were proven fakes.” That’s not the whole story, says Damian, and he links to a Telegraph explainer that points out, “the British court did not conclude that the documents were fake, that Galloway’s lawyers did not even challenge their authenticity, and that the Telegraph has appealed” the court ruling that was visited upon it. (Go read the explainer for yourself.) Damian, sounding awfully like CJR Daily, laments, “Pretty sloppy, guys — but not really surprising.”
Trolling around for more Galloway coverage from the blogs, we came across MG at the Norwegianity who was scanning his car radio for Galloway news. Lucky him, he ran across Tony Snow’s radio show. “Christ what a media whore,” writes MG, who reports that Snow came back from a commercial after a segment with Patrick Leahy and told his listeners that the Democratic Senator from Vermont had more or less lied during his interview. Snow explained, according to MG, that just to prove it, he would fact-check the interview — later on in the show.
MG was not happy with that. “What the F**K kind of bullshit is that? I’ll tell you exactly what Snow’s doing. His researchers pore over the transcript in what amounts to an insta-fisking solely for the purpose of making Leahy look bad. Leahy has zero real time opportunity to rebut, so Snow’s free to lie and cheat to his heart’s content, ripping facts out of context and paraphrasing what he can’t quote in so many words.”
It doesn’t sound as if MG actually stuck around to see what Snow really did do with the Leahy interview. Regardless, far be it from us to quibble with his final thought:
“God I hate talk radio.”
–Thomas Lang
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.