January 6, 2003
Paul Martin — Person of the Year
The Canadian edition of Time Magazine chose Paul Martin as person of the year. Time’s person does not necessarily mean the best person; rather it is the person or persons who most influenced the events of the past 12 months.
Unlike years ago when Hitler and Stalin received the designation, political correctness has taken over. Last year Time chose former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani as its person of the year. Although Giuliani was a significant factor in the events of 2001, his choice oozed of political correctness. Giuliani was reacting to the events of September 11 that were put into place by Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden truly altered the world and ushered in a new era with the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre and was clearly the person who most affected the course of world events, not only for 2001, but for a considerable period of time to come.
Much like Rudy Giuliani, Paul Martin was a safe choice. Stephen Handelman, who wrote the accompanying article about the former finance minister went to great lengths to justify the magazine’s choice. Had Martin truly been a "person of the year," the reasons could have been recited in a couple of sentences. Handelman really began to stretch things when he wrote: "Martin’s position in Canadian politics was unprecedented. From the back benches, he inspired a rebellion at the party’s annual parliamentary caucus meeting in Saguenay Que., last August that led to the bombshell of Chrétien's retirement announcement." A rebellion? Hardly in the same league as the revolt of the 13 colonies. A bunch of back benchers pretended they were in a real democratic country like England and voted the way they wanted to. As far as Chrétien's retirement announcement was concerned, it was hardly a bombshell. His retirement had been expected and were it not for Paul Martin, he would have waited another year and announced he was leaving in six months instead of 18 months.
If Paul Martin deserves credit for anything, it is for his work as Finance Minister. Since the Chrétien Liberals came into office, 2002 was the only full year in which Martin did not hold the top finance job for the entire year. And Pierre Trudeau was the last Liberal leader that was chosen for a reason other than "It’s his turn". It’s hardly surprising that Paul Martin will be the next leader. And as for Handelman’s comments that Martin is the de facto opposition leader, that speaks more about the opposition and the country than it does about Paul Martin.
The frightening thing is that, except for the littlest guy from Shawinigan himself, who else could have possibly been named "Person of the Year" in Canada?
CBC -- It’s still America’s fault
In a year-end review shown on CBC Newsworld, when it came time to talk about the United States, the program zeroed in on the anniversary of September 11. The network chose to speak about the memorial service that was held in Shanksville Pennsylvania where Flight 93 went down. After spending a perfunctory amount of time paying tribute to those who died, the CBC (the Chrétien Bootlicking Corporation) went right to Jean Chrétien's comments about September 11 being the fault of Western greed and arrogance. The network did, of course, make the obligatory comment that the attacks were not justified and then threw in that a lot of Canadians agree with the Prime Minister.
Perhaps the most revealing comment was one made by the reporter who described a little girl who spoke about her sister who died on Flight 93. Her sister had taught her to love people and animals. According to the reporterette, that statement showed that those who died on September 11 were "real people".
Real people--outside of the CBC, most of us already knew that.