The Gods of the Copybook Headings

Sunny Days

For a network no one watches...

The Twitter account is only followed by a few dozen people, but routinely takes aim at Sun News Network hosts and their parent company, Quebecor, while defending the CBC.

"We have to start taking advantage of this kind of support," writes CBC VP Kirstine Stewart, in an email obtained through access to information, making reference to one tweet by Scum_TV.

Levant and Stewart have a history of fencing with each other.

Let the hate grow. Now why would the Mother Corp, whose august presence has dominated the Canadian media landscape for almost four generations, want the support of a Twitter user going by the inelegant name of "Scum TV." As the moniker might suggest, the Twit in question had post titles such as "Ezra Levant is a Douchebag." Is this the kind of support Kirstine Stewart wants? Desperation, thy name is CBC.

The grumpiness continues. Warren Kinsella, ex-Ass Kicker and current House Liberal for the Sun chain, has unearth a study that proves conservatives are "whinny and insecure." Did we mention that the researchers were from Berkeley?

The whiny, paranoid little kids grew up to become conservatives! They were rigid, thin-skinned, didn’t like ambiguity, and devotedly stuck to traditional gender roles. They looked to authority and tradition a lot more, and were highly uncomfortable when it was absent. The more-confident kids, meanwhile, mainly grew up to be liberals. They were non-conformists with diverse interests, and more self-reliant and energetic, too.

Sounds just like "Scum TV." Heck, no one can accuse Warren of not being self-confident. Some would use other language to describe the former Chretien flack. This being a family blog we will, however, refrain from using such colourful expressions of opprobrium. Despite my intense hatred of ambiguity, and obsession with traditional gender roles, I'm willing to admit that Warren has an amazingly non-conformist take on his political adversaries. Like when he mocked Stockwell Day's obscure religious beliefs by using a stuffed toy. Original and biting satire. Very tolerant too.

There seems to be just a bit, a very small bit, of tongue in cheek in Kinsella's article. The Berkeley study, however, is how liberals like to see themselves, "Scum TV" is how many liberals actually are in the flesh. Having lived three decades here in the Imperial Capital, where conservatives and libertarians are as scarce as hen's teeth, the snarling variety liberal proliferates.  

But don't trust me, take a quick trip to the comments section of a political news story at the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star. The bile directed at conservatives in general, and the current Harper government in particular, is as impressive as it is unoriginal. How many times can you spell it "CONservative" before the joke wears off? Apparently several hundred times.

While there are certainly tradition minded conservatives, typically called paleocons, they represent only a small segment of the overall movement. The overarching theme of conservatism on both sides of the border is not "authority" but smaller government, i.e. less coercive authority. A dislike of ambiguity might be better understood as a suspicion of elitist sophistry. Being vague does not get you far in professions that conservatives often gravitate toward, like engineering and business.

To the liberal mind the world is like that small town in Footloose. They're Kevin Bacon and the conservatives are all reincarnations of John Lithgow. The film presented a world view so stale that it had to be set in an obscure town in the midwest to be plausible. America during the Reagan era wasn't a religiously oppressed society, it hasn't become so in the quarter century since then. Liberalism as perpetual rebellions has one fatal flaw: How do you keep rebelling after you've become the Establishment?

Going Squirrel

The Unions object:

Canada’s largest public-sector union is launching a new social media campaign to protest the job losses and service cuts it says will result from the government’s effort to reduce the deficit.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada says Canadians are being asked to make “an absurd choice” between a balanced budget and strong public services.

To sell their message to Canadians they have created a video featuring a gigantic squirrel. More than being merely a squirrel, it is squirrel who causes chaos at the office! Amazingly enough the video is actually quite funny and well made. I have no idea what the squirrel represents. Perhaps he is possessed by the demonic spirit of Tony Clement. The video is much better than the one put out by the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. For those keeping track, that's Media Experts 0, Public Sector Unions 1.

Technically the PSAC is correct. You don't have to choose between balancing the budget and firing bureaucrats. There is a third way: Hiking taxes. Now the union bosses don't come out and say that. Being obvious gets you nowhere in politics, unless of course you're a lobbyist, and there are no cameras or microphones nearby.

Helpfully John Gordon, national President of the PSAC, points out that:

PSAC’s members perform wide range of government jobs including environmental protection, food inspection, infectious disease tracking and search-and-rescue. “All of these are service that people depend on,” Mr. Gordon said, “and some of them are life-saving services.”

And rather a lot of them ensure that paperwork is filed in an appropriately diverse and bilingual manner. Activities that do much to promote our sense of moral uplift, as well as well as absorb the surplus sociology majors from the job market. It's a win-win for everyone. Except the taxpayers.

In public policy circles the taxpayer is colloquially known as the "sucker." The money gets sucked out of their pockets into someone else's. In ordinary life this is called a mugging. Being an essential function of modern government, however, it is instead described as being "compassionate." As our unionized educators taught us, compassion is the most important virtue. Feel before you think.

Being compassionate at the point of a gun - what is taxation ultimately? -  is a contradiction in terms. Saying that you think my money belongs in your pocket, while far more honest, is less convincing an argument. If the compassion angle doesn't work the unions try fear mongering: If you don't give us more money people will die! People like you you! Maybe!

Controlling infectious diseases, inspecting food and conducting search and rescue are all important functions. Why do they necessarily have do be done by the government? Or done by as many people as are now employed? In the private sector the question is always: What can you do that someone else can't do for less? Explain the value added you provide that can't be done some other way by someone else.

Now if union leaders talked like that they wouldn't be union leaders, they'd be business people. If they were capable of actually convincing ordinary people they provided value, instead of rhetorical tricks, they wouldn't be working for the government. There isn't much of a reason for government to be inspecting food - do businesses make money by killing their clients? - or ensuring that Francophones in Edmonton have access to government services in French - is learning basic English really that hard? - public sector unions need to frighten or guilt trip people into overlooking these truths.

Unionized government employees are, on the whole, better paid and better benefited than the vast majority of Canadians. They have a job security few in the private sector can even imagine. Asking bureaucrats to take a hit, along with everyone else, isn't unfair or cruel, it's life. Being an employee of the Government of Canada does not make you anymore of a Canadian than everyone else.

 

Friends and Relations

The "Friends" of the Mother Corp fight back:

“Nobody can watch what’s going on on Parliament Hill without realizing there’s a threat to public broadcasting,” spokesman Ian Morrison said.

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is worried the CBC will face cuts as part of the Conservative government’s strategic and operating review, which aims to find $4-billion in overall savings to help reduce the deficit.

All departments, agencies and crown corporations have been asked to submit plans detailing how they would trim their budgets by 5 and 10 per cent, and Heritage Minister James Moore has said the CBC won’t be exempt from the belt-tightening.

$4 billion. Sounds like a lot of money. Lots of digits. That is until you consider that in the month of August 2011 alone the federal government ran a $3.6 billion deficit. The 2010-2011 deficit was $36.2 billion on spending of $261.2 billion. The estimated federal expenditures for 2011-12 clocks up to $250.8 billion, that's $151.4 billion in transfer payments, $69.1 billion in operating and capital costs and $30.3 billion in debt charges. $4 billion in "savings" is just trimming Leviathan's beard.

