AMERICA/Conor O'Clery: However unpopular he may be at home, Tony Blair is a big hit in the United States. Democrat Anthony Weiner of Brooklyn described him as "the most popular American politician right now".
Republicans love the British PM for sticking with George Bush and doing so with conviction. Without Blair, the "coalition of the willing" would look even more transparent as a cloak for unilateralism.
"They see him as a bulldog figure . . . and he comes over as pro-American when anyone opposed to war is seen as anti-American," explained Washington-based British columnist Andrew Stephen. Former Sunday Times editor Harold Evans told the New York Observer that the "intellectual classes who despise George Bush have come to see Blair as the enlightened and rational expression of anti-terrorism while despairing of Bush's diplomacy".
Opponents of the war praise Blair's attempts at consensus-building and at getting Bush to put the Middle East back on centre stage. His more passionate, humanitarian case for regime-change in Iraq delights pro-war liberals like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times - a leading member of the "I Can't Believe I'm a Hawk Club" - who has suggested that the Democrats should draft Blair for US president in 2004. A fervent admirer, Bill Clinton, has written recently of the similarities between himself and Blair. Another comparable figure is Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet communist leader whose popularity soared in the US as his authority collapsed at home. Being a foreign icon in the US comes with a heavy domestic price.
* * *
The White House is furious with the BBC for airing live video of President Bush getting ready for his address to the nation from the White House on Wednesday evening. A technician on the CBS News crew responsible for pool coverage accidentally flipped a switch and the BBC broadcast one minute and 37 seconds of unauthorised action. Viewers saw a distracted president having his hair sprayed and patted into place by a female stylist.
The BBC and CBS apologised profusely. The BBC said that it could not stop the broadcast because of "technical difficulties". The White House was unforgiving. The result has been yet another tightening of controls of the media. A senior official said that in future the White House, not the networks, will control the switch which directs pool coverage.
Many Americans have been tuning into BBC World as an alternative to US coverage, the tone of which has tended to be overly supportive of the war.
Example: an anchor on the Murdoch-owned Fox News commented to a correspondent in the field: "Our best to the men fighting for freedom there." All three cable news channels are enjoying an enormous boost to their ratings from the war. The average audience for Fox News grew more than 500 per cent and hit a peak of 9.7 million for the president's address. CNN attracted just over five million viewers that evening, almost a seven-fold increase, and MSNBC saw its audience growing more than 750 per cent to about 2.3 million.
* * *
ABC News is having a terrible war, reporting late the attack on Iraq on Wednesday and later leaving black screens due to a "human error" and causing millions of viewers to switch channels. It could suffer even worse collateral damage if the Oscars ceremony is cancelled tomorrow evening. The Oscars is the second-biggest TV show after the Super Bowl.
ABC, the show's broadcaster, has sold an estimated $75 million in advertising.
The glitzy red-carpet entrance has already been cancelled as too frivolous and some Hollywood celebrities like Tom Hanks and Will Smith have said they will not attend. Iraq may also intrude in the speeches at the 75th Academy Awards. Stephen Daldry, director of The Hours, says that he will denounce the war from the stage if he wins Best Director.
* * *
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts turned the recent disclosure that he is half-Jewish and has no Irish blood to his advantage at the annual St Patrick's Day roast of local politicians in South Boston. The Democratic Presidential hopeful was missing when the event got under way in Ironworkers Local 7 Hall, prompting local senator Jack Hart to announce, to laughter: "No matter who you are, everybody's Irish on St Patrick's Day . . . except John Kerry."
Kerry, however, arrived halfway through. "Who said I don't have the matzo balls to be here?" said the senator, who is recovering from prostate surgery (or, as he put it, "a little repair work done on my shillelagh"). He and Representative Stephen Lynch brought the house down by singing "If you're Yiddish, come into the parlour . . . There's a 'mazel tov' for you."
Massachusetts House Speaker Thomas Finneran listed the top 10 reasons that people suspected Kerry was Jewish. Among them was that Kerry's Irish soda bread always came out flat. Also that he ate his corned beef on a bagel. And he always went to Mass on a Saturday.
The war also intruded on the event, with politicians urging prayers for US soldiers. When a woman unfolded a "Vets Against War" sign, she was jeered and pushed out the door. And, echoing the decision by the US Congress cafeteria to rename French fries "freedom fries", one speaker joked that Boston City Councillor James Kelly had "filed an ordinance to change the name of the Frog Pond" in Boston.