While I, normally, regard Ezra Levant as a
buffoon, he does, now and again, play a useful
court jester role. He does that in this (only modestly overstated) column about the "free ride" which the
media party has given Justin Trudeau:
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/11/23/speaking-in-liberal-mother-tongue-media-party-gives-justin-trudeau-a-pass-on-anti-alberta-remarks
Speaking in Liberal mother tongue: Media Party gives Justin Trudeau a pass on anti-Alberta remarks
BY EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY
FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2012
Two years ago, Justin Trudeau sat down for an interview on a French-language TV show in Quebec. It was a celebrity-style interview — the kind he likes best. Trudeau was wearing a Zorro-style hipster moustache and his shirt was, as usual, unbuttoned low.
He joked around, even doing a gag where he fell down a flight of stairs. But then the host asked him a serious question about Quebec’s place in Canada.
Trudeau summoned his best substitute-drama-teacher acting face — think of the male models in the movie Zoolander — and got serious too. Things aren’t going so well for people Quebec, he said, because “Albertans control our community.”
When the host asked if Canada was better when Quebecers were in charge, he agreed heartily: “I’m a Liberal, so of course I think so, yes … This country — Canada — it belongs to us.”
Trudeau’s claims are stunningly anti-Alberta. But they’re also just false. Canada is as socially liberal as ever — gay marriage, abortion on demand, affirmative action, bilingualism, etc. Stephen Harper hasn’t touched those in nearly seven years as prime minister.
And even if he had tried to, he couldn’t have undone those policies just with a band of wild Albertans. Only 28 seats out of our 308-seat Parliament come from Alberta. Harper’s Ontario caucus is almost three times bigger, and most of his senior cabinet ministers are from central Canada.
So it was a baseless accusation. But the facts weren’t Trudeau’s point. He just needed some generic grievance in order to bash the West, to demonize Alberta. That’s called bigotry.
So why did he do it?
Well, he’s a panderer. He was speaking in French, so he was counting on no one in Alberta hearing it. He has a different, lovey-dovey speech for them, in English, when he’s out West.
The insults came easily to Trudeau, because anti-western sentiment is every Liberal’s mother tongue. Earlier this week, David McGuinty had to resign as the party’s natural resources critic when he said Alberta MPs should get out of Ottawa and go back home. That’s not a gaffe; that’s standard-issue Liberal thinking.
But this story is bigger than Trudeau.
See, his Quebec supremacist video wasn’t hidden. It was broadcast, two years ago, to all of Quebec. To be fair, English-speaking journalists wouldn’t have understood it. But what about every bilingual reporter in the country? What about every reporter in Quebec?
To them, what Trudeau said was unremarkable. It wasn’t offensive, or even newsworthy. It wasn’t until Sun Media “broke” the story in English this week that it was grudgingly covered by other reporters. And even then, the Media Party did its best to minimize Trudeau’s gaffes. While Trudeau himself hid from the press, his media surrogates offered up any excuse they could. It was two years ago! He was just 38! It was just a small part of a large interview! It was out of context!
When Jason Kenney, the Conservative point-man on this issue, stepped out into the foyer of the House of Commons to talk about it, the scrum of reporters didn’t ask him questions. They debated him — asking him three times if his concern about Trudeau’s comments wasn’t just a reflection of his own party’s desperation.
The Toronto Star’s headline on the story was this: “Trudeau faces uproar for alleged anti-Alberta comments.”
Alleged?
The Canadian Press, the unionized, left-wing news agency, topped that. Their headline: “Tories target Trudeau as poll suggests his popularity keeps growing.”
Say what? No mention that Trudeau had slurred Alberta. The attackers were … the Tories! Oh — and in case you were wondering — Trudeau is super awesome, and they have polls to show it.
Some journalists practically asked Trudeau out on a date. Christine Tam, a CTV producer, posted a pretty picture of Trudeau on Twitter and wrote the caption: “Justin Trudeau can make anti-Alberta comments to me anytime!”
Oh, get a room. Or, don’t, actually — I prefer that kind of drooling to be done in public, for the country to see, rather than Liberal spin doctors pretending to be neutral reporters.
I need to be clear: I believe the
media is biased - in all directions; I accept, even relish a
biased media but I wish TV was more like print journalism with
editorials,
columnists and
reporters (different
types of people say different
types of things (opinions vs facts)) and publicly
stated political points of views, like the
Toronto Star. As it is, I generally regard TV "news" as
infotainment and I watch, mainly, for Brooke Baldwin's body ...
I also believe there is a
media party, led, mainly, by TV news programmes that are
desperate to fill a 24/7 news cycle; when there is no real news,
per se, they must resort to either fabricating it (see the
erroneous Postmedia reports on Conservative donations) or do
fluff journalism - and Justin Trudeau is the
perfect bit of
fluff: beautifully telegenic and a celebrity just because of his name (think Princess Eugenie of York). But the
media party is, largely, a herd: most are of the same generation which means they were "educated" (journalism is a craft,
fer chrissakes, like plumbing, not a profession like engineering or the law) in a few schools, by a small cadre of like minded professors and they share a common
social position which is, broadly: anti-
conservative ... they aren't really
FOR much of anything, just against that which they (erroneously, again) define as
conservative, which they think of as being old and maybe even
fascist.
Justin Trudeau is a
celebrity, and that may be enough, in 21st century Canada, to make him our prime minister.