As our friends over at Sun News like to remind us, ad nauseum, the CBC gets a $1.1 billion yearly subsidy from the feds. The exact figure for 2010-2011 is $1,159,938,000, slightly up from $1,142,673,000 in 2009-2010. Earned revenue for the Mother Corp in 2010-2011 were $649,948,000. Total expenditure for 2010-2011 was $1,839,546,000. If you can't cut 5% or 10% from that budget, and still run a television network, you're just not trying.

Did we mention that Peter Mansbridge's salary is nearly a state secret?

Nothing to hide, I'm sure.

Needless to say that running the numbers is not a strong point for the MSM, it's why most of them are journalists after all. They also have a vested interest in keeping the CBC going. While it is formally a competitor, that only means something to the suits in the executive offices. For the frontline hacks the CBC is a potential employer. In a field with few places to jump, the CBC looks like a good safety net. Thus there is little mention of just how minor a cut the Tories are actually contemplating.

The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting was founded back in the 1980s. The Damascus moment for the Friends came when they stumbled across this startling fact:

In 1987, FRIENDS' founders were inspired by the shocking realization that by the age of 12, the average Canadian child has watched 12,000 hours of television, 9,000 hours of which was American. The same child had attended only 6,000 hours of school. The generation of Canadian children growing up during the past 20 years has been raised on steady diet of stories about Los Angeles, Detroit and New Orleans - not Halifax, Chicoutimi or Edmonton.

Ah, for the mean streets of Chicoutimi. That's where the action is.

The ratio of American to Canadian content in our living rooms has almost certainly gone up since then. In their list of "Accomplishments" the group goes to some length in detailing their lobbying activities. Rather little is mentioned about actually stemming the tide of American television. Perhaps this is because they have failed miserable. People watch American television because it is, on the whole, more interesting than Canadian television.

I will concede to no one a greater loathing for the vulgarity of modern American television. Excepting HBO style cable networks, it's mostly a swamp. When it comes to mass media, however, the law is clear: vox populi, vox dei.  This is not an aesthetic judgement. I'd prefer television schedules be filled with programs on nature, history, architecture and news. Instead we get perma tanned sluts behaving in a manner unbecoming of a Marseille whore.

If the CBC and its Friends were indeed fighting such vulgarity, offering an intelligent alternative to popular culture, I would cut them some slack. TVO and PBS are partially on the dole, but they have also been able to attract significant financial support from individual donors. Their secret is in offering high quality programming people actually want to see. It takes a very high level of commitment to pay for something you'd otherwise get for free. The large number of small scale supporters of TVO and PBS suggest those two networks are providing something of value to their viewers.

What about CBC? Can people honestly say that re-runs of Jeopardy! are either very edifying or genuinely Canadian? Even if Alex Trebek is from Sudbury. That broadcasting hockey games, in country where it is more a religion than a sport, requires public subsidy? Local news? In Toronto CityTV has provided better local news coverage than CBC, CTV or Global for decades. In smaller communities websites and newspapers can easily provide the same service, as they have for years. The CBC simply makes no sense in the modern age.

In the days of VHF/UHF there might have been some faint hope, for those of an authoritarian bent, in limiting the exposure of Canadian children to the sinfulness of American TV. Not a chance now. The CBC is not a guardian of our culture and way of life, it is a bloated collection of rent seekers who are allowed to indulge in their ideological vendettas.

The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting recently put out a video warning of the dangers of an American takeover. In this supposedly satirical skit, an American wrestling promoter buys out the Mother Corp, quickly dumbing down its content. That is if you believe replacing Peter Mansbridge with a wrestler is an intellectual step down. The wrestler in question goes by the stage name of "Uncle D: The Canadian Ass Man."

The video is a wonderfully eloquently statement of everything that is wrong with the CBC itself, to say nothing of its defenders. It's not funny, it's not original, it beats you over the head with its message and is crudely anti-American. The front page of the Friends' website has a photoshopped image of Stephen Harper shaking hands with the CBC's "new owner." Ouch. Bet the boys in the PMO never saw that coming!

Leaving aside the absurdity of a successful American businessman wasting his money on the CBC, we are left wondering how much this little video cost. Despite its poor writing and acting, the production values are fairly slick. In year ending December 31, 2010 the Friends collected $2.3 million in donations. Not a vastly powerful lobbying group, though hardly a mom and pop shop either. It's Steering Committee is packed with academics, writers and the actor R.H. Thomson, whose mug is frequently seen on the state broadcaster. Not exactly a cross section of modern Canadian society.

So a taxpayer supported elite demands the taxpayers continue to support their "friends" at the CBC. A friend in need...What do the taxpayers get? This is the Friday night lineup on CBC's English television service: 

6:30 PM Coronation Street

7:30 PM Jeopardy!

8:00 PM The Ron James Show

8:30 PM Rick Mercer Report

9:00 PM the fifth estate

10:00 The National

10:55 CBC News: Late Night

11:05 PM George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight (Interviews with Stephen Lewis and Michele Landsberg)

All this for a mere $1.1 billion? A waste at a fraction of the price. The CBC does not have a divine right to pick my pocket or yours. 

Applied Education

Via Quot'd:

If students aren’t studying science, technology, engineering and math, what are they studying?

In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual and performing arts graduates in 1985.

Ah, so we need to get more visual and performing arts students into engineering? Yeah. Not really seeing it. I'll let you in on a dirty little secret, it's easier to train an engineer to become an interpretative dancer than vice versa. There's a reason more people take "soft" subjects than "hard," relatively few people have an aptitude for the latter compared to the former. These subjects are "hard" because few people can master the knowledge base and skill set effectively. If everyone could learn calculus as easily as basic arithmetic few would consider it a difficult subject.

The meme that kids are taking too many soft subjects, compared to practical ones, dates back at least to the Sputnik scare of the late 1950s. The result then was to produce a glut of engineers a few years down the read, many of whom subsequently drifted into other fields. As gluts go having a surplus of engineers is not that bad a thing. It's a talent pool that can be easily leveraged into many different areas of the economy. Lots of clear logical thinkers can only be an aid to the pro-freedom cause at the ballot box. The events post-Sputnik 1, however, should give us pause. 

There is no such thing as a magic degree. A wondrous piece of paper that, if you just work hard enough, can be obtained by anyone and will guarantee a good and secure income. For a long time engineering was consider to be the magic degree. By the 1980s, the age of great civil engineering projects now having past, the bachelors to get was in finance. The emergence of IT in the 1990s gave the computer engineer degree new luster. That is until the dotcom crash. Then finance and microbiology became the sheepskins to hang on your wall. Then not. Creative destruction makes a hash of career planning.

Picking a university major is akin to taking two big stabs in the dark. You are trying to match aptitude with available economic opportunities. You are trying to combine what you think you are good at with what you think you can make money doing. Two very large uncertainties for most people. Trying to overcome the uncertainty of the latter, by ignoring the former, is foolish.  

Most people in the humanities, whether they admit it or not, are their because they can't hack the math. Asking the visual arts major to become a microbiologist, because that's where the money is, is like asking an asthmatics to run a marathon. There are people with a diverse enough aptitudes that they can perform at a high level across many different disciplines. The combination brilliant athlete, artist and scientist is not without precedent. These people, however, are quite rare. While a basic proficiency in most subjects can be taught to people of average intelligence, expecting university level skill in most subjects is absurd. At some point the wheat needs to get separated from the chaff.

The flood of students going into the soft subjects, or into pseudo-subjects like gender studies, these last thirty years has been driven mostly by the subsidizing of post-secondary education. Contrary to the solemn declarations of guidance counselors through out the ages, not everyone should go to university. Not everyone has the raw intelligence. Those that do have the intelligence do not necessarily have the learning style compatible with post-secondary education. Most people learn by doing to achieve an immediate practical end. That's not how universities are designed.

