07.07.2017 08:14 AM

Summertime at the CBC: bite me

I get it.  The full-time folks are gone on holiday, people are a bit sleepy, Peter Mansbridge has finally (finally) departed.  CBC isn’t firing on all cylinders.  I get it.

But, you know, I keep thinking about two things.

One, Steve Ladurantaye gets pilloried by CBC – he gets evisceratedfor an obvious tweeted joke.  Being (full disclosure) a friend of Steve, and being someone who writes novels – and, you know, fiction would be impossible if it didn’t “appropriate” culture – I found the way in which they treated him appalling and disgusting and cruel.  I wrote about it.  (Steve doesn’t know I’m writing this, by the way.  He doesn’t tell me what to say, and vice-versa.)

Two, this week the CBC itself – on its flagship programs The National and Power and Politics, no less – bring on a far-Right white supremacist leader, and let him say whatever the Hell he wants.  This creep has written on The Rebel’s web site about how he hates Jews, calls blacks “monkeys,” calls himself “anti-Semitic,” says Jews should “get over” the Holocaust, and authors essays titled “I’m Not a Racist, Sexist, or a Homophobe, You Nigger Slut Faggot.” It’s all there in Google, easy to find. And CBC brings the racist on TV, arrogantly thinking they can “handle” him, and he handles them instead.  And, only when there is a massive backlash about their stupidity do they offer up a hasty apology.  Only about how they questioned him – not about bringing him on in the first place.

But did anyone get dismissed for helping out a neo-Nazi?  Did anyone get maligned in company-wide emails from the bosses? Did anyone get named and shamed?  Did anyone get forced by management to sit through a veritable Salem witch trial, in which they were defamed and libelled, and their bosses didn’t say word one to stop it?

Not on your fucking life.

As a test, and because I allegedly know a little bit about the racist Right, I wrote to a CBC manager, and offered to write up a piece about why they made a mistake.  The eventual reply: “Don’t think we’ll bite on this.”

Gotcha.  We’ll bite on Steve Ladurantaye, however, because Deepest Annex was apoplectic for all of ten minutes.  But bite on why Canadians’ tax dollars shouldn’t be used to provide an uncritical platform for a white supremacist?

No, the CBC won’t bite on that.

Well, you know what, CBC?  Bite on me.  Bite on us.  You guys are so full of shit, it almost makes me wonder if crazy Right-wingers are right about you.

You know: the ones you invite on-air, to talk about why indigenous people deserve to be scalped.

18 Comments

  1. James Smith says:

    Thank-you. This mistake should be corrected by folks loosing jobs.

  2. Kevin T. says:

    Reading this helped release some frustrated disgust for CBC and how they helped poison spread rather than wither it with knowledge. They’ll have another brainfart episode inevitably and nothing more will have been learned.

  3. Sean Cummngs says:

    There are massive, massive problems with CBC. One of which is that CBC HQ is in Toronto which is an island unto itself. I was wondering why they let a freaking white supremacist have a podium to spout off his bile. Unreal

  4. Howard says:

    When Maryam Monsef’s familial immigration fraud was uncovered, many people wondered allowed why she was given special treatment while others had been booted from the country for similar dishonesty. For this, the President of Canada, Gerald Butts, compared these logical questions about established facts to US right-wing racist myths about Barack Obama’s birthplace. The tactic worked and Monsef continues to be a citizen even though she came to Canada under false pretenses.

    When you throw around the racism label at issues that have nothing to do with race, the accusation carries far less weight in cases where it is actually warranted.

    “Deepest Annex” – I like that.

    • Howard says:

      Just to clarify since I now see my comment might be misinterpreted, I agree that the character you refer to is a racist. What I’m saying that previous hysteria about your friend Steve L., and similar such SJW and progressivist eruptions about nothing, lessen the impact when applying the label to true bigots.

  5. jay says:

    “Don’t think we’ll bite on this”–did he really say that? I can see why it pissed you off. Precious and arrogant all at once.

  6. lougive says:

    This should come as no surprise. The idiots at mother Corp are to busy finding “news” that fits the agenda. Why they assumed their Bachelors degrees in unemployable arts made them smarter than that idiot and that they could handle him is beyond me. This is CNN pattern. Find an idiot, give them air time, and then feign shock when it doesn’t work out.

  7. Charlie says:

    I have a slightly different take, but similar sentiments.

    The first thing I remembered in the fall out of the CBC “fuck up” was the Ladurantaye situation. I’ve said this before and I still believe it now, I agree with the actions taken with Steve. Someone in his position should be held to higher scrutiny given their compensation and prominence. In a field where words are king, comments and remarks aren’t up for leniency when coming from a person with influence.

    The problem I have is now that Hannah Thibideau gave what could have been the most “oops, did I do that?” fucking apology ever on TV yesterday, wrapped up in a semi-justification for the mistake, no producer has been admonished for the incident. Whoever booked Gavin, whoever okay-ed the interview, whoever believed that hearing the views of a irrelevant third party over the accounts of perhaps those who attended, whoever failed to do the most basic of research on the previous statements made by Gavin — should be removed from their position. I can’t imagine how this isn’t a huge failure to uphold the most basic of journalistic standards.

