The attention-hungry continue to falsely martyr themselves
There's no martyr like a self-made martyr. Over the last year, Canadians have seen far more self-made martyrs than anyone really needs.
Now Margie Gillis, Franke James and Brigette DePape have some strange company among them: Fog of War author Mark Bourrie.
According to Bourrie, he'd been scheduled to appear on Michael Coren's show on the Sun News Network. Later on, that interview was cancelled.
Quickly following the cancellation of his interview, Bourrie wrote a blog post for Ottawa magazine claiming he had been banned.
"Well, that’s it. I’m banned," Bourrie claimed. "I am lower than low, mere scrapings from the bottom of the dog walker’s boot. Yes, I’m not fit to be on the Sun News Network."
"My publicist booked me on Michael Coren’s show a couple of weeks ago. Last Wednesday, I got an e-mail saying the interview had been cancelled by Sun TV," Bourrie continued. "It wasn’t Coren or Coren’s producer who made the decision. Someone higher up had killed the booking and banned me from Sun TV."
The evidence Bourrie offers? Precisely none.
This author hasn't yet had access to Bourrie's book to give it a fair consideration of its merits. So your not-so-humble scribe won't automatically lump Mr Bourrie with mediocre self-made-martyrs like DePape, James or Gillis.
But Bourrie's martyrdom seems no less self-made.
Simply put, one interview cancellation does not a ban make. Bourrie's planned interview on Sun News could have been cancelled for any number of good reasons. Here's a very good one, and a very plausible one: perhaps the topic of episode on which Bourrie was scheduled to appear was changed.
This author doesn't know this to be the case. Nor does this author have any evidence to support it. However, under the evidence already offered -- Bourrie's complaint that his interview was cancelled -- this explanation is no more and no less plausible than Bourrie's.
The obvious difference is that Bourrie's explanation simultaneously lionizes himself while portraying himself as a victim. Bourrie's explanation unfortunately precludes any other possibility that doesn't require Sun News to be the bad guy of the story.
If Mark Bourrie wants to know what a real media ban looks like, this author has a story for him. Unfortunately for Bourrie, it doesn't make him out to be the martyr he seemingly wants to be so desperately, so he may not be interested.
Showing posts with label Sun TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sun TV. Show all posts
Monday, November 07, 2011
Thursday, September 08, 2011
The Sheer Comedy of Margie Gillis
"Iconic" interpretive dancer wants news network taken off the air
In the wake of the fevered response to Krista Erickson's June interview with "iconic" interpretive dancer Margie Gillis, an interesting subtext has emerged.
Canada's arts community -- despite enjoying millions of dollars in federal subsidies on an annual basis -- have convinced themselves that they are an oppressed group. And, like all self-imagined oppressed groups, they are now eager to re-invent themselves as the oppressor.
In a recent interview, Gillis -- who self-organized a boycott of Sun News Network's advertisers that has very clearly failed comically -- has suggested another "solution" to the Sun News Network "problem". She wants it taken off the air.
This is actually a more extreme position than her previous position, in which she and her cronies merely suggested that Sun News Network be ordered removed from basic
cable packages. Now she's calling for it to be removed entirely.
"I think the station should be taken off until they can prove that they represent Canadian values," Gillis declared in an interview with the Vancouver Observer.
Naturally, one would expect that Gillis would describe "Canadian values" within a very narrow set of far-left values. And it shouldn't be considered even remotely surprising that Gillis and her cronies would want to silence anyone who disagrees with them.
Amidst a plethora of Orwellian messages to her followers telling them to "be compassionate" and "stay human", Gillis has held her bruised ego up as a rallying point for all the emotionally-unbalanced artsy types who are enraged that she wasn't treated with what they consider the proper deference.
In order to keep that rage alive, Gillis is still pretending she's some sort of victim.
“It was just an attack,” Gillis said. “She just didn't care what I was saying … I've never done an interview where they don't come back on to say thank you very much. I sat there in this little room. Nobody came in, nobody came out and I sat there for about 10 minutes just going: wow, that was an attack.”
Then again, perhaps Sun News Network staff had already had their fill of Gillis by the 8:50 mark of the interview, when Gillis very obnoxiously began to speak over Erickson, reciting self-scripted remarks even as Erickson asks her to stop talking over her.