All must now have the prize of the BA, how very little that prize is now worth, yet few have the combination of skill set, knowledge, learning type and aptitude to perform at a university level. Since you can't change the children, you instead change the curriculum. Subjects once reserved for community colleges, like retail management and interior design, are slowly creeping into university calendars. In traditional subjects there has been a steady dumbing down of the course work. One of my history teaching assistants told me that in five years, out of thousands of students, he had failed exactly three of his young wards.

The graduate and law schools of the country not being fools, well at least not their admissions officers, there is an informal ranking of degrees and marks. While it is easy enough to pass a humanities course, it is much harder to get a good grade in that same course. Many courses are marked on an informal curve. Some of the humanities are considered more rigorous than others, with traditional fields like history and philosophy held in higher regard than say minorities studies. This does not mean that good scholarship does not occasionally percolate up through the Leftist propaganda, but as a general rule if a humanities discipline is less than fifty years old it's probably useless.

While many on the Right view the humanities with mockery, the unemployable seeking the valueless, they are making a very grave mistake. The businessmen and engineers of the Dominion may look down in haughty contempt at the resumes lacey with Queer Studies majors, clicking delete as surely as with a piece of spam, yet someone does hire these people. That someone is government.

While career prospects are weak they are far from hopeless. With the right connections, good communications skills and a little luck the useless degree holder can often find themselves as minor level bureaucrats. The more politically shrewd can climb quite high up government ladder ladder. A few even become politicians, especially at the municipal level. 

So what do you do with a useless degree? For rather a lot of graduates the answer is torment those people with valuable skills and practical experience. Big government created the problem of the useless degree, then the problem creates more big government. A very vicious and expensive cycle.

 

The Two Solitudes of Don Cherry

Oh, Eric. 

Of all current public figures, he’s becoming the one who unites English Canada, from the leftists at the CBC to the right-wingers at Sun News who all seem to love Cherry. My friend and fellow columnist in this paper, Ezra Levant, even said Cherry is such a true Canadian that he has maple syrup in place of blood in his veins.

Well, we really live in two different solitudes my friends. Nobody here in Quebec, even among the most federalist, wants to have anything to do with that weirdo, not even live in the same country as him.

He's an acquired taste. Like, well, Quebec television. Even those anglophones who understand French don't understand what's going on. Now Eric Duhalme is a sensible chap who is familiar to regular viewers of Sun News. He's not a left-wing flake or a WASP hater. Do please give him the benefit of the doubt.

How to explain the fascination with Grapes? At some deep psychological level Don Cherry is what English speaking Canadians want to be. Ron MacLean is who we really are. Those cracks against the French? Well, Don was born in 1934. There's a lot of people born in 1934 that talk like that. It's not polite language nor is it respectful.

So why do nice, decent Canadians who would never say a bigoted thing about Sikhs, blacks, Hindus, Muslim and other groups cheer a guy who calls a quarter of the country "Frenchies." Because at some deep psychological level the ROC hates Quebec. I don't mean in the let's bomb them back to the stone age sense of hate, not that we have the military capacity to do that, it's a more nebulous form of hate. Perhaps we should say that the ROC envies la belle province.

Think of an older sibling that was constantly favoured when you were growing up. You don't hate them in the sense of wanting to cause bodily harm, you're just quietly happy when something bad happens to them. Not getting cancer or losing their job, just having their best dress splattered in mud. In your bitter moments you curse them. You don't really mean to curse them, it just comes out and its quite cathartic. Quebec is that older spoiled sibling. All together now: Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

Now, mon cher Eric, the Quebeckers (but we really mean the Quebecois) don't see things in this light. Mother didn't favour you, special circumstances required special efforts. Those privileges that the ROC bemoans are necessary to protect the French language and culture. A frozen Louisiana you do not wish to become. 

Those of us who speak English in an English majority country, situated in an English majority continent, placed at a moment in history when English is the pre-eminent global language, do not understand what the bellyaching is about. Just stop whining and speak English already. If the guy from Somalia can love Canada why can't the Quebecois? What's with all the "distinct society" stuff? Chinatown is pretty distinct but no referendums have so far been planned.

The difference is that the denizens of Chinatown are immigrants or so descended. The Quebecois are not the distant ancestors of immigrants, they are the progeny of settlers. The immigrant comes to another society, the settler creates a society.  The Quebecois have no interest in assimilating because, well, they were here first. If you ignore the aboriginals. Which generally speaking we do in Canada. Even when a small violent faction of aboriginals holds a small Ontario town hostage.

Quebec's special status irks people in the ROC, it certainly irks Publius, because most of us have signed onto this idea of One Canada. Even if many Canadians today have never heard of John George Diefenbaker, the idea that we are all Canadians, and that all Canadians are equal before the law, is enormously compelling. It is also, in the light of official multiculturalism and the "distinct society," a very controversial idea.

Since we can't say openly that Quebec's special status, and that accorded to the French language across the country, is very unCanadian, we allow Don Cherry to say it for us. He vents on behalf of the ROC. So popular is his venting that the CBC, a bastion of Leftism, refuses to dismiss him. Should the Pinko hater get the pink slip the wrath of millions would descend on CBC HQ. Indeed it would be a wrath so great the CBC might at last be permanently detached from the government teat.

From time to time Grapes says something particular offensive. Out comes a Mother Corp flack carefully distancing the state broadcaster from the cro-magnon man who stalks their hallways. Everyone shrugs their shoulders and moves on. Just one of those things.

He's a safety valve, Eric. A performer playing to the crowd. Try not to take him too seriously. Don Cherry certainly doesn't take himself seriously. That's part of his charm. Like I said, an acquired taste.

The Laughing Conservatives

For a channel no one watches...

Daily and weekly, the network has specific themes it uses to bond with its tiny band of viewers. Mainly, its theme is the CBC. In this, Sun News closely resembles the Conservative Party of Canada. For both outfits, attacking the CBC is a handy tool for gaining attention and raising funds. The Conservative Party does it all the time – connecting with its members by issuing dire warnings or canvassing members about how to cut the public broadcaster. Their themes, and their devotion to these themes, are so similar that Sun News might, in some quarters, be considered the comedy branch of the Conservative Party of Canada.

The difference between Ezra's antics and the CBC is that Ezra knows when he's doing schtick. The "state broadcaster" is unintentionally funny all the time. If you don't believe me just watch Strombo attempt to sound intelligent, deep and cool all at the same time. It's funnier than anything Ezra & Co have gotten up to, with or without forestry implements.

The potted plant assault was back in the Spring. Why bring it up now? For the same reason that the MSM continues to mock Sun News' low ratings, despite the fact that for a youngish news network it's doing quite well. Sun News is more than just a business competitor, someone else selling a different coloured widget. The new network is an ideological competitor to the MSM. That's why Sun has gotten under their skin.

In one of my early reviews of Sun News I had bemoaned their stunts and hyped up outrage. I warned that these antics would be used as weapons by the MSM to dismiss the hosts as clowns. So it has come to pass. Again and again. You might just shrug your shoulders and say that Sun News' target audience is not Globe and Mail columnists. Very true. The dumb stunts, however, turn off reasonable people who might be interested in the Sun's alternate view points.