    My belief that the hatred for the media is well placed has been reconfirmed by this incident. What the CBC attempted to do was “hard-hitting journalism” without any of the work required for such an endeavour. Instead, a national public broadcaster was made to look like a shitty basement operation run by some college kids.

    Nevertheless, the ego and sheer fucking narcissism of these downtown Toronto media elites (I hate that used that term too, but its the most apt description I can think of) to think that propagating racism by accident is forgivable because “oh well, we tried”, is beyond gobsmacking.

    The other layer to this whole issue is that despite the marathon of self-congratulations the CBC is currently participating in for emphasizing indigenous voices into the network, they chose to completely and utterly abandon any attempt of hearing from an indigenous advocacy group on the incident until after the public backlash.

    The cut and dry of this BS: Gavin McInnes comes out looking like a winner to his crowd because a) he fought for them, b) made the “liberal media elite” look like complete dumbasses and c) completely changed the conversation from what happened last week to how the CBC is getting raked over the coals by its own viewers. The CBC moves on because the pretty blonde made a vapid statement on their mistake and will likely go on to repeat the same mistake again because the no one in the decision making process is going to be scrutinized.

  8. Michael Bussiere says:

    CBC is proud to spout platitudes but is seriously inconsistent. “This incident raised questions about CBC’s commitment to being a more inclusive and representative workplace in staffing, in leadership and in content,” says Jennifer McGuire with a straight face. Go the The Current’s website and take a look at the team photo on the About page. See if you can spot which group is grossly under-represented.

  9. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    Entrenched, self-entitled, elites lead to a mediocre journalistic mentality. Too bad the collective CBC viewership can’t file a class-action complaint with the ombudsman…no jurisdiction.

    A Charter lawsuit, or serial of same, might just make them rethink, if that is indeed possible, their lazy journalistic standards and Berlin Wall sized lack of true accountability.

    This is much bigger than Evan or Amanda’s departure. Blaming it on summer staff just gives them a highly convenient out. With the public broadcaster, what we saw is what they give. Hopefully, Mother Corp’s daddy ain’t comatose. Send him before a Commons committee just to reflect on his standards of appropriate accountability.

  10. Dan Calda says:

    I love the CBC.
    But they really..really fucked up big time.
    Giving this twunt air time is ridiculous.

    Hopefully they felt the kick in the nuts from Canada…

  11. Jon A says:

    I also wonder what your take is on him coming on a Saskatchewan radio talk show (hosted by a former MP who should know better) and going essentially unchallenged.

  12. Gyor says:

    I agree with you about Steve Ladurantaye and cultural appropriation. Not only could you not have fiction, but you also can’t have multiculturalism without cultural appropriation, because multiculturalism requires cultural exchanges to keep people from being isolated.

  13. billg says:

    Hard nosed journalism right there.
    The CBC doesn’t care what you think. The CBC doesn’t care if you even tune in.
    The CBC doesn’t care, period.
    Give CTV a billion a year of taxpayers money and it would turn into the same thing.
    What could Bob Fife uncover if he had the CBC’s financial resources?
    The CBC should interview white supremacists, but, it should be by investigative journalists who will ask uncomfortable questions.
    The CBC, with an unbelievable amount of free money given to them every year should be at the head of every news story in Canada regardless of which government is in power.
    My dislike for the CBC isn’t its biased reporting, its that it doesn’t do its job well enough to deserve what it siphon’s from the taxpayers every single year.

  14. Pat T. says:

    The difference: McInnes / Vice are generating large amounts of money, so he / they are insulated; there is more infotainment value in throwing Ladurantaye to the wolves.

    Consider Vice Media’s Edition Worldwide, content provider for Philip Morris tobacco products. Vice’s Shane Smith smokes in videos, recycling the infamous Torches of Freedom campaign.

    Likewise, McInnes ventures are designed to weaken public morals e.g. “His fascination with the unutterable culminated in McInnes’s 2005 stag, where friends surprised him with a faux KKK rally complete with hoods, a flaming wooden cross and his best friend, Derrick Beckles, who is black, officiating with a wedge of watermelon in his hands.” (MacLeans’s, 2012).

    Enter Ezra Levant, once-lobbyist for Rothman’s tobacco products. Levant creates Rebel Media, featuring McInnes, creator of Vice, leveraging his hipster brand to advance Levant’s “libertarian” ideology.

    McInnes = Torches of Freedom for the so-called Alt-Right i.e. high status, “cool” people used to make hitherto unacceptable or taboo behaviours acceptable to increase market share. The rot runs deep e.g. the Ontario’s Teacher’s Pension Plan has invested in the tobacco industry. So, Vice, McInnes, nihilistic hipsters, Proud Boys, faux KKK events, Nazi memorability, and all the rest are the logical conclusion, the expected norm in a society disproportionally dedicated to venal boomers, profiteers, trust fund kids, et al.

    Incidentally, Aboriginals are not pristine in this regard: roughly 30-40% of tobacco consumed in Canada are black market smokes from First Nations reserves.

  15. Bill H. says:

    Seems like a libel case would cool his jets:

    Gavin McInnes‏
    Verified account
     @Gavin_McInnes 4h
    4 hours ago

    His father funded terrorists and so does he. What do they think he’s going to do with the money?

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