Gillis and her cronies continue to pretend that Erickson "constantly" spoke over her. Erickson had indeed spoken over Erickson in the interview -- to self-correct an error she had made. Comically, Gillis objected to Erickson correcting herself.
Ever since, GIllis has been using the interview, in which both interviewer and interviewee did their fair share of the dirty work in turning the entire affair awry, as a lightning rod for every Canadian artist who feels they're being oppressed if they can't live as well as a doctor or lawyer off of their work.
Now Margie Gillis wants to take up the role of oppressor for herself. It would be frightening if it weren't merely comical.
In the wake of the fevered response to Krista Erickson's June interview with "iconic" interpretive dancer Margie Gillis, an interesting subtext has emerged.
Canada's arts community -- despite enjoying millions of dollars in federal subsidies on an annual basis -- have convinced themselves that they are an oppressed group. And, like all self-imagined oppressed groups, they are now eager to re-invent themselves as the oppressor.
In a recent interview, Gillis -- who self-organized a boycott of Sun News Network's advertisers that has very clearly failed comically -- has suggested another "solution" to the Sun News Network "problem". She wants it taken off the air.
This is actually a more extreme position than her previous position, in which she and her cronies merely suggested that Sun News Network be ordered removed from basic
cable packages. Now she's calling for it to be removed entirely.
"I think the station should be taken off until they can prove that they represent Canadian values," Gillis declared in an interview with the Vancouver Observer.
Naturally, one would expect that Gillis would describe "Canadian values" within a very narrow set of far-left values. And it shouldn't be considered even remotely surprising that Gillis and her cronies would want to silence anyone who disagrees with them.
Amidst a plethora of Orwellian messages to her followers telling them to "be compassionate" and "stay human", Gillis has held her bruised ego up as a rallying point for all the emotionally-unbalanced artsy types who are enraged that she wasn't treated with what they consider the proper deference.
In order to keep that rage alive, Gillis is still pretending she's some sort of victim.
“It was just an attack,” Gillis said. “She just didn't care what I was saying … I've never done an interview where they don't come back on to say thank you very much. I sat there in this little room. Nobody came in, nobody came out and I sat there for about 10 minutes just going: wow, that was an attack.”
Then again, perhaps Sun News Network staff had already had their fill of Gillis by the 8:50 mark of the interview, when Gillis very obnoxiously began to speak over Erickson, reciting self-scripted remarks even as Erickson asks her to stop talking over her.
Gillis and her cronies continue to pretend that Erickson "constantly" spoke over her. Erickson had indeed spoken over Erickson in the interview -- to self-correct an error she had made. Comically, Gillis objected to Erickson correcting herself.
Ever since, GIllis has been using the interview, in which both interviewer and interviewee did their fair share of the dirty work in turning the entire affair awry, as a lightning rod for every Canadian artist who feels they're being oppressed if they can't live as well as a doctor or lawyer off of their work.
Now Margie Gillis wants to take up the role of oppressor for herself. It would be frightening if it weren't merely comical.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
More From the Relentlessly-Whiny Canadian Left
When the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council waved a red flag in the face of thousands of rabidly-censorious Canadian left-wingers, Charlie Smith of the Georgia Strait interpreted it as a red flag in the face of a raging bull.
And he's the bull. In so many ways.
Smith, of course, is among thos outraged that Sun News Network personality Krista Erickson asked "iconic" interpretive dancer Margie Gillis some challenging questions about her funding.
Smith is outraged that the CBSC has called for a halt to the complaints. Gillis' self-organized campaign to complain to the council has amassed so many that it can't process them all. So he recommends that, instead, the implacably-censorious left go directly to the CRTC.
In going to the CRTC, Gillis' cronies would be scrambling for an even bigger fly swatter than the CBSC; one that cannot be ingored.
And the CSBC very much can be ignored.
As Ezra Levant and Brian Lilley recently alluded to, it was the CBSC that, based on a single complainant, attempted to direct all radio stations in Canada to air an edited version of "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits.
Radio stations decided to ignore the ruling. The CRTC directed the CBSC to revisit their deicision, and they backed down.
The CRTC, however, cannot be ignored. If they decided to give in to the demands being made by Charlie Smith and the rest of the mice following Margie Gillis in her pied paper act, they could pull the Sun News Networks' broadcast license.