I'm not saying the stunts aren't funny. A nearly fell over watching this video of Ezra dancing. I was also cursing myself for laughing. I'm an old fashioned sort of Right-winger, my firebrands should behave with a touch more gravitas. Not necessarily Peter Mansbridge's impression of an oak tree, but a wee more restraint. Does Charles Adler do this sort of stuff? Nope. Yet he is not dull or charmless. There is a Golden Mean in televised punditry. More WFB less Catskill, please.

Putting aside the debate over the finer points of  TV schtick, the above author's main grievance seems to be Sun News' laser like focus on the CBC's rear end. He even goes so far as to imply sinister motives: "At the same time, its viewers might also not be aware that Sun News Network’s owner, Quebecor, might benefit a lot from a diminished CBC." Rather doubt that. The Sun News presenters have been quite open about who owns the network and have complained about the unfair competition. You'd have to be fairly daft not to realize that Sun News is rubbishing a subsidized competitor.

Then again these Right-wing mouth breathers aren't too bright to begin with, eh? No point actually refuting anything Ezra, Brian, Charles or Michael have to say. Just dismiss them as CBC obsessed clowns. No mention of the dozens of other political and social issues raised by the new network since its launch. Nothing about its scathing attacks on the hypocrisies of the Conservative government in Ottawa. The mere mention of Sun News seems to irritate Heritage Minister James Moore. If they're the "comedy branch" of the federal Tories, Minister Moore has not gotten the memo.

The above article is a sign of success for Sun News. For a network no one watches it sure gets a lot of ink in the major dailies. At the time of the channel's launch a certain National Post columnist attacked the female presenters sleeveless outfits, demonstrating a view of feminine attire perfectly in keeping with the Edwardian age. Not the sort of conservatism we once expected from the Post. But that was back in the days of Conrad Black, Ken Whyte and Mark Steyn. Thinner blood now flows at Don Mills.

That is in part what makes Sun News so exciting. The hopes we once had for the Post have been transferred over to Ezra and the Boys. They are our Great Right Hope. Not simply blandly and barely conservative or libertarian, but Right in a full throated and full spirited way. What I admired about the old Post was its edge. That edge is long gone from the paper. It now lives on as limp rag with a few good writers. If I was editor of the NP I'd make sure that Rex Murphy, Robert Fulford and Terence Corcoran never get on the same plane. Let its sad lingering existence be a warning to the good people at Sun News.

Otherwise, keep laughing. Not everyone has gotten the joke yet.

 

The Professionals

The hacks get their papers in order:

Quebec's Culture Minister, Christine St-Pierre, announced this week that she is pushing forward with a plan to create "a new model of regulation of Quebec media." Public consultations on the project will be held across Quebec this fall.

Key to the plan would be legislation establishing the "status of professional journalist" in order to distinguish those committed to "serving the public interest" from "amateur bloggers." It is proposed that state-recognized professional journalists would enjoy unspecified "advantages or privileges" not available to the great unwashed.

Why is it that these wacky ideas always come out of Quebec? Perhaps it's because bureaucracy is word partially rooted in French. So, incidentally, is entrepreneur. Yet scanning French Canada the concept of individual initiative seems rather less prevalent than on this side of the Ottawa river. The obsession with credentials and government sanction, something which has only begun to infect the Anglophere in recent decades, has a long Francophone pedigree.

The desire for a government sanctioned hack-guild, supported in principle by the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, is supine and cowardly. It is also unprofessional. The purpose of journalism is to convey information to the wider public. If that is done better by a unshaven lout in his parents basement than a hack with a desk at the Toronto Star, so be it.

Journalism is a certainly a profession, in sense that all honourable and valuable employment is a profession. It does not, however, require advanced training comparable to law, medicine or engineering. The basic qualifications are the ability to write, if only workman like prose, ask reasonably intelligent questions and meet a deadline. Beyond that it requires old fashioned experience and human insight, neither of which governments are very adept at noticing.

What makes Christie Blatchford a journalist is sound instincts, hard work and abundant experience. Being granted a little plastic card from a modern day Ministry of Information would add nothing to her skill set, popularity or esteem among readers and fellow journalists. Giving her a little plastic card might, however, improve the profile of the press release re-writers that clutter up newsrooms across the Dominion.

It can take decades to establish yourself as a top flight reporter. Any credential handed out by the government, especially in so subjective a field as journalism, is likely to be easier to obtain. This is akin to a driver's license. The provincial government comes along and gives your 16 years old a little plastic card and pats them on the head. Does that mean your 16 year old is actually a driver, in the sense that you or anyone with decades of experience behind the wheel is a driver? 

The collapse of ad revenues, especially classified ads, has crippled the economic model of the newspaper industry. Since the papers are where most of the actual journalism in Canada happens, TV and radio largely regurgitate serious news stories from the big city papers, this is a serious issue for a free press. Rather than trying to figure out a better business model, or rationalize the industry by focusing on core strengths, the Quebec hacks have succumb to their statist instincts.

Losing market share to the internet thingy? Heck, let's form a closed shop union and lobby the government for special privileges. Won't it be a tad difficult to hold governments to account if they can get you fired by pulling your license? Don't worry, say the hack syndicalists, the journalists will determine who is and is not a journalist. Ah. So what if your political opinions dramatically differ from those of other journalists? What if some higher ups in the hack world decide your reporting on homelessness, Medicare or immigration is insufficiently "objective?" Then what happens?

Unpaid bloggers, like yours truly, are not especially frightening to competent journalists. What I do part-time they do full time. I can call Stephen Harper an underhanded rascal and provide some hyperlinks. A good journalists can dig up the information to concretely prove that the Prime Minister is an underhanded rascal. Most bloggers comment on or double check the MSM. They cannot replace it because the economics of blogging are even worse than those of the media.

Such regulation appeals to mediocrities within the media; the fear that some schmuck with a website will announce to the world just how sloppy their work really is. A restriction on their freedom seems a small price to pay for not missing the Friday afternoon drinking session with the boys. But how will people spot the difference between a real journalist and a "mere" blogger? The same way most people can tell the difference between a lady and a whore. There's no regulatory body making that call, just common sense applied to simple observation.

The Quebec media, should they accept this disgrace, will be little better than dogs braying for a leash.

 

You Know We're Winning When...

For a network no one watches, it sure gets a lot of ink:

You know what’s great about Sun News Network? No, it’s not the seamless marriage of perpetual fury and Wayne’s World-esque production values. It’s not even the daily five o’clock cutoff, where all the female talent goes ‘poof!’ and the Sun set becomes a soapbox for hours of spitty white male outrage. The best thing about the folks who bring you “Hard News, Straight Talk” is their utter lack of consistency. Or, since we’re all we’re straight talking here, let’s call it what it really is: hypocrisy.

The Macleans article then proceeds to launch a string of ad hominem attacks at Brian Lilley, Sun News and Quebecor. Nicely done. Let the hate flow. It only makes Sun News stronger. The smart move would be to ignore the upstart network and its cast of supposedly blowhard idiots. The Canadian MSM is not known for making smart moves, that is why Sun News exists. Had its biases been not so obvious and so consistent there would have been no market for the product Adler, Lilley and Levant are flogging. 

Reviews of Sun News tend to focus on its low production values - it's a new network, what did you expect? - and the "perpetual fury" of its broadcasters. The last one is a bit of a headscracher. Old Publius is an elitist snob, a classically liberal minded snob but still a snob. I find most of popular culture to be incredibly vulgar. What passes for Top 40 radio is painful to my ears. The sartorial standards of my fellow Torontonians is a constant source of annoyance for me. This is all to say that I'm rather picky and sensitive. 

