Can you believe everything you see online?

The Globe and Mail, which likes to think of itself as "Canada's national newspaper" [Wut? It's not the Notional Pest? Ed.], featured this item on its landing page today.

Guess they don't teach geography in Canadian j-schools. American readers who aren't getting this are recommended to review their grade school geography texts... if such things still exist.

The Ant & The Grasshopper - Canadian version

A reader has passsed along an updated Canadian version of the Aesop fable. 

Old Version: 

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house, and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. 

Modern Canadian Version: 

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. 

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving. CBC, CTV and Global show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. 

The Globe and Mail does a feature story. Canada is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on CBC News with Adrienne Arsenault. along with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."

People Against Poverty stage a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We Shall Overcome". Then Justin Trudeau has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake. Chrystia Freeland condemns the ant and blames former Prime Minister Harper, Former Premiers Jason Kenney, Brad Wall and Cristy Clark and Conrad Black for the Grasshopper's' plight. 

Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh explain in an interview with Rosemary Barton that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. 

Finally, the Liberal/NDP coalition drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs, not consulting with First Nations, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes; his home is confiscated by the government's Green Czar, Stephen Guilbeault, and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his freeloading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it. 

The ant has disappeared in the snow never to be seen again. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize and ramshackle the once prosperous and peaceful neighbourhood. The entire nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it. 

Moral of the story: Be careful how you vote in the next election, because you are an ant! You may wish to pass this on to other ants, but don't bother sending it on to any grasshoppers because they wouldn't understand it anyway.

Note from Ed. to our American readers: You can easily adapt this cautionary tale to the American politico-economic situation. Just subsitute, for the Canuch lickspittle media named, CNN, NBC, CBS, etc. For Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper, read Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And for Liberal/NDP coalition, read Democrats and Bernie Sanders. I should have posted this before the mid-terms, since some  American ants appear not to have got the message and are still voting for the grasshoppers.  

Journalist quits Canadian state broadcaster because it's too woke

"To work at the CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity. It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions. 

"It is to pretend that the 'woke' worldview is near universal -- even if it is far from popular with those you know, and speak to, and interview, and read."

So says Tara Henley, a Toronto journalist who resigned today after over eight years with Canada's state-owned broadcaster.

Writing on the Substack platform, Ms Henley opened her piece on the Substack platform by revealing that she's been hearing more and more complaints about the house organ of Canada's governing Liberal Party. 

"People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as 'brainstorm' and 'lame'.

"Everyone asks the same thing: What is going on at the CBC?"

Ms Henley goes on to answer her own question. 

"To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others. [Ahem. Less sugar, fewer people. Back to English class for you, young lady! Ed.] 

Ms Henley suggests that the focus on racial issues is resulting in less scrutiny of other issues that affect large numbers of people, such as the housing crisis, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, accumulation of wealth by billionaires and power by bureaucrats, and the rising total of overdose deaths. 

"It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change."

If working for a propaganda machine where newsreaders now must include not only vizmins but some who display their religious identity through their choice of headgear is too much for the not-quite-that-woke Tara Henley, Walt suggests she apply to CTV or Global, where things haven't gone quite that far... yet.

Further reading (added 4/1/22): Turns out Ms Henley landed softly at the new woke Globe & Mail, the Toronto elite paper that pretends to be Canada's national newspaper. Click here to read her reviews of six new books, including Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, by Batya Ungar-Sargon (Encounter Books, 2021), which Ms Henley calls a must-read. I'll add that to my shopping list, but not from Amazon!