There should be no doubt that those expressing contrived, sanctimonious and generally false outrage at Gillis being asked some tough questions are prepared to accept nothing less than that. They're already demanding it.
And he's the bull. In so many ways.
Smith, of course, is among thos outraged that Sun News Network personality Krista Erickson asked "iconic" interpretive dancer Margie Gillis some challenging questions about her funding.
Smith is outraged that the CBSC has called for a halt to the complaints. Gillis' self-organized campaign to complain to the council has amassed so many that it can't process them all. So he recommends that, instead, the implacably-censorious left go directly to the CRTC.
In going to the CRTC, Gillis' cronies would be scrambling for an even bigger fly swatter than the CBSC; one that cannot be ingored.
And the CSBC very much can be ignored.
As Ezra Levant and Brian Lilley recently alluded to, it was the CBSC that, based on a single complainant, attempted to direct all radio stations in Canada to air an edited version of "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits.
Radio stations decided to ignore the ruling. The CRTC directed the CBSC to revisit their deicision, and they backed down.
The CRTC, however, cannot be ignored. If they decided to give in to the demands being made by Charlie Smith and the rest of the mice following Margie Gillis in her pied paper act, they could pull the Sun News Networks' broadcast license.
There should be no doubt that those expressing contrived, sanctimonious and generally false outrage at Gillis being asked some tough questions are prepared to accept nothing less than that. They're already demanding it.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
The Relentlessly-Whiny Canadian Left
4,100 Gillis-organized crybabies wirte the CBSC
If one were to judge from the volume of complaints received by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, one would think Krista Erickson's interview on the Sun News Network with Margie Gillis is a geat and terrible thing.
News outlets like the Globe and Mail and distinctly not-news outlets like The Mark and the Toronto Star have repoted that the CBSC has received more than twice the number of complaints about that one specific interview than it normally receives in an entire year.
However, they're declining to report a single salient detail:
The complaints are the result of a campaign organized by Gillis herself.
In a previous Facebook note, Gillis expressed sadness at the malicious hate messages being posted on Erickson's own Facebook page. That much is to her credit. But in the very same post, she recommended that her followers write to the government to complain not about Erickson's conduct, but rather about her views.
"Filing a letter with the CRTC , with copy to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages and to the Prime Minister, stating that the unilateral view depicted in that interview is not what we want for ourselves or how we wish to be known in the world would be a far more fruitful action and it wouldn’t replicate the hatred we want to denounce," Gillis writes.
That's almost as comical as concluding her campaign call with a direction to "be brave, be clear, be compassionate."
Uh... what? What does compassion have to do with Margie Gillis' outrage at being asked some challenging questions on the Sun News Network? Or being confronted with her bizarrely-sanctimonious attitude toward Canadian society (the same Canadian society that supported her interpretive dance endeavours to the tune of $1.2 million over 13 years).
Speaking of sanctimony.
In a comical turn of events, the Star's resident hate addict, Heather Mallick wrote a column about the complaints, wherein she depicted Erickson as "venomous".
Mallick even seemed to echo Gillis' bizarre insistance that 1998-2011 is a 35-year period.
"Viewers are up in arms about the bullying the much-loved Gillis took from the angry, wired Erickson for having received a total of $1.2 million in government cultural grants over the decades," Mallick writes. Huh? 13 years "over the decades"? It seems that Mallick shares Gillis' extremely bizarre sense of time.
She acknowledged the Facebook campaign, but failed to attribute it to Gillis.
Quelle suprise!
One would almost think Mallick forgot that it was herself, not Erickson, who once penned a column in which she declared that then-Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin dresses like a porn star. That column blissfully ended her career at the CBC, even if the Star has breathed undeserved life into it. But the most salient detail seems to be that Mallick is so unashamed of her own venmous performance that she maintains it on her personal website.
No rational person needed the reminder, but that's how contemptible a person Heather Mallick is.
This author would love to see her go on the Sun News Network to defend her condemnation of Erickson in light of her own conduct. Unfortuately, Mallick is far too much of a coward to do anything like that.
For the CBSC, there should really be only one response to the complaints, spurred by Gillis' own wounded pride: severe disintrest in the complaints, and immediate dismissal.