I submit this to you, gentle readers, because if there is someone who would loath vulgar blowhards, even ones on this side of the political street, it would be Publius. I have been watching Sun News almost every weekday evening since its premiere in April of this year. The first two weeks were from curiosity and gathering material for the blog. Since then it has been from genuine interest. My initial reaction to Sun News was that it often veered into rant shtick, despite the talent of the presenters and the strength of the concept.

Time has moderated the ranting. I initially found Brian Lilley to be somewhat annoying. He grows on you. Perhaps it's the hair. Perhaps the goofy smile. Perhaps, shocking though the thought might be, that he is making intelligent points that simply are not being made in the rest of the broadcast media. He doesn't really rant now. Not in the sense of a coffee shop blowhard holding court. What is different about Lilley and Levant, especially Levant, is energy.

Try this for an experiment next time you're surfing the dial about 10pm on a weeknight. Watch the Foreheaded One over at the state broadcaster for five minutes, then switch over to Ezra doing his thing for another five. It's more than cognitive dissonance. It's a physical shift. Like walking from a crowded and overheated room straight out into the February cold. Bracing, like the adverts say.

It's this physical shift, from lukewarm pablum to clear cut views expressed plainly, that seems to have discombobulated the Canadian Left. Had the network been boring and mediocre it might have been safely ignored. It's not boring and not mediocre. In the overheated and drowsy room of the Canadian media, someone just opened a window. The MSM hacks are furiously trying to close it.

UPDATE: Sun News trumps CTV News in the ratings.

 

Bill From Seattle Says Goodnight

This blog post was written on an obsolete piece of equipment:

The days of the personal computer are numbered, a leading IBM designer has claimed. Dr Mark Dean, who worked on the original IBM PC, the 5150, wrote in a blog post commemorating its 30th anniversary, that “they’re going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs”.

Dr Dean argued that PCs had created the environment for a new generation of devices, ranging across different form factors and uses. You only have to compare the 5150 with a top smartphone of today to see what he means.

I bought an iPad recently. I promise to minimize the gushing for the purposes of this blog post. Perhaps I'll pen an ode to our Father of Cupertino some other time.  The good doctor, however, has an excellent point. A friend of mine who bought an iPad a few months ago, and annoyed the hell out of me by gushing about it constantly, said that he had essentially stopped using his laptop. During a particularly lengthy "I  Love Steve" session he claimed he would never buy a desktop again! 

Madness I thought. Then I bought an iPad. Damn bastard was right. Since I do a considerable amount of writing, for those who haven't noticed, it's unlikely I'll ever dispense with a large screen and a proper keyboard. Right now I've got two Safari windows open with about eleven tabs between them. When I get up to about four windows and two dozen tabs, that little rainbow wheel appears telling me it's tired. Don't try this on a tablet.

For those who don't write thousand word dissertations on why Bob Rae sucks, or are graphic designers, why would they need a laptop? Or desktop? The tablet simply makes too much sense. The damn iPad been within arm's reach since I bought it. I don't exactly sleep with it. It has it's own place on the headboard. 

This whole run in with the future has gotten Publius, who is neither technophile or phobe, thinking of what else is going the way of the buggy whip and the Liberal Party of Canada. OK. OK. We can still hold out hope for the former. The Telegraph has a list of mainstream technologies on the way out:

Blackberry - Wretched little things. Almost everyone I know, who didn't have one paid for by corporate, chucked theirs when the iPhone came out. The best thing about the Blackberry is how it will one day give arthritis to so many people I hate.

Digital Cameras - I've got a fairly basic Canon for doing my Scenes from the Imperial Capital shoots. If you're just taking photos of your friends getting plaster faced, not much of a point in lugging around a camera and a phone or tablet. For those of us who want crystal clear images of that 19th century doorway, the specialized camera will remain a must.

MP3 Player - I have a five year old 60GB iPod somewhere. Too big to walk with. Only really practical for commuting. I've got my iPad now. I'll probably give the old clunker to Brutus. If I can find out where the hell he is...

eReader - Sorry. It was useless from day one. Seriously. You can barely read anything on those damn things. Perhaps the years are just creeping up on me. Grandpa Publius. Your humble corresponding grump. 

Blu-Ray / DVD - Sometimes I think the books and the Blu-Ray / DVDs live in my condo and I'm their guest. I had my copy of Lawrence of Arabia give me a nasty look the other day. I could almost hear it muttering something about Aqaba from the land. Counting down the days until I can upload 'em all to the Cloud. Ha! I'll be able to stream Becket to my iPad without Lawrence even knowing. Ha!

Keyboards - Anything small enough to be portable is small enough to be useless, except for the casual user. I've written exactly one very short blog post on my iPad. My wrists still hurt. The keyboard shall live forever. That is until the good people at my local Apple Store implant the iMind in my cerebral cortex sometime around 2016.

Physical Newspapers - Have not bought one in at least seven years. Even my seventy something father has stopped buying them. When someone who remembers the Great Depression thinks you're obsolete, the end is truly nigh.

Landline phone - Yes I have one. Why? I hate cell phones. I've hated cell phones since I got one in high school. They are the ultimate generators of useless conversations. I have never participated, or heard, an intelligent cell phone call that lasted more than ten seconds. Beyond simple sentences like "please get milk" and "I'll be there in five minutes" the damn things just encourage verbal diarrhea. I like my clunky old landline and its high quality speaker. If I'm in transit, that probably means I have something more important to do than talk to you.

Fax machine - I have one as part of my printer / scanner / fax machine thingy. Have not used it in about three months. The fax will probably linger around in the corporate world a bit longer.  Many large firms are paranoid about sending confidential info over the web. Secure e-mails can be an utter pain to open. More than once I've been asked to just fax rather than e-mail important info. 

House keys - I hate to jingle when I walk. Makes me feel like one of Santa's reindeer. Card keys make an enormous amount of sense. But they are still too pricey for domestic use. 

Well. That's my rant post for the week people. Now I've got to figure out something to say for tomorrow. How about a post on Bob Rae's haircut. Yeah. That should work. What? I'm running out of ideas? Never...

Irrelevant Media

I think this is good news:

But if a phone-hacking scandal is unlikely in Canada, it's not because politicians and journalists here are inherently more ethical. It's more a reflection of the fact that Canadian politicians simply don't need the news media in the same way they do in Britain.

"Canadian newspapers are such a niche market — so few people actually read most of them — that they just don't have the impact in Canada that News of the World did in the U.K.," Harper's former chief of staff Ian Brodie, told The Canadian Press in an email.

"The only paper with a big circulation is the Toronto Star and ... it's only really influential in Liberal circles."

Back in Salazar's Portugal the running line was that the newspapers were irrelevant. Anyone literate enough to read a paper was smart enough to know they were filled with lies and evasions. The gullible peasants were too poor and illiterate to pick up a copy of Diário de Notícias or O Primeiro de Janeiro. Printed propaganda thus fooled relatively few in fascist Portugal. 

Dashing across the Atlantic, and a few decades later, we supposedly find ourselves in a similar situation, if we are to believe Ian Brodie. Yet the Sun chain sells quite well among the blue collar stiffs. The Globe and Mail seems to be ubiquitous at Starbucks and Second Cup. You occasionally see a few men in blazers furtively looking at the National Post. This is for fear that their upwardly mobile co-workers discover that secret infatuation with Jonathan Kay. I believe Ryerson has a de-programming course.

