A fond look back at Fred C. Dobbs, scourge of the lamestream media

I'm still hot under the collar about the sorry state of the lamestream media in North America. See "Anus horribilis 2020: Noted in passing (media)", posted yesterday. The truth isn't out there. It's here, in the blogosphere.

Liberal group-think dominates the lamestream media of the Excited States of America, and Canada is just as bad -- worse, now, with the passing of Christie Blatchford and Allan Fotheringham. 

And there are those who say that, even at his best, Dr Foth was not really anti-establishment, but more of a court jester poking fun at the Powers That Be, from inside the charmed circle of the liberal elite.

His jibes were indeed tepid, compared with the vitriolic savagery of my favourite Canuck political commentator, Fred C. Dobbs, the Bard of Beamsville. Ole Freddy was the alter ego of the late Michael Magee, a part-time radio and TV personality and full-time fan of the sport of kings, based in Beamsville ON. And yes, there is such a place. You can look it up.

While we were writing yesterday's piece, Ed. looked through one of Fred's two published works, The Platinum Age of B.S. (Van Nostrand Reinhold 1981) and found some comments on the Canuck controlled media which are even more to the point now than they were 40 years ago.

It's a funny thing in this country, but nobody really wants to talk, nobody wants to get out there and tear strips off the government anymore. Everybody wants to suck up...everybody's just cowed into keeping their yaps shut....

In Canada, I think if we had a Watergate situation the fix would be in with the Toronto Star, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Maclean's magazine. These is the big three media knee-jerkers in the English language in this country. 

[They] would really not want the great, wonderful, golden image of the Liberal Party of Canada to be tarnished in any conceivable way. Because, after all, this image is as great, as bright and aas shiny as any kinda galaxy could ever be if it come along and upstaged the eclipse of the sun. I mean, the arrival of the Liberals for these poor bastards is like the Second Coming.

There's a climate of fear among broadcasters, there's a real fear of the CRTC [the Canadian equivalent of the FCC], that muddling, meddling government quasi-regulatory body that they see as a group of people really interfering with their right to do what it is they want to do. And it's kind of a valid argument against government interference in our lives; there's far too much of it.

This is what the Trudeau government gang really do stand for, cuz they passionately believe that unless they run, organize, regulate and produce everything that goes on, it ain't going to be up to some peculiar standards they imagine exists.

The Platinum Age of B.S. was the sequel to The Golden Age of B.S. (Gage, 1976), both long out of print. If you're a Canadian and want to see what Dr Foth called "the Natural Governing Party" get the disrespect it richly deserves, try to get your hands on Fred's books. Try your local library, but don't be surprised if they don't have them. As for his radio and TV broadcasts, those tapes have been erased, wiped clean. Wonder why....

If you're American and wonder what relevance this has to you, just reread that passage. Where Fred says "Liberals", substitute "Democrats". For Toronto Star, CBC and Maclean's magazine, substitute, New York Times/Wapo, CNN and Time magazine. They're all the same! Ask yourself, now that Dr Hunter S. Thompson and George Carlin are no longer with us, is there anyone left who's willing to stand up and say the liberal elites are full of BS?... Anyone?...

Footnote: The "Trudeau" to whom Fred refers is not Blackie McBlackface, the current Prime Minister of Canuckistan, but his father, Pierre, who began the destruction of Canada way back in 1968 and was still in power when Freddie was writing. That in itself tells you all you need to know about the Canaadian sheeple.

Anus horribilis 2020: Noted in passing (media)

Ed. here. 2020 is almost over, thank God, truly an Annus Horribilis if ever there was one. (I know my Latin but Walt insists on leaving the headline as he wrote it.) Here is the second segment of our yearend review, saying ave atque vale to some people who in some way made this world a better place, and who will be missed. 

Walt wanted to do "sports and music" second, but I'm going with journalists today because only two who died in 2020 rate a fond farewell, so this will be a short piece for a Monday morning.

Maybe not. What Ed. just wrote might get me started on the sad state of the Fourth Estate in the quasi-free world, particularly the broadcast media, particularly in the Excited States of America and its branch plant in the Great No-longer-white North. [He means Canada. Ed.] We don't call them the lamestream media for nothing. 

