Posted on 06/21/2002 6:04:59 AM PDT by Grig
What do I have to do to get fired by the Aspers?
I'm listless, I'm depressed, I've got self-esteem issues, the Viagra doesn't work. My wife lounges on the four-poster, reading Toronto Star editorials on freedom of the press and sneering, "Why can't you be a real man, like Russ Mills?"
"Russ Mills? The CanCon instrumental artiste from Verdun who got to Number One in 1978 with Music Box Dancer and whose 1984 TV special, A Rocky Mountain Christmas, is still fondly remembered?"
"That's Frank Mills, dummy. Russ Mills is the Ottawa Citizen publisher who got canned by David Asper for running a piece calling on Chrétien to resign. He's a paragon of journalistic integrity."
That's the way it goes every week now. Some guy's dug up from the bottom of the Assiniboine River, chipped out of his concrete overcoat and given half a page in The Globe and Mail to explain why the Aspers are the greatest threat to the Canadian media since ... well, since Conrad Black, except that he's been posthumously beatified. Time-serving corporate deadbeats, dreary journalism-school profs who've been holding down unread weekly columns for decades, tedious multicultural quota contributors who make the mistake of comparing life on the rez to the West Bank ... David Asper barely has time to unscrew his silencer and abseil over the balcony, and suddenly the corpse is all over the Globe doing the usual profiles-in-courage shtick.
And next thing you know Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton and the massed ranks of CanLit grandees, who'd never heard of any of these guys 20 minutes earlier, are taking out full-page ads calling for government intervention to guarantee the "diversity" of our press. Russell Mills was publisher of the Ottawa Citizen for 17 years, for most of which period it was the worst daily newspaper of any G7 capital. But overnight he's the poster-boy for everything a healthy journalistic culture should be.
If the rumours are to be believed, Papa Jean and Izzy were having dinner, and Papa Jean says, "Y'know, dat papers of yours all say da nasty dings about me," and Izzy goes, "Fuhgeddabouddit, it's taken care of. I'll make a couple calls." And, from Chrétien's point of view, it worked brilliantly. One week ago, the papers were full of stories about how bad Chrétien is for Canada. Now, they're all full of stories about how bad the Aspers are for Canada. And not just the domestic papers -- "Sacking Follows Chrétien Resign Call" (The Courier Mail of Queensland), "Protest After Editor Sacked" (The Scotsman), "Publisher's Ouster Ignites Furor" (The Boston Globe). If Papa Jean's the Teflon Don, Izzy's the Velcro Don. And Boy David is the Robert Blake of journalistic assassins.
Meanwhile, those of us still here, still taking the CanWest shilling, still quietly non-igniting furors, are dismissed by the Toronto Star and Sun crowd as hacks and pen-pushers. On Monday, I got an e-mail from a correspondent saying he would no longer be reading my column and he'd cancelled his subscription to the National Post. I get these from time to time, particularly since September 11th, and they're usually because of something I said about Jews or Muslims or Canadian defence spending. Dave Lambert of Aurora, Ontario, cancelled his subscription because I was rude about the UN. ("Your pathetic writer Mark Steyn, and his mocking of the United Nations and their attempts to create peace and justice for all, is the final straw.") But Monday's correspondent has given up on us because "Russell Mills deserved better." I bust a gut trying to be sexist, intolerant, homophobic, Islamophobic and Canadophobic, and you're bailing out on me because some mid-level exec's been shown the door? Thanks a bundle, Izzy.
What's worse is that now every position I take is assumed to be the result of "pressure from Winnipeg." The other day, I got an e-mail from David Atkin of Windsor: "You don't have the balls to write anything positive about Muslims," he wrote. "You are a sycophant toadying up to the boss' line on Mid-East policy." Get a grip, Atters. I'm not pro-Israel because Izzy is. I'm pro-Israel because I'm a pro-Washington right-wing madman. Is it likely, under any circumstances, that I'd be cheerleading for Yasser?
But these days you can't even not write about things without your motives being questioned. "Why are you silent on Chrétien/Martin?" demanded one reader. "Just following orders from Asper?" Not at all. I haven't written on Chrétien and Martin because I don't feel I've anything to add to Andrew Coyne's observations and Paul Wells' fine crack about Martin having gotten away with suicide. Paul Martin is the Russell Mills of the scenario: his stature derives from his boss' pettiness. (I know this analogy makes those of us who've stuck with CanWest look like Don Boudria, David Collenette and the other Cabinet pygmies, but so be it.) I honestly have no preference for Martin over Chrétien as PM: the problem is not the occupant but the office -- the concentration of power, patronage and purse strings in one man.