There are also the freebie rags like Metro that stuff recycling bins on the TTC. These seem to be the most popular, filling the need of most commuters for something to read that has short words and medium sized print. They are essentially wire service headlines with just enough text to give casual readers the feeling they have been informed about something. Not necessary something important or interesting, but just informed. People read the morning paper in much the same way, and for much the same reason, they drink their coffee: Habit and addiction.

The habit is understandable, the addiction is somewhat less do. How can you be addicted to pulp news? Keeping up with Jones is part of it. Around the water cooler, or cappuccino machine for any graphic designers in the audience, you won't want to be the only one who hasn't heard that X is dead, or perhaps that Y is dating Z. The same function, however, can be fulfilled by television or radio.

From the freebie rags, as well as the car radio headline speed readers, you get the feeling of being informed. The issue is not that few people read the papers, but that few people read the papers with any seriousness. I've met reasonably intelligent people over the years, including avowed conservatives, who did not know the Toronto Star was a left-leaning paper. There is reading and there is glancing. 

The sort of ribald offerings that make the News of the World so popular never took off in Canada. We like our vulgarity in small and innocent doses. Do recall the utter fit back in April when the female Sun News TV readers showed up on camera with sleeveless dresses. The reaction of Victorian matrons would have been more subdued. Our taste for modesty, however, is not inherited,

Unlike the Mother Country we don't have a clear sense of class consciousness, which even today pervades the nooks of British society. Part of the appeal of British tabloid muckers like News of the World was its mixture of class vengeance and voyeurism. Seeing how the posh live, frolic and fall. That lusting for schadenfreude is too mean spirited for the Canadian soul. We prefer our hates peevish. See that great yellow streak of anti-Americanism that runs through our culture.

If people don't read, in a serious way, in Canada then what do they do? The epherma of popular culture dominates. The harder bits of news, actual hard news seems to spoil breakfast or the car ride, are scanned and vaguely recalled. Reading requires effort. Television and radio does not. A five minute CBC story on American health care - standard drill including unemployed person with no health care insurance, greedy hospital and callous big insurance companies - has a far greater impact than a hundred well written editorials either way.

The power of any visual medium is that it slips beneath your guard. You feel pity for the unemployed American, who is usually white, rather fat and somewhat dim. Fear then overcomes pity. What if that happened to me and my family? Then reassurance. We're Canadian. These things don't happen to us. The silent prayer for the spirit of Tommy Douglas is optional.

Feeling is easier than thinking. Especially after a hard day's slog. The feelings evoked by the British tabloids are of lust and envy. Here in Canada they run more along the lines of fear and pity. Our scandals are far more boring than British scandals, then again lust and envy are very interesting sins. Fear and pity are rather ordinary emotions. Sentimental and bourgeois. Very Canadian.

 

Better Council

Wandering off the media plantation:

The letter from Garnett reads: "It has become painfully evident that the editorial direction of our newspapers, especially our urban tabloids, is incompatible with a politically correct mentality that informs OPC [Ontario Press Council] thinking, in the selection of cases it hears, and the rulings it renders.

"We cannot be bound by the interpretations of our competitors on our obligations and objectives as journalists. We no longer believe there is common cause here and have no reasonable expectation this is going to change."

Sun Media offered no comment beyond Garnett's letter.

The Ontario Press Council is one of those worthy sounding ideas that, with time, has proven to be just another tool of Canada's soft censorship regime. In the abstract there is noting wrong with accountable and responsible journalism. Yet what does it mean in practice? Accountable to whom and on what terms?

Journalists and their employers are ultimately responsible to their viewers and readers. Something that has become far faster and easier in the age of the internet. The idea that an outfit with the pseudo-government sounding name of "press council" is needed to keep journalists accountable is nothing more than old fashioned paternalism. Can't let the little kiddies make up their own minds, so it's best we make sure the news is monitored, lest anything disturb their Trudeaupian dreams.

In a notice on the Toronto Sun website there was this interesting tidbit: "The press council had overseen 37 daily newspapers in Ontario, including 27 Sun Media newspapers." So Sun Media is basically the press council membership, with the Star, Globe, a few second string outlets and the community papers to round out the numbers. Pause to consider that ratio: 27 to 37. You don't become that popular for that long in the media without a fair level of accountability to the ordinary reader. 

The Toronto Sun and its progeny are not old establishment outlets like the Globe or Star. Over the last four decades their style has been irreverent, sensationalistic and broadly right-wing populist. More than enough reason for staid and true members of the MSM to look down in contempt. But the yokels keep lapping it up.

The chair of the Press Council is one Robert Elgie. Don't recall the name? He was one of the redder Tories in Bill Davis' latter cabinets. When Frank Miller won the narrowest of minority governments in 1985 it was Elgie who is alleged to have pushed for an alliance with the NDP. Yeap. In a choice between David Peterson and Bob Rae he plunked for Rae. Not too surprising that the Sun Media decided not to bother. Their sister papers in Quebec pulled of that province's press council last year. No point playing a game with loaded dice.

 

The Bogey Harper

Beware the sinister menace of Harper:

Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe was first off the mark: "A Stephen Harper majority means the complete denial of what we are, we Québécois. It means new attacks against Québécois culture. A Stephen Harper majority means that our economic interests are completely ignored and that our regions will be even more abandoned." He called on all Quebecers to rally around the flag to prevent the cataclysm of a Conservative majority.

He'll burn the forests! He'll pave the Arctic!  He'll order the womenfolk back into the kitchen! The whole of the province of Quebec will be napalmed into submission! If Bush was Hitler then Harper is Hitler and Stalin's evil love child! Hosannah! Hosannah!

Last week in this space I called for another Conservative minority government. The best of bleak alternatives. I'm not carrying any candles for Stephen of Leaside. While reading the above Ottawa Citizen column, however, I was struck by its photograph of a young Stephen Joseph Harper fighting his first campaign in 1988. It's not Stephen on the sign, just Steve. The blue eyes and the mop-top are almost endearing. The future Prime Minister looks like the great young conservative hero of that era, Alex P Keaton.

Whatever youthful Keaton-like spirit might have suffused Harper then, his record in power is some distance from those Reaganite salad days. This does nothing to stop the opposition parties' hysterical denunciations of the Prime Minister. There is that hidden agenda, you know.

They are not really attacking Harper's ideas. The Liberal Party had no qualms about balancing the budget in three years - just as the Harper authored Reform Party manifesto had called for - and taking all the credit for it. Jean Chretien the reckless Trudeau-era Finance Minister became the Great Budget Balancer aided by his sometime side-kick / usual nemesis Paul Martin. Brian Mulroney and Michael Wilson achieving an operational surplus, well that was heartless. A few years later even deeper cuts were written off as wise statesmanship by the centrist team of Chretien and Martin.

In a post last week I decried the empty symbolism of Canadian political discourse. The vilification of the Prime Minister is a prime example. There is little that Stephen Harper has done in government that could not have plausibly been done by a Liberal leader, with the notable exception of a more pro-Israel foreign policy. There is also nothing he has done that justifies the devil-incarnate rhetoric of the opposition parties. 

