by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
august 6, 2004
Canadian taxpayers fund the national broadcaster to the tune of $800 million a year. In case you are wondering whether or not you are getting your money’s worth, here is what the CBC broadcast last Sunday.
In what was described by CBC: News Sunday’s Evan Solomon as a "special edition" of the program, the network showed a documentary entitled, "Buried alive--a spiritual quest". If by special edition Solomon meant that it had absolutely nothing to do with news, then he was absolutely right.
Filmed in 2002, Buried alive showed a group of people who decided to spend the night, well, buried alive. The purpose of the exercise was we were told to "reconnect with Mother Earth". It was to allow the people to contemplate not only their lives but their deaths. Some actually came away from the experience knowing that they were going to die some time.
The people who chose to spend a weekend digging their own graves and spending a night in the bosom of Mother Earth were quite a collection. There was George, the sporting goods salesman, Maria the retired teacher, Steph, the teacher, Kate the mutual funds employee and a few others. The fact that the group seemed to be heavy with teachers and retired teachers should be a cause for concern. all that was missing from this group to give the program more realism was the professor and Mary ann.
Kate, the mutual funds employee had to be the best. The young woman chose to be "buried alive" because it was necessary to be able to reassess what’s important in life. according to her people (a reference to herself no doubt) spend too much time working at jobs that they don’t enjoy and she wanted to go back to the earth to help relinquish material goods. It would have been so much easier for her to dial 911 and have the cops arrest the person who is holding a gun to her head and making her work in mutual funds.
Following two days of fasting, the group was taken to an area in Southern Ontario where they were required to dig their own graves that they had no trouble distinguishing from ordinary holes in the ground, which of course they were. While a drum was being beaten two people screamed at the individuals that they were now dead. They then got into their graves that were then covered by sticks, a tarp and then dirt.
It is hard to believe that anyone other than the CBC elites and their fellow travellers could think that this program was worth what the hard working taxpayers of Canada shelled out to produce it.
The CBC obviously thinks that this new age mumbo jumbo is one of those Canadian values that the network constantly says is their mandate to broadcast.
Sadly the program was sadly out of touch for those hard working, taxpaying, "normal" Canadians.