After all, one could likely safely guarantee that if one were to examine the complaints submitted to the CBSC and compare it to the petition that Avaaz so feverishly organized in order to prevent the Sun News Network from ever coming to air, one would likely find each one of those 4,100 complainees had signed the petition.
Because that's what this is about: it's about the relentlessly-whiny, impacably-censorious left trying to run the Sun News Network off the air.
If the CBSC doesn't treat this comical complaints with the seriousness they deserve -- which is none -- the Sun News Network should summarily respond to them with a middle finger. Perhaps even an exploding one.
Shake it off, ignore the crybabies, and just let them wail. No one's listening to them anyway.
If one were to judge from the volume of complaints received by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, one would think Krista Erickson's interview on the Sun News Network with Margie Gillis is a geat and terrible thing.
News outlets like the Globe and Mail and distinctly not-news outlets like The Mark and the Toronto Star have repoted that the CBSC has received more than twice the number of complaints about that one specific interview than it normally receives in an entire year.
However, they're declining to report a single salient detail:
The complaints are the result of a campaign organized by Gillis herself.
In a previous Facebook note, Gillis expressed sadness at the malicious hate messages being posted on Erickson's own Facebook page. That much is to her credit. But in the very same post, she recommended that her followers write to the government to complain not about Erickson's conduct, but rather about her views.
"Filing a letter with the CRTC , with copy to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages and to the Prime Minister, stating that the unilateral view depicted in that interview is not what we want for ourselves or how we wish to be known in the world would be a far more fruitful action and it wouldn’t replicate the hatred we want to denounce," Gillis writes.
That's almost as comical as concluding her campaign call with a direction to "be brave, be clear, be compassionate."
Uh... what? What does compassion have to do with Margie Gillis' outrage at being asked some challenging questions on the Sun News Network? Or being confronted with her bizarrely-sanctimonious attitude toward Canadian society (the same Canadian society that supported her interpretive dance endeavours to the tune of $1.2 million over 13 years).
Speaking of sanctimony.
In a comical turn of events, the Star's resident hate addict, Heather Mallick wrote a column about the complaints, wherein she depicted Erickson as "venomous".
Mallick even seemed to echo Gillis' bizarre insistance that 1998-2011 is a 35-year period.
"Viewers are up in arms about the bullying the much-loved Gillis took from the angry, wired Erickson for having received a total of $1.2 million in government cultural grants over the decades," Mallick writes. Huh? 13 years "over the decades"? It seems that Mallick shares Gillis' extremely bizarre sense of time.
She acknowledged the Facebook campaign, but failed to attribute it to Gillis.
Quelle suprise!
One would almost think Mallick forgot that it was herself, not Erickson, who once penned a column in which she declared that then-Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin dresses like a porn star. That column blissfully ended her career at the CBC, even if the Star has breathed undeserved life into it. But the most salient detail seems to be that Mallick is so unashamed of her own venmous performance that she maintains it on her personal website.
No rational person needed the reminder, but that's how contemptible a person Heather Mallick is.
This author would love to see her go on the Sun News Network to defend her condemnation of Erickson in light of her own conduct. Unfortuately, Mallick is far too much of a coward to do anything like that.
For the CBSC, there should really be only one response to the complaints, spurred by Gillis' own wounded pride: severe disintrest in the complaints, and immediate dismissal.
After all, one could likely safely guarantee that if one were to examine the complaints submitted to the CBSC and compare it to the petition that Avaaz so feverishly organized in order to prevent the Sun News Network from ever coming to air, one would likely find each one of those 4,100 complainees had signed the petition.
Because that's what this is about: it's about the relentlessly-whiny, impacably-censorious left trying to run the Sun News Network off the air.
If the CBSC doesn't treat this comical complaints with the seriousness they deserve -- which is none -- the Sun News Network should summarily respond to them with a middle finger. Perhaps even an exploding one.
Shake it off, ignore the crybabies, and just let them wail. No one's listening to them anyway.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Thursday, June 09, 2011
The Far-Left's Bizarre Love of Mediocrity Strikes Again
Margie Gillis bumbles through interview, hailed as a hero for it
As the Brigette DePape episode has shown Canadians, there's nothing the far-left truly loves more than mediocrity, so long as it's ideologically-soothing mediocrity.