The Harper Tories are the supposed masters of the American-style attack-ad. This dozy informs Canadians that a vote for the Liberal Party is a vote for Michael Ignatieff. Hardly a bombshell revelation to anyone familiar with our parliamentary system. The Cosh dissects the ad here. These attack-ads are described by many in the MSM as something akin to hydrogen bombs. Political instruments of such unimaginable power and devastation that they will destroy Canadian democracy. It'll be nothing but Caudillos and Duces from here on in.

Compared to actual American attack ads they are very tame. More than tame they are also rather funny. The black and white images. The over-the-top ominous music. The somewhat out of context quotes. The repeated insistence that a Coalition is in the offing. You can almost hear the voice-over guy shouting: "Hey stupid! Michael Ignatieff is a nasty bum who hates puppy dogs."

We are told that attack-ads work. Well sort of. They work at reinforcing an already established image type. Stephane Dion was an out-touch and befuddled university professor playing at politics? Check! Michael Ignatieff is a pompous opportunist? Check! Now try imagining an attack-ad that accuses Jack Layton of being in the back-pocket of Bay Street. Not going to work. Short of having Jack on tape sharing a shiraz with Lord Black, while mocking the rank file at the CAW, very little is going to convince voters that he's turned reactionary capitalist.

The main benefit of an attack ad is in its repetition. Keep saying that Michael Ignatieff didn't come back for you and - if you're not paying attention - you'll start believing it. Now Old Publius doesn't believe that Lord Iggy came back for him. He accepts the Tory charge that the Liberal leader is a craven opportunist who looks down on ordinary people with the contempt of the august. He is to the manor born and acts it, occasional pandering to us proles aside.

This belief, however, is derived from some study of Iggy's biography. I doubt one Canadian out of a hundred knows what universities the Liberal leader attended, that he studied under Isaiah Berlin, that he was a leading public intellectual in Britain and is a well regarded fiction writer. It is not the job of the Conservative War Room to advertise their opponents C.V. Saying that Michael Ignatieff didn't come back for ordinary people does nothing, however, to explain what Stephen Harper will do for ordinary Canadians, or perhaps even for the extraordinary ones. 

Some of you, gentle readers, will be engaged in the rolling of eyes. "Oh, come on Publius, this isn't the nineteenth century. No one plays politics by the Marquess of Queensberry rules anymore." No, they don't. There are no rules anymore. It's a rush to the lowest common denominator.

The vilification of the Prime Minister on one hand, and the simplification of Michael Ignatieff on the other are symptoms of the same disease. It is an election about nothing in a political environment about nothing. The pressures of globalization, the crisis of demographic decline, Medicare lingering on well past its best before date and all the political class can talk about is Lord Iggy's personal ambition. Not asking for nice here. Just for a little substance with the vitriol. 

Canada deserves better?

If you say so John:

Enjoying the election yet? Don’t worry. There’s more where that came from. But while we can’t make them go away, we can’t make them smarter and we can’t make them quieter, we can take back the conversation if we want.

That’s why I’m glad to be joining Sun Media especially in the middle of this offensive electoral hoohah. I’m convinced Canada can do better. It wouldn’t even be that weird.

Look, I think John Robson is a top-flight columnist. I just sometimes wonder what Brigitte has been putting in his oatmeal. Canada can do better? But how did Canada get this way? This isn't 1950s Poland. The Soviets never invaded and imposed a foreign political system upon us. We elected ourselves into this mess. Generations of Canadian voters have bought into the something-for-nothing philosophy that is at the heart of big government.

Blame the political class all you want - I certainly do - the buck still stops with the greed of the ordinary voter. When a blow-dried mediocrity promises you lots of free stuff, without explaining who will be footing the bill, and you buy into that nonsense, who is really to blame? Getting taken in by an obvious con requires both the con-man and the conned to participate.

Last Refuge of Scoundrels

In some countries it's patriotism. In this country it's an off-brand substitute called anti-Americanism:

We’re being conquered. If Stephen Harper wins a majority, the United States of Canada is what we’ll be. Maybe you’re fine with that. I am not.

The Harperites’ attitude is Republican with a layer of Tea Party, a “current of bitterness, an anger born of a sense of exclusion,” as Lawrence Martin wrote in his fine book Harperland, Conservatives “viscerally hating their political opposition” in a way that was new and startling in Canada but old poisoned hat for the Americans. We will become more American in word and deed, in thought and feeling.

I know. I know. I've been warned about critiquing anything Heather Mallick writes. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. It also drives up my blood pressure. Which is impressive considering that I'm about twenty years younger that her. My anger doesn't come from her opinions being different than my own. Nor that she's a hack writer. It's that she's a bad hack writer.

John Moore's opinions are different from my own. Thomas Walkom's beliefs are an anathema. Yet these men can actually string words together. I recognize that they are writers. The Toronto Star has many writers of varying quality. Still, I can say honestly that most of them are professional writers. After all these years I have no damn idea how Heather Mallick continues to draw a paycheque as a writer.

Again, it is not that she's a shrill leftist feminist. It's that she's an incompetent shrill leftist feminist. Her decades long career in Canadian opinion writing can only be explained by one of two things 1) She's a quota fill, which is unlikely since straight white women aren't really an identifiable victim group anymore 2) There is a significant audience for incompetent shrill leftist feminist writing.

The second option is puzzling at first, then terrifying when you come to think about it. Who would want to read the rantings of an incompetent shrill leftist feminist writer? The answer: Other incompetent shrill leftist feminists. To sustain Ms Mallick's literary output would require that, in the Greater Toronto Area alone, there be thousands upon thousands of shrill leftist feminists. A type begins to emerge: The Mallick.

A woman of a certain age, who matured when feminism was still fresh from its victories (real and imagined) against the patriarchy. She is scarred from the battles fought by the previous generation of feminist activists. Perhaps she endured actual sexist behaviour, perhaps she merely heard about such behaviour second-hand. Either way she is outraged. Action is always required and state action is usually preferable. There are few problems that cannot be solved by bigger government. It's employees are angels of compassion and arbiters possessed of Solomonic wisdom. Whatever the date on the calendar, the mind of The Mallicks is set permanently in 1978.

It should be noted that the mind-date of The Mallicks is set not in the actual 1978, in which real human beings drew breath, spoke words and gazed upon the dawn in wonder. No, it is the 1978 of stereotype and cliche. One of the enduring Myths of Canada is that of the peaceable kingdom. It's a plausible myth because our history is far less bloody than that of any other major country in the world. The myth hides, or downplays, actual bloodshed in the Canadian history and gives an exaggerated sense of Canadians as innocents, located by hard chance next to the dark satanic mills of America. From this myth of peace and innocence emerges such patent nonsense as:

Conservatives “viscerally hating their political opposition” in a way that was new and startling in Canada but old poisoned hat for the Americans.

Heather Mallick and Lawrence Martin (who is quoted above) were both around and generally sentient in the 1980s. Perhaps the 1988 General Election slipped their mind. Let me remind them. The sheer vitriol directed against the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, and Brian Mulroney, makes the back and forth of the Harper-era look very tame.

You may also recall that The Mallicks of the 1980s were predicting the speedy assimilation of Canada into the Reagan-led behemoth to the South. Unless, of course, the old trigger happy cowboy did not blow up the world before then. I do not recall a moment of repentance or regret from The Mallicks when the Soviet Union collapsed - perhaps they were not socialist enough - or when nearly a quarter of a century later we remain a sovereign state, no more inclined to Americanize now than at any other time in our history. The end was not nigh then. It is not now.