Reporters? Journalists? Ha! Just a bunch of typists and cut-and-pasters turning out  mediocre liberal propaganda sweetened with a veneer of "celebrity" and entertainment "news" to convince the (North) American sheeple that everything is just fine -- especially now that Sleepy Joe Biden has been pushed into the White House under cover of night -- when in reality our society is disintegrating before our very eyes. You can see it (if you open your eyes!) but they can't... or won't.

Now that I've got that off my chest, let's note the passing of two journalists of the old school -- both of them Canadian -- who will no longer be letting the air out of the tires of the liberal establishment.

One such was columnist and author Allan Fotheringham -- aka "Dr Foth" -- known for his biting satirical commentaries aimed at the rich and the powerful, who died in Toronto on 19 August 2020. 

For 27 years, you weren't considered a member of the Canuck establishment unless you had been pilloried in Dr Foth's column on the last page of Maclean’s magazine. Such was his genius that he got invited to all the best parties and, some would say, became himself a member of said establishment. 

Allan Fotheringham was born on 31 August 1932 in the middle of nowhere -- Hearne SK -- just down the road from Lilac. His career began with a regular column at the University of British Columbia's student newspaper, the Ubyssey. (The incomparable historian cum storyteller Pierre Berton also wrote for the Ubyssey at about the same time.) Fresh from university, he was hired as a reporter and columnist by the Vancouver Sun. 

He began writing his weekly Maclean’s column in 1975, and is credited with making Maclean's the only magazine customarily read from back to front. He was known for his cutting sense of humour, often aimed at prime ministers and lesser mortals. His more memorable political nicknames include "the jaw that walks like a man" for PM Lyin' Brian Mulroney, "Natural Governing Party" for the Canadian Liberal Party, and the "Holy Mother Corporation" for the Canadian Broadcorping Castration (as I call it).

Mr Fotheringham was a regular panelist on the CBC TV programme Front Page Challenge. Like Christie Blatchford (see below), he became more conservative in his later years, and wrote columns for the Toronto Sun until 2000. In 2001, when his column was moved to an inside page of Maclean's, he left in a huff to become a columnist for the Globe & Mail. His syndicated column appeared in 20 newspapers until his retirement in 2007.

Many of his columns were collected into a series of books, beginning with Collected and Bound (1972), then Malice in Blunderland, or, How the Grits stole Christmas (1983); Look Ma — no hands : an affectionate look at our wonderful Tories (1986); Capitol offences : Dr. Foth meets Uncle Sam (1989); Birds of a Feather: The Press and the Politicians (1999); and Last Page First (2001). 

Allan Fotheringham's last book was an autobiography, Boy From Nowhere - A Life in Ninety-One Countries (Dundurn Press, 2011), which Walt recommends. Maclean's marked his passing with a column filled with some of his memorable jibes under the headline: "Allan Fotheringham was loved, revered and loathed but never ignored." That's exactly why I find him an inspiration as I continue with WWW.

On 12 February 2020, Canada lost a thorn in the paws of the smug and a powerful voice for ordinary people when Christie Blatchfor lost a short but fierce battle with cancer. Born on 20 May 1951 in Rouyn QC, Ms Blatchford was one of Canada’s most prominent writers, having been a leading journalist all four of Toronto's daily papers (including two that believe they are "national newspapers").

She started at the Globe and Mail in 1973, as Canada’s first female sports columnist. (I mean she was a female who wrote about sports, not a columnist who wrote about female sports.) She moved to the Toronto Star in 1977 as a features and news writer. They say a conservative is a liberal who just got mugged. Perhaps Ms Blatchford got mugged at the Red Star, for she moved to the right(ish) Toronto Sun in 1982, and finally to the newly launched National Post in 1998.

Over the years, Ms Blatchford's award-winning work covered sports, war, the courts, crime and much more. In recent years she focused more heavily on political commentary. She wrote columns and appeared in videos that displayed both her conservative views and her hard-nosed attitude.  In her last column in the Post, published on 22 October 2019, she expressed her bewilderment that Justin Trudeau was re-elected Prime Minister of Canada.

