The Church of England appoints its first black bishop in 20 years - a perfect opportunity to accuse it of "institutional racism"!

Martin Bashir spots a racist

Yes, I know - it's odd. Because you might have expected race-obsessed liberal-leftists to welcome this week's appointment of The Reverend Karowei Dorgu as Bishop of Woolwich as a hearteningly positive sign of the Church of England's inclusivity. But no - of course not. It provided an excellent excuse for attacking the Church's racial bias, and to demand that it appoint more blacks to senior positions. Church liberals were helped in airing their grievances by the BBC's recently-appointed Religious Affairs correspondent, Martin Bashir, who is both a committed Christian, and (his record would suggest) obsessed by race.

To recap, in November 2013, Bashir, who was then a news presenter at the extremely left-wing cable channel, MSNBC News,  made some comments in the wake of remarks by Sarah Palin suggesting that the US national debt would turn future generation of Americans into slaves. Bashir completely lost the plot. Here's the Guardian's account:

Bashir laid into Palin with characteristic brio, saying she was making light of slavery, which she failed to understand, and calling her America's "resident dunce".

Bashir then read vivid descriptions of the brutal treatment of slaves from the diary of an 18th-century plantation overseer, Thomas Thistlewood. The diary describes slaves being beaten and having faeces and urine forced into their mouths.

“When Mrs Palin invokes slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance," Bashir said. "She confirms if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, she would be the outstanding candidate.”

Charming. And not in the least hyperbolic, repulsive, tasteless or hysterical. In the ensuing furore, MSNBC suspended Bashir, who subsequently apologised profusely and "resigned" (i.e. was presumably given the old heave-ho).

His comments might not seem particularly Christian, but, then, all we believers are, by definition, imperfect.

An incident in 2008 resulted in Bashir being suspended by ABC News, his employer at the time, after making "crude and sexist" comments during a speech at  the Asian American Journalists Association convention in Chicago, where he quipped:  "I'm happy to be in the midst of so many Asian babes. I'm happy that the podium covers me from the waist down" before going on to say that a speech should be "like a dress on a beautiful woman – long enough to cover the important parts and short enough to keep your interest – like my colleague Juju's," referring to fellow ABC reporter Juju Chang. ABC News suspended Bashir, and he sent Ms Chang a grovelling apology.

It's been a bit of a strange career so far, marked by high points (the Princess Diana interview for the BBC, the Michael Jackson documentary for ITV) and some pretty low ones. I guess being appointed BBC religious affairs correspondent ranks somewhere in the middle. I worked with Bashir a few times in (I think) 1995, a few months after the sensational Princess Di broadcast, when the BBC seemed unsure what to do with their newly famous/notorious employee. He seemed a nice chap, and he was a good presenter. I wanted to offer him a role as one of the hosts of the somewhat obscure late-night BBC2 politics programme I was running at the time, but word came from on high that no such offer should be made. I never discovered what the problem was. Maybe someone up there had "doubts" about his temperament? No idea. Whatever, he eventually disappeared off to the States.

Now, he's back. Let's hope he doesn't make any salacious remarks about female bishops or suggest that someone should defecate in Theresa May's mouth. And let's hope he realises that the majority of the British television audience now tends to lapse into a boredom-induced coma whenever the phrase "institutional racism" gets trotted out by some tedious leftie. Back in 1999, when Bashir was still a thing on British TV, and the Macpherson Report into the Stephen Lawrence killing had just minted the phrase "institutional racism", it had the power to make us white folk feel vaguely guilty, no matter how unracist we were. Now, after seventeen years during which, at some point or other, it seems to have been applied to every single organisation in the country (usually in an attempt to shut down any form of intelligent discussion about immigration or multiculturalism) it has lost whatever power it once possessed, because most Britons have realised that they're not in the least bit racist and that the country as a whole is astonishingly unracist. Maybe someone could take Martin Bashir aside and bring him up to date?

On Tuesday, the Church of England appointed a black bishop, presumably because they thought he was the best man for the job. If left-liberals really couldn't bring themselves to break the habits of a lifetime and welcome the appointment, they might at least have had the good manners to keep their whining traps shut.

Talking of race-obsessives, did anyone catch the hour-long BBC2 documentary celebrating the life of "Sir" Lenny Henry earlier this week? No - thought not. He and Martin Bashir should get on like a house on fire.