That Thatcher/ Palin snub.
It was stunning to hear the leftist media gloating over the fact that an audience Palin was to have had with former British PM had been rejected. The rejection was not the issue that was stunning, but the reported discourtesy in which Thatcher was alleged to have referred to Palin as a nut was. It would be extraordinary if this were the case. It now seems not to have been so.
A reader of the Guardian who was skeptical wrote to the Thatcher Foundation inquiring about it. Mentioning that President Obama has sided with Argentina and calls the Falklands the “Malvinas,” she felt that comments attributed to Lady Thatcher’s staff being used to discredit Palin, a leading US conservative seemed wrong. The reply is here:
A reader of the Guardian who was skeptical wrote to the Thatcher Foundation inquiring about it. Mentioning that President Obama has sided with Argentina and calls the Falklands the “Malvinas,” she felt that comments attributed to Lady Thatcher’s staff being used to discredit Palin, a leading US conservative seemed wrong. The reply is here:
From: Margaret Thatcher FoundationIt seems likely that either the newspaper made the whole thing up, or a staffer or staffers added their own perceptions to the reporter. It is highly unlikely that Thatcher even at 85 years of age, would release such a statement.
To: ————
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 4:51 PM.
Subject: Mrs Palin
Dear Mr ——-,
Thank you for your message.
I have no inside knowledge of this business to offer I am afraid and certainly am not in a position to make any kind of statement on Lady Thatcher’s behalf. I’m happy though to give you my personal view.
The Guardian, of course, is not a newspaper at all sympathetic to Lady Thatcher (or to Mrs. Palin), so reports on this topic, from that source, have minimal credibility. If nothing else, would Lady Thatcher have ever described a prominent US conservative politician as ‘nuts’, or approved an ‘ally’ who used the description? I would hope that question answers itself.
Of course, sadly, Lady Thatcher’s health is not good these days and such considerations naturally dominate her schedule. That much is true. Someone once said that if you plaster together the true and the false you thereby manufacture the plausible, but in this case I don’t think even that much has been achieved by the Guardian.
On the ‘Malvinas’, the OAS never learns and the State Department endlessly seeks to curry favour with it for the sake of the a quiet life. The question is a closed one as far as we in Britain are concerned, as it is in the Falklands themselves where opinion is undivided.
Best wishes,
Christopher Collins
Margaret Thatcher Foundation
Let's see. The Royal Family, Sarkozy, Walesa, the Russians, etc. (and I'm sure many more we've never heard about) all snub Obama and we hear not a peep from the State-run Media.
ReplyDeleteBut come up with any wacky muddled vague rumor on a conservative, such as claiming her own child is her daughter's baby or that George Bush flew a secret around-the-world time travel flight on a U-2 to make dirty deals with Iran, and the press runs with it as if God Himself had come down and announced it personally.
Go figure.
Well Bawb, that warm comforting cocoon probably seems ideal to them, even if they are trapped within it. Much better than that nasty old changeable real world.
ReplyDeleteI imagine the British press, like ours over here get most of their information from MSLSD and don't question it. I am not sure where the information in the report came from, but I am damn sure it didn't come from Thatcher herself.