For her sins of political incorrectness, she was much maligned by the PC police and social commentariat, but readers loved her -- 1000s sent cards and best-wishes when her cancer diagnosis was revealed -- and her vox populi is missed, not least by her colleague Rex Murphy. See "Christie Blatchford was hard as a rock, soft as a teddy bear and Canadians will miss her", in the National Post, 12/2/20. Sub-head: "She was instinctively kind, had an alert and well-exercised radar for the plight of the underdog, the 'little guy,' the person or group never near the head tables of life."

Further reading: Agent 3, who knows a thing or two about what happens when you get caught in the "justice system" [Is dis a system? Mr Natural] recommends Christie Blatchford's Life Sentence - Stories from four decades of court reporting -- or, how I fell out of love with the Canadian justice system (especially judges) (Doubleday Canada 2016).

Footnote: The estimable Rex Murphy is younger than I am, but still old enough and conservative enough to be considered a curmudgeon -- one of trhe last of a dying breed. Last June, some of his younger and more liberal "colleagues" at the Notional Pest  attempted to get him fired for having the temerity to deny the existence of systemic racism in Canada. In spite of the baying of the PC hounds, the NP's editor still gives Mr Murphy his space. Walt says: Don't let `em get to ya, Rex. I don't want to be writing your obituary next year!

TMI has made us callous

Picking up where we left off yesterday -- the topic was why nobody cares about Haiti now -- Walt presents the explanation, from Allan Fotheringham's column of 1 August 1994.

"We have more information than we actually want... Whenever there is yet another world crisis the nervous establishment networks dispatch their anchormen immediately to the hotspot. Peter Jennings in a safari suit...

"Constant exposure to the tragedy of others does not make us more stricken, more grieving, more dumbstruck. Thanks to live television, it makes us accept the worst, knowing that next week there will be more...

"Information overload, it is called. A survey taken 20 years back [1974] asked North American television viewers how many TV channels they felt comfortable with, how many they required. The answer came out to seven. [Now] we are in 1994...and a recent survey divined that most viewers feel -- world scoop! -- that about seven channels is all they can, or want to absorb.

"Those of us in the industry of information are killing our consumers with overload. Saturation. Brain dead. What is wanted is quality, not quantity."

Walt adds... My impetus for writing these two posts was an item in the news earlier this week that the human disaster story for next month will be -- wait for it -- Chad. It's another one that most North Americans couldn't find on a map. Hint: try Africa. Apparently millions in that poor country are faced with starvation unless we help. Heard it all before, right?

Then I read Dr. Foth and, just for fun, counted the number of TV channels I watch, out of the hundreds available through the little dish on the roof. The number is -- wait for it -- seven!

A final (?) word on Haiti

We haven't heard much about Haiti, lately, have we? Her Jeanness, the Governor-General of Canada, finally made a quick trip to the homeland she left behind, and discovered that leaving it behind was the smart thing to do.

Some members of the Haitian diaspora have suggested that it would be a Good Thing if the lovely and fragrant Ms Jean went home when her term as G-G ends in a few weeks. She could be the new president, they said! It'll never happen, Walt says. It would mean the regal [vice-regal? ed.] First Lady would have to mingle with poor black folks. Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, the world's attention has turned elsewhere. The fundraisers and telethons and famous-people-to-the-rescue efforts have pretty much stopped. The flavour of the month has become the flavour of last month, and it seems we (meaning rich whites) are prepared to let Haiti slip back into the backwardness and poverty in which it has been mired for nearly two centuries.

"Most Canadians, not to mention Americans, could not locate Haiti on a map if given a pointer and a large crayon. It contains fewer people than New York City and yet rates huge headlines in all the best newsmagazines and your favorite morning paper.

"In reality, it is a piffle, no threat to world security, of no consequence to the average inhabitant of Omaha or Moose Jaw, and yet it makes it into every morning's 8 a.m. newscast. Why? Because modern technology...makes it possible. Because technology can make it possible, trivial news masquerades as importance.

"Haiti has no relevance to the world order. It is about as important as Yellowknife. But the New York Times -- and therefore the Globe and Mail -- puts Haiti on the front page. It is a joke."

What's that?! A racist rant from Rush Limbaugh? More of Walt's politically incorrect musings? No, dear reader. Those three paragraphs were written by one of Canada's leading journalists of the last century, Allan Fotheringham. The date of the piece? Not this past winter, but August 1, 1994. You could look it up.

Tomorrow... "Dr. Foth" elucidates the fuzzification.