Laugh of the Day

I heard a young fellow call up to CKNW this morning, blathering about something that had me both laughing and shaking my head. He was deeply saddened that STV was summarily rejected by the voters of BC yesterday and had convinced himself that it was all the media's fault for not better publicizing it.

Here's the comedy part of his diatribe (paraphrasing) : "I think the CBC did a pretty good job at explaining STV though. But then CBC listeners are generally already highly informed."

Really? REALLY?? R-E-A-L-L-Y?!?

I am confident that if I were given the opportunity to interview typical CBC listeners, I could ask them just a few questions about current news events for which they would have answers. But I submit that at least 90% of these answers would be:

1. Absolutely and completely FALSE.
2. Simply a regurgitation of what they had heard on the CBC.

If my hypothesis proves true, does that mean that CBC listeners are "highly informed" or rather that they're the unknowing victims of a massive brainwashing campaign?!

Just a Typical Day for CBC News Reporters

Ensure there are no sharp objects around when you read this. Remember that over a billion dollars of year of your tax dollars are funding twits like this at the CBC. It's unbelievable how ignorant two so-called journalists could be!

Update: I just heard the CBC Radio News report on their 4:30pm news. The local reporter mentioned in the cited piece is Karen Tankard. She is the same one who won the 2002 Jack Webster award for "Excellence in Legal Journalism".

Remember that old line about what 4 bits and a journalism degree will buy you . . . ? ! ? :-)

Are Canadians Interested in the American Election?

This was the topic of conversation on today's CBC Radio 1 Cross Country Checkup show. I enjoy this show because they usually have a diverse set of interesting guests. What is always a predictable wall of ignorance are the majority of callers phoning up from all over Canada. For the most part, this is not a diverse group but rather an assortment of CBC Radio listeners, 99% of whom have ingested endless litres of mind-numbing Socialist Kool-Aid.

Here's the letter I sent them, which of course will not get read on-air because it doesn't fit in with their "narrative":


It's fascinating to listen in to the endless stream of devout CBC listeners, calling in to Cross Country Checkup today. Here's a sampling of the "brilliant" gems of fiction that several callers deeply believe to be true:

• George Bush stole the 2000 election.
• NAFTA and Free Trade in general is a terrible thing for Canadians.
• It's not a matter if the United States will implode and collapse, but when.
• Hillary Clinton has a lot of experience. (in what?)
• [The war in] Afghanistan was planned one year before 9/11.
• Stephen Harper is anti-woman.
• Ronald Reagan inspired just conservatives.
  

While such statements undoubtedly feed the frenzy of hatred amongst many Canadians toward 50% of Americans, they are absolutely and unequivocally false. But why let facts ever get in the way of prejudice?!

CBC's The Current: A Racist Hiring Policy?

Take a look at this set of faces. They work for "The Current", CBC Radio 1's morning primetime show. With a few minor exceptions, all of the staff are white, white, white.

Yet this show has a constant parade of segments featuring "ethnic" people who are constantly facing some sort of racism. Today there was a piece on mixed races. The general implication was that if you dare ask a person what ethnic makeup they are, then you are automatically a racist. What a crock!

I have two traits that make me guilty:

1. I'm a curious person. Always have been. It's one of the reasons I became an engineer.
2. I happen to be especially attracted to women of mixed races. I don't know precisely why but I so often find their looks to be very enchanting.

So in the same way that I'm curious to learn about where people have traveled to and what types of cuisine they like, I'm also curious to learn about their ethnic heritage. Wow, what a horrible person I am for doing so!!

I wrote The Current and [more gently] shared my thoughts with them. I also challenged them to do a future show that asked more pressing questions, walking outside the politically correct boundaries that the CBC has imposed on itself. Here's an example: A CBC radio reporter should interview a group of Chinese-Canadian teenagers in a mall and ask them the following: "Some might call you to be racist because you've not let into your social group anyone outside your own racial group. Do you agree? If not, why have you made no effort to diversify your social circle?"

Do you think they'll ever ask such a question?!

Letter to CBC Radio

On CBC Radio One's Sunday Edition program, host Nora Young had a fascinating discussion with author Andrew Keen. I felt compelled to send her this letter:

Your in-depth discussion with Andrew Keen about Web 2.0 and the ongoing death of MSM was extremely interesting.

While I agreed with several of his concerns about where people are now getting their information from, I believe he was off-target on several key points.

First off, he seemed to be in denial about the fact that the wave of technology can not be held back. Things have changed and there is simply no going back.

