The infantile leftist frenzy which overcame the BBC after the second Iraq war has burned itself out. Its better journalists began fighting back after their colleagues presented the 7/7 attacks on London as an acceptable punishment for voting for Tony Blair. Justifying mass murder in Iraq was one thing, making excuses for the men who murder licence fee-payers was another. In any case, America looms too large in the imagination of broadcasting executives for anti-Americanism to become a permanent ideology. Reconciliation was always likely, but it has been speeded by Barack Obama, who for better and for worse, is a wealthy European's dream candidate.