Oh goodie. A new year is about to begin. As I sit here on my Northern perch contemplating the world around me, like all of you I wonder what this New Year, the ninth of our millennium, will inflict upon us. Well, here are a few ideas.
First let us talk a bit about the North American media. On both sides of our erstwhile undefended border, I sense the general population has begun to discard their blinders in favor of devices that will give them 20/20 vision when it comes to assessing the relative value of the pap most news outlets foist upon us under the guise of news.
I say that given the fact advertisers are fleeing from their pages in droves, their circulation numbers are tumbling, and for sale signs are popping up on mastheads all over the country.
This past year the cheerleading coverage of the election of Barack Hussein Obama was noted with dismay and incredulity by even the most hardened of media critics. Obama is indeed the media’s man. And his wife Michelle, well they are busy trying to make her likable. Whether they will succeed or not, remains to be seen. My feeling is she will be become her husband’s detractors greatest ally.
So this coming year, you folks down in the U.S. can expect your media to fill their pages and the airwaves with everything favorable to their hero. That is even though he has done nothing to earn the People’s Red Star Hero Medal as yet. As well, every girly magazine in the States will have covers and inside pages extolling Michelle’s beauty, fashion sense, bright mind, love for the down and out and, of course, puppies.
They will also continue to attempt to impose her image over that of Jacqueline Kennedy and compare them as virtual twins. I just hope you folks have the stomach to stand it all.
Meanwhile, the media will continue to stand by their commitment to everything green. Green cars, green gasoline, green industry and more green in their wallets. This should match nicely with the green faces throwing up in green toilets at hearing the mere mention of the word.
In this country we get a mixture of stories at the national level of things like Everyday Heroes, and snowstorms, and the terrible state of the planet, how bad the economy is thanks to the Conservative Party. Well, you get the drift.
On the political front, up here in staid old Canada, the media ended the year trying to convince Canadians that a planned coup in our nation’s capitol of Ottawa by three defeated parties would be good for us.
Now I warn you, the following is going to be hard to believe for Americans. So as you read this, you might want to send your children far away from the computer.
In Canada we are blessed with having several political parties in our parliament. In any event, after an October general election in Canada, the Conservatives had enough seats to form a government – again. Well, the opposition parties made up of Liberals, New Democrats (read socialists) and a part from Quebec fondly known at the Bloc. Short for Bloc Quebecois. I won’t ask you to pronounce it.
These three latter parties, got together to form a coalition. In reality they can legally do that and form a government because together they have more seats and the ruling Conservatives. Follow me so far?
The problem these people have is that the Bloc Quebecois is committed to tearing this country apart by having Quebec leave. Now, while the three amigos were alright with that, what the media tried to hide is the fact that the separatists would hold the balance of power within that cozy arrangement.
Still, there are a few people left in this country who can count, and who understand how our parliamentary system works, or doesn’t I suppose and raised one heck of a fuss. Now the three amigos tried to discount this outburst of opposition by claiming the Conservatives put the rest of the country up to launching the e-mail and telephone campaign. The problem was, many of the opponents belong to the Liberal Party or the NDP. They soon abandoned that tactic. Now I never said Canada is blessed with the smartest politicians in the world. I think stupidity is one of the requisites for getting into that club.
In January the three amigos will have a chance to unseat the government and try to take over. I can see already that our media friends are poised to spin all this as good for us. I’m not sure how it will be good for us, but they haven’t been telling us the downside.
Now on to more serious matters. I have waited a few days to see how coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would play itself out in the media.
First off, most media support the Palestinians. These guys have really Public Relations stuff happening. You see, many people have been convinced that Israel has no right to defend itself. The reason for that is, they are well armed and supported mostly by the United States. So here we have the Hamas terrorists, who took over Gaza by force, raining rockets down on Israel everyday during a supposed cease fire.
But to the Islamic despots around them in the Middle East, this doesn’t count. After all, they are supposed to kill Israelis. It gets them in good with their god and their Imams. Meanwhile the brainwashed anti-Semites in the West whimper that the terrorist rocket campaign is the fault of the Israelis, I wonder if these people have to go to special camps to learn this stuff.
What they ignore is the fact that days and weeks before, the Israelis warned the Hamas terrorists they would be attacked if they didn’t stop bombing Israel. Well, as we all know, they didn’t stop so they were attacked.
Here’s a tip on media coverage. On the first day of the attacks it was reported that Hamas fighters were killed. Now that’s not acceptable coverage. They forgot the pregnant women and little children. So the next day, they reported 60 or so women and children killed. What you will see, and have seen, is coverage focused on civilian deaths, whether real or conjured up by the Palestinian PR machine. Of course our media will lap it up.
So for the New Years we will get more of this, more blabber about the economy and how bad it is, while the newsreaders show up on their lavish sets in their designer clothes and tell us we all going to have to live in caves and walk to our non-existent jobs just like the eco-evangelists want us to.
And finally. One of my favorite CFP columnists is Alan Caruba. He has a great column today carrying the headline,
People I don’t want to hear about in 2009. Well Alan, I am going to take your idea and apply it to Canada.
Here we go. I do not want to hear about: Elizabeth May from the Green Party, anybody from the Sierra Club, Greenpeace or PETA. David Suzuki. Dalton McGuinty. Stéphane Dion, Jean Chrétien, Gilles Duceppe, anybody from the CBC National, Jack Layton, Jack Layton and Jack Layton.