These and other facts do not prevent the issuing forth of this gem:

The march of evangelical Christians on Washington was one of the greatest upheavals in modern American political history, and it was very bad for science and technology, not to mention abortion rights, women generally, non-evangelicals and the national sense of humour.

Has Roe v Wade been overturned? Does the typical American woman have any significant difficulties in finding an abortionist? Except perhaps in the most remote of rural areas? Did overnight America cease to be world's leading scientific and technological power? Was it a Chinese or an Indian who launched the iPad 2 last month? There sits now in the White House a black man. Jim Crow is not readying a comeback.

The Tea Party has only the vaguest whiff of religion about it. The 2012 election cycle is not focusing on social issues. Like the 2008 cycle the focus is on the economy and the growth of government. The America of which Heather Mallick speaks - and which The Mallicks loath and fear as medievals loathed and feared the Devil - does not exist. It is the real America viewed through the distortions of a carnival side-show mirror.

Stephen Harper is not plotting to Americanize the Dominion. In his five years in power he has distanced himself as far as possible from charges of a hidden agenda - i.e. actual conservative principles. Yet nothing prevents this ludicrous accusation:

Social acceptance of American-style racism will increase, Maclean’s magazine’s awful “Too Asian?” school issue having opened the gates. Now Chris Spence, the Americanized head of the Toronto School Board, is setting up special schools solely for black kids. Segregation was, and is, an American disease, now entering from a new social fissure.

It is NOT the Canadian Right that is pushing for racial segregation in schools, it is the Canadian Left. You will not find a conservative or libertarian worthy of the name supporting such a scheme. The Afrocentric school - in which most of the students are likely to be of Caribbean and not African descent - has come near fruition because of that great enabler of modern bigotry: white liberal guilt. This is your crowd sister, not ours.

I point out The Mallicks - and Ms Mallick herself as archetype - because they represent an important group in modern Canada. They are found not simply in editorial boards across the country, but in schoolrooms, government offices and upon the bench. Their power is wide and subtle. Their Canada is a strange and left-wing place, riven with paranoia at the imminent takeover of this country by the United States, a thought which does not cross the mind of one American in a million. It is a little Canada afraid of the world beyond, clinging to the myths of yesteryear and the big paternalistic government that will protect them from the modern globalized world. 

Rumble in the Dominion

Stephen vs Iggy:

While Stephen Harper danced around a challenge to go toe-to-toe in a debate with his Liberal rival Thursday, Michael Ignatieff reiterated his willingness -- both online and in the flesh -- to take part.

On Twitter, the Liberal leader again laid down the gauntlet, writing: "The consortium debates are set. How about that one-on-one, Mr. Harper?"

Ignatieff also fired a salvo at Harper during a campaign stop in Winnipeg, a day after he accepted what appeared to be a suggestion from Harper for a one-on-one battle of wits.

"If he's walking away, that kinds of tells you what you want to know about whether you can trust this man," said Ignatieff in the Manitoba capital.

As with the overwhelming majority of Canadians, I wouldn't trust either party leader further than I could throw 'em. A one on one debate - echos of the old Turner-Mulroney smack downs of years past - is a non-starter. This is just the party leaders trying to measure each other's members, if you understand me. What passes for machismo in the world of political dorks. 

Debates are dangerous. They give the opportunity, however fleeting, of a politician blurting out the truth. John Turner's insistence in 1984 that he had "no option" but to allow the appointment of a group of Trudeau-era flunkies to various patronage jobs defeated him. Failing to reward loyal party operatives is the one unforgivable sin of Canadian politics. This is especially true of the Liberal Party, which is held together by the three Ps of patronage, power-lust and ethnic pandering.

The internal dynamics of the Grit power structure - and an agreement with Trudeau - required Turner to allow those appointments. Mulroney understood this perfectly. He also understood that the optics were awful, which is why he pounded Turner with: "You had an option, sir!" Mulroney was no more of an innocent than Turner. It just looked bad for Turner on that night more than a quarter of a century ago. It's the sort of mistake that can cost a party lots of seats very quickly.

Gaffes are to politics what scoring on your own net is to hockey. An unforced error that can be easily avoided if you keep to the talking points. Once upon a time the politicos and the Press Gallery were on fairly chummy terms - this was before Peter C Newman's dissection of the Diefenbaker government and This Hour Has Seven Days embarrassing of the Pearson government. Investigative journalism might have started out trying to keep the ruling class on its toes, it has however degenerated over time into gotcha journalism. Every hack with a tape recorder wants to be Woodward or Bernstein. Not every news story, however, is Watergate. The result is paranoid politicos and the stilted discourse of modern politics.

This has not substantively improved the democratic process. A politician saying he wants to deport Jews to the Yukon, even in jest, is a legitimate concern. An ordinary human mistake is not. There was no public purpose served - though certain partisan purposes were very much served - by showing on the front page of many newspapers a picture of Robert Stanfield fumbling a football. Stanfield threw the ball several times perfectly that day and goofed once. I'm sure even Peyton Manning has fumbled the odd ball in practice. It was a striking photo that was arguably more important than any platform plank in the 1974 Tory defeat (Stanfield's third in a row). I recall, some years ago, visiting The Canadian Press' offices in Toronto and seeing a blown-up copy of that infamous picture in a place of honour, like an enemy's scalp.

An old man dropping a football is easy to understand. Wage and price controls - one of the main issues of 1974 campaign - are not. The triumph of the visual over the substantive was made possible by television. Here, however, I differ with McLuhan and say that the medium instead frames the message. Showing a party leader making a human mistake, during an election campaign, while showing another party leader looking every inch the statesman, isn't reporting the news it's defining it.

Television does not require such images. It merely requires images. The editorial decision to elevate gaffes above substance makes for lazy journalism and worse politics. Politicians become too afraid to utter an original thought, or make a human gesture, lest it be twisted beyond recognition. The result is the kabuki theatre of modern Canadian politics.

This is not to say that politicians should enjoy immunity from making stupid comments. Justin Trudeau's recent questioning of the wisdom of calling honour killings "barbaric" is quite revealing. Most political gaffes do not rise to this level. Get anyone to talk long enough and they'll hang themselves. Saying that a reporter is just giving the public the facts in showing a politician's missteps - verbal or physical - is only partly true. No reporter can or should report all the facts. Not all the facts are relevant. Do reporters routinely inform their readers, or viewers, of the dates and times of the Prime Minister's ablutions? Unless their frequency suggests ill-health they are not relevant facts.

The purpose of political journalism is to inform the public on matters relevant to the operations of government. Covering the politicos does entail investigating their background and personal views. These are relevant in allowing the voting public to decide if a politician is fit for elected office, or if the politicos views are truly compatible with their own. Football handling skills notwithstanding.

The three-way debate that will actually take place is likely to be a stilted and childish affair. Some name calling. Promises to give freebies to targeted groups. Rather than being an actual debate it will resemble a series of quasi-simultaneous speeches given by the party leaders. Stay on message. Look into the camera and try to sound and look Prime Ministerial.

This will be easy for Stephen Harper, he's got five years' experience. It will be harder for Michael Ignatieff as his emotional range as a politician stretches from feigned outrage to feigned interest. It will be impossible for Jack Layton as his vaguely Lenin-like appearance prevents him from projecting a statesman's reserve and gravitas. You can imagine him addressing workers about to storm the Winter Palace, or perhaps disgruntled undergraduates, less so the suburban denizens of the 905.

It will be an hour of empty gestures made by men who are today - whatever they might have been once - empty suits on parade.