If This Offends

From the London Telegraph, this illuminating story about the girlie-men in the BBC:

Amid the deaths and the grim daily struggle bravely borne by Britain’s forces in southern Iraq, one tale of heroism stands out.

Private Johnson Beharry’s courage in rescuing an ambushed foot patrol then, in a second act, saving his vehicle’s crew despite his own terrible injuries earned him a Victoria Cross.

For the BBC, however, his story is “too positive” about the conflict.

The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain’s youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

The BBC’s retreat from the project, which had the working title Victoria Cross, has sparked accusations of cowardice and will reignite the debate about the broadcaster’s alleged lack of patriotism.

"The BBC has behaved in a cowardly fashion by pulling the plug on the project altogether,” said a source close to the project. “It began to have second thoughts last year as the war in Iraq deteriorated. It felt it couldn’t show anything with a degree of positivity about the conflict.

That’s Private Johnson Beharry in the photo, holding his Victoria’s Cross.

While lamestream media stories of the heroism of America’s troops in Iraq aren’t common, they do exist — our media, lame as it is, hasn’t quite been reduced to the politically-correct pablum of the BBC. Not yet, anyway. And the independent outlets (including, most especially, the hundreds of excellent “mil blogs” out there, and the video outlets like YouTube) are very effective at getting these stories out to those who want to read or see them. Collectively, these sites have millions of visitors each day — a cheering fact to those who, like me, expect that some day in the not too distant future we’ll be needing some folks with a positive view of patriotism and heroism.

I hope the movie about Private Beharry finds another outlet; I’d like to see it. And how sad…how pathetic to see a formerly-great institution like the BBC descend to such limp-wristed depths. If you know anything at all about the history of World War II, you know that just 60 years ago the BBC could have been called “heroic” itself. Now they’d probably censor a history about themselves!