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!

PC gone mad! Toronto public school board drops "Chief" from job titles

"If there were any doubt, there is no more: Canada is the stupidest country ever," writes Christie Blatchford in Canada's National Post, in an article headlined "Toronto school board declares war on 'chief' and all sense".

As we all know, Canada is kind of a nitwit nation. Particularly under the double-liberal government of Justin "Junior" Trudeau, the mania for political correctness and embracing diversity ("It's what makes Canada what it is!" says Junior) has reached dizzying new heights. The passion of the Canadian government for cultural sensitivity, inclusiveness and such-like BS is ridiculous, to the point of being mocked (quietly, of course) by ordinary "old stock" Canadians.

The Ontario government of proudly lesbian Premier Kathleen Wynne is worse. And now, Ms Blatchford reports, the Toronto District School Board, in its efforts to remain ahead of the Ontario government curve on all gender-cultural-political sensitivities, is not only contenting itself with following Education Minister Mitzie Hunter’s directive of early this year to review all potentially indigenous-offensive team names and mascots, but also has declared war on the word "chief".

"Chief"? What's wrong with that? TDSB spokesthingy Ryan Bird e-mailed Postmedia to "confirm that the title 'chief' is being phased out in various departments at the TDSB" as " part of the ongoing work that the school board does through the TDSB’s Aboriginal Education Centre with regards to Truth and Reconciliation (Commission, or the TRC, which produced its massive final report in 2015)."

Apparently the problem stems from the controversy south of the world's longest undefended border (subject to change without notice) over characters such as Cleveland Indians' beloved Chief Wahoo, pictured here.

Ms Blatchford continues: Attempts to find out precisely where in the TRC’s Calls to Action section there is any cry for the de-chiefing of the language in Canadian schools went unanswered. The board spokesman, Bird, tried hard on Postmedia’s behalf to get someone to respond but to no avail.

The best he could do, he said, was to suggest that the move didn’t necessarily come out of the TRC itself, but was "an aspect of a larger conversation staff have had" since the report was issued. Bird said he consulted with a TDSB elder who told him that probably "every Aboriginal person has been referred to as 'chief'" in a derogatory way at some point in his or her life.

But the fact of the matter is that the word is Latin in origin and comes from the Latin "caput", meaning head or leader, via the French, where chef is short for chef de cuisine, or boss of the kitchen.

If many people understand that caricatures such as Chief Wahoo...might be offensive to Indigenous ears and eyes, it’s a struggle to get the notion that a non-Indigenous word such as "chief" is equally insulting.

Anyhoo, there will be a lot of changes in nomenclature at the TDSB. While some key titles, such as "Chief Financial Officer" were changed a few years ago, recent casualties include the former Chief Caretaker at Glenview Public School, who arrived at work last week to find the word "Chief" on her office door blacked out. (Ooops. Could that term be offensive?) The Chair (Chairman? Chairperson?) of the TDSM will have to review and correct his résumé, where he is still described as "former Chief Student Achievement Officer" for the provincial education ministry. Presumably, Ms Blatchford concludes, the Board’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Officer and Chief Social Worker will all have to do the same. The entire C-suite could soon be history -- culturally sensitive history, to be sure.

Interesting factoid: One of Walt's agents, who must be numberless, worked for a time for the Saskatchewan Legal Services Commission, the public defender in that Godforsaken hinterland. 97% of the people he defended were Indians (or Indigenous People or First Nations, whatever is PC today). There were two main clans, he says, the Bears and Birds. He wonders if Ryan Bird, mentioned above, is one of those Birds. That would explain a lot.

The religion that must not be satirized... on pain of death!

In yesterday's second post on the assassination of Charlie Hebdo, Walt drew attention to the craven refusal of the lamestream media to draw attention to the fact that the terrorists being hunted for the murders of a dozen people are Muslims of North African ancestry. Instead, all we hear is calls for brotherhood and unity, as if the massacre had nothing to do with the perps' ethnicity or religious motivation.

Why is the fact that the murderers are Islamic extremists being downplayed? Political correctness, of course! The Taliban, al-Qaeda and now IS have bullied Western politicians -- including Francis the Party Pope -- and media into fearing to say, let alone do anything which might possibly give offence to followers of the Prophet.

Such is the post-Christian, post-religious Western world today. It's OK to make fun of Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church and fundamentalist Protestants. Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons have all been satirized in South Park and other TV comedies. Even Judaism is fair game. The Eastern religions -- Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism -- don't even get a laugh. But the one religion that can't be touched, or even mentioned, is... dare we name it... Islam!

Islam is untouchable because our "leaders" and chattering classes have got The Fear. This goes back at least as far as 1989 (before the word "Islamophobia" was coined), when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (an order to Muslims to kill someone) against Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. English writer Hanif Kureishi called the fatwa -- which is still in effect -- "one of the most significant events in postwar literary history."

The controversy over The Satanic Verses may be said to have divided Muslims from Westerners along the fault line of culture. The core Western value of freedom of expression -- that no-one "should be killed, or face a serious threat of being killed, for what they say or write" -- is now confronted by the Islamic fundamentalist commandment that no-one should be free to "insult and malign Muslims" by disparaging the "honour of the Prophet" Mohammed.

"Death to those who insult the Prophet!" is what the Islamists preach, and their followers -- including the two North African Muslims who killed the journalists of Charlie Hebdo -- are walking the talk. With a vengeance. Literally!

These thoughts have occurred not just to Walt but to others, including numerous cartoonists, commentators, journalists and writers. But so far I've heard only one make the point that political correctness to the point of fear has silenced public discussion of the issue. The CBC's senior correspondent, Neil Macdonald, spoke out on last night's edition of The National. Click here to watch "Religion, satire, and where we draw the line". Bravo, Neil, for breaking the politically correct silence.

Walt also recommends: "Terrorists have cowed us all into a ridiculous self-censorship", by the deliciously un-PC Crusty Blatchford ["Christie", surely. Ed.] in the Notional Post. ["National Post", surely. Ed.] Sample: You want to talk about common or "shared values", as just about every Western leader has done since the attack? The value most shared in the West, and perhaps in this country in particular, is timidity.