Little else could explain the far-left's sudden love of interpretive danger Margie Gillis, who recently was the quieter -- yet no more polite -- participant in a dust-up over arts grant with Krista Erickson on Sun TV.
Erickson outlined $1.2 million in grants Gillis had received from the Canada Arts Council over 13 years. Gillis accused Erickson of belittling the arts community. The Globe and Mail's John Doyle firmly took Gillis' side:
Gillis may draw some sympathy from the far-left because of her soft-spoken demeanor, but that also requires them to overlook her own behaviour during the interview. She did her best to be slippery, refusing to answer Erickson's questions. Despite $1.2 million in grants over 13 years being outlined on the show, Gillis tried to insist that money was spread out over 39 years... despite the fact that the grants were listed year-by-year from 1998 onward. (There may well have been more grants, but they were not the ones Gillis was being asked about.)
Over and over again, Gillis declared that she had "sacrificed her life" to interpretive dance. Aside from this remark being a little bit creepty, it doesnt' strike a rational person as much of a sacrifice: Gillis "sacrificed" her life to be funded to the tune of millions of dollars in order to do what, presumably, she loves to do.
In fact, since 1998 Gillis has been funded by the federal government, through the Canada Arts Council, to the tune of nearly $100,000 a year. According to her remarks, she also uses that money to fund the salarty of at least one other individual.
But even $50,000 to travel the world spiraling her arms is a pretty sweet gig.
In reality, Margie Gillis hasn't made any discernable sacrifice. She isn't hard put upon.
Nor does her spiralling arms actually do anything toward the goal of world peace. A Canadian fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan does; Gillis does not.
If anyone expected that Gillis' experience yestearday would provoke even the slightest bit of self-exploration to determine whether her behaviour on Sun TV contributed to the argument or not, don't expect it. Gillis has posted a message on her Facebook page asking her followers to write the CRTC and complain about the "unilateral views" expressed on Sun TV.
(She did, to her credit, instruct her followers to stop posting hate messages on Erickson's Facebook page. However, readers of the Nexus are by now familiar with the hateful behaviour of the far-left. They probably won't listen to her.)
It's nothing new to Canada's far-left, who demand merit for every mediocre remark to tumble out of the mouth of their adopted icons. Fortunately for the rest of Canadians -- who are becoming increasingly conservative -- it works out to our advantage.
As the Brigette DePape episode has shown Canadians, there's nothing the far-left truly loves more than mediocrity, so long as it's ideologically-soothing mediocrity.
Little else could explain the far-left's sudden love of interpretive danger Margie Gillis, who recently was the quieter -- yet no more polite -- participant in a dust-up over arts grant with Krista Erickson on Sun TV.
Erickson outlined $1.2 million in grants Gillis had received from the Canada Arts Council over 13 years. Gillis accused Erickson of belittling the arts community. The Globe and Mail's John Doyle firmly took Gillis' side:
"Recently, the channel’s Krista Erickson accosted dancer Margie Gillis on air about arts funding and tried to beat her up, verbally. This was comedy of the raw sort. Erickson explained that Gillis is a very famous, award-winning dancer and choreographer. Gillis, who talks in a very soft voice, thanked her for the nice introduction and things proceeded. Erickson, aided by an onscreen crawl, pointed out that Gillis and her dance foundation have, over the past 13 years, received grants totalling $1.2-million. That’s $1.2-million spread over 13 years. She demanded to know why Gillis was costing taxpayers $1.2-million.As anyone who actually watches the interview would quickly realize, this actually bears very little resemblence to the interview itself.
Gillis explained that all the money didn’t go into her pocket. It kept a lot of people going. Erickson then went wacky. She waved her arms around in a lame attempt to mimic dance movement. Not a wizard at the arm ballet is Krista, believe me. She looked like the Martin Short character Ed Grimley getting excited. 'This whole thing,' she barked, while frantically waved her arms, 'Why does it cost $1.2-million over 13 years?' Then she shouted at Gillis to try to drown out the response. "
Gillis may draw some sympathy from the far-left because of her soft-spoken demeanor, but that also requires them to overlook her own behaviour during the interview. She did her best to be slippery, refusing to answer Erickson's questions. Despite $1.2 million in grants over 13 years being outlined on the show, Gillis tried to insist that money was spread out over 39 years... despite the fact that the grants were listed year-by-year from 1998 onward. (There may well have been more grants, but they were not the ones Gillis was being asked about.)