Second, if the Mainstream Media (MSM) does eventually die, it will not be the fault of technology. All the blame will lie collectively with the members of the MSM themselves. With Internet access, one still has the ability to get one's news strictly from MSM websites. But most choose not to. Why? Because most people have come to realize that straight news, without any editorial spin, is very rare these days. Now that people have the ability to avoid such spin or to avoid spin that doesn't sit well with their own world view, they choose to exercise this freedom.

Many Canadians and Americans criticize the spin of Fox News in the U.S. I would suggest to you that Fox News has gained its great success BECAUSE of the spin from other media outlets ... including your own.

Any journalist who claims they have no bias is as ignorant as a person saying that they have no accent when they speak. We all do! It's simply a matter of perspective.

I am deeply troubled by the many unsubstantiated beliefs of many, often fed and supported by websites run by anonymous wackos with some personal agenda. The key to moving beyond them is not for the MSM to dismiss them out of hand but to do things better. This means having staff of all political inclinations and striving to be first to be correct, not first to be first!

Case in point, if an anonymous survey were to be done of all CBC employees, do you think there would be some semblance of equal representation of political views? Please don't insult me by saying 'Yes'. For left and extreme left do not constitute a balance. This may begin to explain why fewer and fewer Canadians are listening to and watching CBC news and information programs these days. Your organization is fortunate to be funded by the generosity of the Canadian taxpayer. Without that, your fate would surely be the same as the rest of the MSM.

Finally, Some Common Sense on the CBC!!!

I just heard an AMAZING interview on CBC Radio 1. The guest was Queen's Law Professor, Bruce Pardy. The topic was Global Warming. He told it as it is and it was music to my ears. In a nutshell he made clear that any little steps that Canadians make to reduce their carbon footprint matter not a whit if the much more densely populated nations of the world don't take the lead. Taken to the extreme, if tomorrow all Canadians stopped consuming ALL energy, it wouldn't make any real difference to the world as a whole.

The interesting thing is that Pardy is very "pro-environment" but he's just not buying into the hypocrisy surrounding the nonsensical Kyoto Agreement.

You can listen to the segment here, though you need Real Player. A highly recommended listen!

The Lunacy of Environmental Ethics

This morning on CBC Radio 1 I heard what, on the surface, was supposed to be a serious discussion. But I kept thinking that I must have been transported back to April 1st.

The guest was a former beef-farmer turned researcher named Gidon Eshel. You can read more here. He went on in great detail about how eating meat - any kind of meat, but especially beef - is completely unethical and comparatively just as bad as driving an SUV instead of a Prius. Why? Mainly because of ... wait for it ... the amount of a gas a cow expels (farts!) on a daily basis.
I have little doubt that the research numbers of this fellow are probably quite accurate. But I've long realized that EVERYTHING we do leaves a footprint on the environment. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Reading a book
• Going for a walk (unless you're naked and walking in the forest)
• Sleeping (unless you're naked and walking in the forest)
• Watching TV
• Listening to music
• Reading these very words
• Just living

I have little doubt though that the Environmental Righteous Activists (ERA) among us are going to start preaching about the new evil: Eating meat. There'll undoubtedly be some fast food restaurants picketed.

When people get so ridiculous, the only thing to do is to treat them with mockery and sarcasm. I'm going to have some great fun with the ERA acquaintances I know. I'm going to question every single activity they partake in and ask them, in the most serious of tones, whether they're okay living the unethical life they do!

Human Rights Discussion (CBC Style)

On the recent edition of CBC radio's Sunday Edition program there was a long discussion about "Human Rights". I felt compelled to send them this letter:

While I found the thoughts of your two guests informative, it wasn't a very balanced discussion. Adding someone like Mark Steyn onto your panel would have made it a lot more interesting.

The basic flaw with the arguments your guests put forward is that they assume that the major human rights violators are just "friends waiting for their grievances to be resolved".

Does anyone REALLY think that dialogue and offers of friendship will ever resolve things with al Qaeda, Kim Jong-il in North Korea, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, or Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe?

The truth is that in most cases these men must be imprisoned or killed before anything can actually change. Denying this basic fact has provided gainful lifetime employment for thousands in the UN but has also DIRECTLY resulted in the murders of millions of people and the ongoing oppression of millions of others.


Update: I just received this response from to my e-mail:

Thank you for your comments. They have been received by the program.

Reynold Gonsalves
Associate Producer
CBC Radio One, The Sunday Edition

Please note that emails sent to the program may be read onair as part of our Mail segment.

