I’ve always viewed Canada as a liberal dystopia full of blissed-out Stepford Wives-style looney-tunes floating around in a haze of self-approving moral superiority, being super-nice and sharing towards everyone who thinks like them or who they can patronise as a "victim", while executing smokers and hate criminals and anyone who doesn’t believe in Climate Change. After all, Michael Moore routinely uses this socialist paradise as a stick with which to browbeat fascist America.But, if the Sun News Network is anything to go by, this supposed Home of the Bland contains its share of red-in-tooth-and-claw rightists who despise political correctness, the race industry, the human rights racket, militant anti-Christians, multiculturalism and… well, everything I hate, actually.
Who’d have thought?
This cable network, which launched last year, rejects any comparisons with Fox News – but I’m not sure why. Feels pretty darned Foxy to me. (You can visit their website here.)
UK broadcasters have to adhere to “due impartiality” rules, which would make it impossible to launch a British equivalent of Fox News or the Sun News Network– i.e. decidedly partial news channels presenting issues from a largely right-wing perspective (with one or two lefties invited on for ritual humiliation - think Question Time in reverse). What makes our rules absolutely nonsensical, of course, is that both Sky News and the BBC News Channel (as well as most of the rest of the corporation’s output) are unrelentingly left-wing. The nakedness of the bias is breath-taking. I assume the reason they’re never called to account is that successive Conservative governments haven’t had the guts to launch an attack (and, in any case, the Tory Party is currently controlled by left-liberals), and that Ofcom – like every other quango – is mainly staffed by left-wingers.
Funnily enough, Mark Thompson – the BBC’s outgoing DG – surprised everyone back in 2010 by criticising the UK’s impartiality rules as hopelessly outdated, going to so far as to state that he saw no problem with someone launching a Fox News-style right-wing UK current affairs channel. (You can read the article here.)
Yes, please!
The only criticism of itself the Conservative Party hears on TV is invariably from the Left. I’m convinced that’s partly why liberals like Francis Maude and David Cameron have been able to turn it into a centre-left party – they’ve somehow convinced everyone that the BBC speaks for the whole country. A genuinely conservative/libertarian/right-wing channel voicing criticism from the Right would act as a rallying point for traditional Thatcherite Conservative voters, association members, councillors and MPs, and that would make it a lot harder for Lord Snooty and his pals to sneeringly dismiss their myriad critics within the party they’ve so successfully hijacked.
Canada. A Liberal Dystopia.?
ReplyDeleteIn a recent episode of "Homeland" somebody said that you will not find refuge even in "all-forgiving Scandinavia".
Why is it that countries that are quiet, conservative, mind their own bloody business and don't intervene are always regarded as a bit "wet"?
In WWI Canada lost 65,000 combatants. They came in at the beginning; their southern neighbours declared war in 1917. In WWII they lost another 45,000 military dead and, again, came in right at the beginning in 1940 [vs Dec 1941]. This from a tiny population base [ditto Australia and NZ and to an extent, SA]. They have never been given their due. I suspect it is because they don't play cricket or rugby enthusiastically. If want aggression, watch a Montreal-Toronto ice hockey game.
Lay off the Canadians. Damned good people.
I am still smouldering about the opening paragraph of this post. There is a certain type of modern Retreat -from - Empire Briton who, never having lived abroad, passes trite judgements on other nations [Jeremy Clarkson on the Mexicans is exempted]. Your days of meddling disastrously in other people's affairs are over so naff off. Canada gave you Glenn Ford, Leslie Nielsen, Jim Carrey and Mike Myers. Also, women with French-Canadian accents are incredibly sexy [Genevieve Bujold, Christiane Amanpour and Don Draper's wife, pour exemple].
ReplyDelete"Vive Quebec Libre!" as that old Froggy Anglophobe nutter used to declaim.
Zut allors, Trudeau – take a Canadian chill pill or something!
ReplyDeleteThere’s a difference between one’s feelings for a country and its people (the Canadians are amongst the best of the good guys, along with the others you cite) and disliking its prevailing political culture. For obvious reasons, I love Norway – but I find the nicey-nicey, socialistic, “aren’t the Palestinians lovely” egalitarianism wearing: ditto Canada, which spent several years being controlled by the political equivalent of Moonies. The Conservatives are back in power after a long absence, and fiscally, they’ve got it dead right (they didn’t need to bail out their banks, for instance), but, like our lot, they’re leaving most of the annoying liberal cultural stuff in place (the country’s a bit of a bolt-hole for Islamists, and packed with nanny-statists and human rights fanatics). And Canadian politicians and left-wing commentators have generally been irritatingly smug about how much more compassionate they are than their noisy neighbours.
But… they’re a brave, independent people, with whom the Brits have a lot more in common than they do with most of their European neighbours. I’m well aware of Canada’s glorious C20 war record - and it’s where my father, having lived there for many years, started his RAF training during the last war. And they’ve produced many great actors and writers and their contribution to popular music is disproportionately large (I keep meaning to blog about that).
Nonetheless, when I visited it 30 or so years ago, having travelled around the States for two months, it did seem milder, calmer and, well, blander in comparison (Toronto, at least – I found Montreal very cosmopolitan and atmospheric). But, to be honest, its comparative quietness came as a relief. I have no problem whatsoever with quiet, conservative places – and if someone told me I’d have to live in Canada for the rest of my life, I’d be fine with that (if they’d have me).