I happen to agree with the Ottawa Citizen's position on Chrétien -- or, to be more precise, their position as it was a week ago. But we thrashed these arguments out in the 2000 election and the dwindling number of voters who can be bothered to go to the polls decided they couldn't care less. Were Chrétien to run for a fourth, fifth or sixth term, it would likely prove the same.
But let's take as read the official line from Winnipeg that every thing the Prime Minister did in Shawinigate is entirely above board. It's still no way to run a country. About a year ago, I stayed at the Grand-Mère Inn and got to see its taxpayer-funded "improvements" close up: the lovely paneled dining room has been spoiled by cheapjack replacement windows; the ugly new cabins below ruin the view of the river; and the new en suite bathrooms in the old part of the hotel do not meet minimum clearances. Should M Chrétien ever stay at the inn he has so lavishly endowed, he would find that, were he to sit on the toilet, he would have to do so at an angle with his knees sticking out into the bedroom, possibly causing embarrassment to Warren Kinsella as he sat on the bed and took notes on the week's talking points. I can't for the life of me see what the interest of the Canadian taxpayer is in paying for any of this.
But this is Canada, where you're hard put to find a line of work that doesn't, in all kinds of unhealthy ways, intersect with government. The Aspers need Chrétien as Conrad never did, because they're in the TV business and thus their operations require Federal approval. Now Margaret Atwood and her fellow Globe and Mail signatories want to extend the Federal Government's role to newspapers. Let me see if I follow this: The Aspers are stifling media scrutiny of the government. So the best way to ensure media scrutiny of the government is to have government scrutiny of the media? Hmm.
It's government interference in "cultural" matters that's got us where we are today. In London, Conrad Black competes with Viscount Rothermere (English), Tony O'Reilly (Irish), Rupert Murdoch (American), the Hinduja brothers (Indian) and all manner of other creatures. But in Canada his competitors were barred from entry, and media concentration followed -- which should have been obvious: If you reduce the number of potential owners, you'll inevitably reduce the number of owners. The endearing Mr. Kinsella has argued forcefully that it's "racist" to forbid non-citizens to vote in Liberal Party leadership elections. I find it hard to see why foreigners should be allowed a say in who gets to be Canada's de facto President-For-Life but prevented from owning The North Bay Nugget.
Nonetheless, Senator Douglas Roche, the peacenik best-known for inviting Michael Douglas to film a no-nukes campaign video in Parliament, and Senator Joan Fraser, the woefully bad Montreal Gazette editor who was elevated to the Senate on the grounds that she'd been fired by Conrad, are now murmuring about getting a little Parliamentary investigating under way. So this is the choice for the Canadian newspaper industry -- formal Liberal Party regulation as favoured by Atwood, Berton and the other nanny-clinging saps; or informal buddy-buddy Liberal Party regulation as favoured by Izzy and Jean over drinks in the clubhouse at Grand-Mère.
For some of us, this is like the Iran/Iraq war: where's the neither-of-the-above box?
"Should M Chrétien ever stay at the inn he has so lavishly endowed, he would find that, were he to sit on the toilet, he would have to do so at an angle with his knees sticking out into the bedroom, possibly causing embarrassment to Warren Kinsella as he sat on the bed and took notes on the week's talking points."
Now THAT's a portrait of the Prime Minister you don't see every day. Only Steyn can do justice to bathroom humor. I have no idea what Jean Chretien's relationship to Warren Kinsella is. Its just Steyn's take on a Folies impression that tickles me maple. LMAO.
For some of us, this is like the Iran/Iraq war: where's the neither-of-the-above box?
And methinks this is also the choice we voters must make more times than not at the ballot box here in the states. I too long for a non-of-the-above lever many times as I stand in the voting booth. But alas, it is almost always the lesser-of-two-evils box that I find.
For some of us, this is like the Iran/Iraq war: where's the neither-of-the-above box?
And methinks this is also the choice we voters must make more times than not at the ballot box here in the states. I too long for a non-of-the-above lever many times as I stand in the voting booth. But alas, it is almost always the lesser-of-two-evils box that I find.
They're already under a "competition" investigation. Maybe that was a part of the reason for firing Mills. Why make the board mad by criticizing Crouton?
Regulations are the perfect lever to ensure that the major media become real monopolies under heavy influence by our corrupt government. The press should be completely independent of these crooks, answerable to no one.
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