For more information about the program, you can check our website at:

http://cbc.ca/thesundayedition

And to it I responded with this:

Dear Reynold,

I certainly hope that letters such as mine will be read on-air. Being immersed in the trees of the CBC, as you are, I wonder if you're able to fully appreciate the forest that constitutes all Canadians in 2007. When right-of-centre people, even mildly right-of-centre people like me hear discussions on CBC Radio, you have no idea how many times we feel like pulling our hair out, frustrated that there's most often no one in the discussion that remotely represents anything other than a left or ultra-left viewpoint. If you were a private broadcaster then it's no one's business what's heard on-air but you are a public broadcaster, on-air through the tax dollars of everyone, and thus clearly should represent the public at large.

I'd love to be a a fly on the wall if you were to read my previous paragraph to your colleagues at the CBC. My guess is that many would laugh or scoff at it. This would speak volumes of exactly what I'm talking about.

The [Not So] Great Canadian Environmental Debate!

I'm generally not much of a CBC fan because of the extreme left-wing bias in most of their programming by I frequently listen to one radio show called The House. In the most recent program, there was a ridiculous display of one upmanship displayed by all the guests. It prompted me to send the host, Kathleen Petty, this letter:

I love your show and listened with great interest to your February 3rd discussion about the environment with members of the Conservative, Liberal, and NDP parties. If that's the best that our three major parties have to offer then God ... errr may Mother Nature help us!

I couldn't stop thinking throughout that the interview was not a whole lot different than the venerable TV show, The Dating Game. (Feel free to listen to the theme music while reading the rest of my e-mail!) The 3 bachelors were desperately trying to win the heart & mind of Miss Canada (us voters).

Mr. Conservative is her latest beau. She's been dating him for the past year, is generally content but ... her old boyfriend, Mr. Liberal, who she's been involved with many years in the past, is now actively pursuing her again, after having to sort out some financial issues with the police. He's definitely the flashiest of all, but she hasn't decided whether she can trust him again. The third bachelor, Mr. NDP, seems like a nice guy but she thinks he's too much of an idealistic geek to ever get seriously involved with. This doesn't stop him from endlessly trying to win her heart though.

Miss Canada has an American uncle named Al Gore. Last year she saw a movie he made about a pending worldwide environmental crisis. Since then she keeps hearing the word "Kyoto" every time she turns on the TV, listens to the radio, or reads the newspaper. She doesn't really know what it means but figures it must be important if so many people are always talking about it. When she was dating Mr. Liberal she remembers him signing some document on her behalf with that "K" word on it, but it certainly didn't make her change her lifestyle! He was having too much fun with her to ever mention

All of this recent environmental talk has perked her interest so much that she confided to her girlfriends (the political pollsters) that the man in her life better be darned concerned about it too ... even if she isn't too clear on the details of what "it" is. As might be expected, the girlfriends let this slip to the 3 bachelors. They're now all pumping their chests, trying to outdo the others, to prove to Miss Canada that they are the greenest of all and thus deserve her affection!

Sadly, none of these fellows realize that the object of their affection was terribly spoiled as a child and grew up in a very privileged environment. Her family stems from proud and noble roots, but it is unclear to all her cousins, watching her from afar, whether she can give up her two cars, her fabulous condo, and her regular winter jaunts down to warmer climes. At this point she doesn't even know that she has to change anything in her own life, but rather is just relying on her boyfriend to ensure that businesses do everything. To varying degrees, the 3 bachelors have convinced themselves that she is prepared to make some radical changes. Time will tell, but relationship counseling seems like a foregone conclusion! If so, her boyfriend can pick up the tab for that too.

Cozy Propaganda

Friday morning I periodically tuned into CBC Radio 1 to get some news from the Liberal Leadership Convention in Montreal. What I heard though was not "news" but was more akin to pro-Liberal propaganda courtesy of our publicly funded national broadcaster. The host, Julie Van Dusen, was just fawning lovingly over every single Liberal she interviewed. There were NO tough questions. Instead, every element of the discussion was in the vain of "God's chosen party has been accidentally bumped out of office. What can we, the propaganda wing of the Liberal party, do to get you back to your rightful place ... and get rid of those horrible, bigoted, unprogressive Conservatives."

I'd long given up hoping for a modicum of evenhandedness when it comes to CBC but this was so extreme it actually became funny.

P.S. Mademoiselle Van Dusen even confessed that the "hospitality suites are killing me". She's actually admitting that she's letting the Liberals liquor her up. So incredibly professional!