by arthur Weinreb
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
a rally was held last Friday at Yonge-Dundas Square in downtown Toronto to show support for our troops in afghanistan. The rally was attended by about 3,500 people who formed a sea of red to show support for the men and women who are serving in the Canadian military. The names of the 37 soldiers who gave up their lives in afghanistan since 2002 were read out and the speakers included the father of a slain soldier and Canadian icon, singer Gordon Lightfoot.
The Toronto rally was the brainchild of Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington who first raised the idea of holding a rally in his column the Saturday before. and Joe knows journalism. Organize a pro-troops rally and then write about it afterwards and in socialist Toronto you end up with an exclusive.
It was an exclusive in the sense that although the rally was supported by a couple of radio stations (aM640 and CFRB) and a couple of TV stations reported little blurbs of it, there was a total lack of interest in Toronto's print media. a search of both Lexis Nexis and Google News shows that the Toronto Sun was the only Toronto print media to give the rally any coverage.
In defense of the mainstream media, they cannot be expected to cover everything and the war in afghanistan and the sacrifices that are being made by our troops are not nearly as important to the country as the burning issue of whether Tie and Belinda were getting it on. Of course if a rally would have been organized by John Clarke and his merry band of Ontario Coalition against Poverty misfits to protest the fact that street kids were not guaranteed their own luxury condominium units, the media would have been out in full force.
The total lack of interest by much of the mainstream media should dispel this Laytonian notion that you can be against the war in afghanistan but still support the troops. The elites do not support the troops which is why Toronto's print media gave the rally the same attention that they give to pro-life demonstrations, something else that they clearly do not support. If only they had the guts to actually come out and say that they don't support the troops, they could at least justify their lack of interest in those people who showed up at Yonge- Dundas Square last Friday.
The lack of media interest illustrates a real disconnect between the elite mainstream media and the 3,500 people that showed up to support the troops in socialist Toronto during the middle of a work day. Had the rally been held on weekend and had more than six days notice given, the crowd undoubtedly would have been larger. That some media could go on for pages and pages about Tie and Belinda being "Beauty and the Beast" while completely ignoring a rally to support our troops in afghanistan was telling.
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