https://spectator.us/topic/big-tech-bullies-facebook/
I was in the kitchen preparing the family’s dinner when the inauguration of Joe Biden was on TV, so I caught only mysterious fragments of his speech, over the noise of the blender and stuff. ‘I want an hour — an hour — with my own teen wolf,’ Joe seemed to say at one point. And then: ‘America, America, I give to you my vest.’ I raced through to the living room when someone announced that Garth Crooks was going to sing ‘Amazing Grace’ — good choice, Joe, I thought. Garth seems to have lost a little weight and indeed color, but he did a decent job.
It all went well enough, given the circumstances, and at no point did Joe ask why all those people were there and was it his birthday or something. A very self-regarding young woman appeared and read an awful poem, so I went back into the kitchen. Truth be told, I can’t bear the chest-beating pomposity of the Americans on occasions like this, and the kitsch and the confected emotion and the dire music. I think I preferred the nonagenarians of the old USSR standing implacably as loads of nukes trundled by. Certainly the Russians have the better national anthem.
Still, the BBC presenters seemed to like it, sobbing with happiness at every juncture. I hope the new director-general, Tim Davie, was watching the coverage and noted the somewhat different tone to that which accompanied the inauguration of Donald Trump four years previously. It was a close call between Auntie and CNN as to who could provide the most dementedly partisan coverage — the difference being that we don’t have Fox to offer a bit of balance.