Over and over again, Gillis declared that she had "sacrificed her life" to interpretive dance. Aside from this remark being a little bit creepty, it doesnt' strike a rational person as much of a sacrifice: Gillis "sacrificed" her life to be funded to the tune of millions of dollars in order to do what, presumably, she loves to do.
In fact, since 1998 Gillis has been funded by the federal government, through the Canada Arts Council, to the tune of nearly $100,000 a year. According to her remarks, she also uses that money to fund the salarty of at least one other individual.
But even $50,000 to travel the world spiraling her arms is a pretty sweet gig.
In reality, Margie Gillis hasn't made any discernable sacrifice. She isn't hard put upon.
Nor does her spiralling arms actually do anything toward the goal of world peace. A Canadian fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan does; Gillis does not.
If anyone expected that Gillis' experience yestearday would provoke even the slightest bit of self-exploration to determine whether her behaviour on Sun TV contributed to the argument or not, don't expect it. Gillis has posted a message on her Facebook page asking her followers to write the CRTC and complain about the "unilateral views" expressed on Sun TV.
(She did, to her credit, instruct her followers to stop posting hate messages on Erickson's Facebook page. However, readers of the Nexus are by now familiar with the hateful behaviour of the far-left. They probably won't listen to her.)
It's nothing new to Canada's far-left, who demand merit for every mediocre remark to tumble out of the mouth of their adopted icons. Fortunately for the rest of Canadians -- who are becoming increasingly conservative -- it works out to our advantage.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Two Years Later, Heather Mallick Still Playing the Victim
Mallick seeks to re-write the history of her career
Apparently, Heather Mallick's relocation in employment from the CBC to the Toronto Star has had the precise effect so many Canadians expected it would.
It emboldened Mallick, to the extent that she actually thinks she can re-write the history of her career.
For the most part, Mallick regurgitates half-considered complaints about Fox News. Her basic argument is that Sun TV will be bad because Fox News is bad. (No, really -- that's the extent of the argument to date.)
Some of her complaints are so hashed-over that they're actually rather comical:
Other than that, the substance of Mallick's argument is that Fox is bad because she says it is. More or less.
Of course, that isn't all Mallick has to say about Fox News. She apparently thinks that this is an opportunity to re-write the history of her career, when she broke a Mighty Wind, and wound up sharting all over her journalistic reputation:
Perhaps Mallick actually feels vindicated to have been swept out of the CBC's dunce corner -- where the CBC promptly parked her after doing the responsible thing and removing her column from the website (although Mallick still maintains the source of her shame on her own site) -- and into the loving arms of the Toronto Star.
But like so many columnists at the Toronto Star, she isn't there because she produces quality work. Quite the contrary. Mallick is at the Star because she produces rhetoric that is ideologically soothing to the far left. Those like Mallick who are filled with an irrational, seething, and soul-consuming hatred of anyone who doesn't share their views, find her vitriolic invective especially soothing.
And no matter how many cues life sends her, Mallick never seems to figure out what her problem is:
As for Mallick's gloomy thoughts, one can only imagine precisely hateful those thoughts must have been.
The rest of Mallick's column basically consists of the vapid, razor-thin rhetoric she specializes in. For the most part, the entire column consists of her substance-free ravings.
The only thing worth noting in her column is her complete inability to ever admit having done anything wrong. Heather Mallick is the classical lunatic far-leftist who would never dream of taking responsibility for her actions.
That she would seek to portray herself as a victim two years after her hateful Mighty Wind hit piece is purely indicative of that.
Apparently, Heather Mallick's relocation in employment from the CBC to the Toronto Star has had the precise effect so many Canadians expected it would.
It emboldened Mallick, to the extent that she actually thinks she can re-write the history of her career.
For the most part, Mallick regurgitates half-considered complaints about Fox News. Her basic argument is that Sun TV will be bad because Fox News is bad. (No, really -- that's the extent of the argument to date.)
Some of her complaints are so hashed-over that they're actually rather comical:
"Fox celebrates ignorance and fosters hate, it’s your weasel heart, that chunk of you that spurts endorphins when a hated rival crashes his car on Ambien or is caught with a gerbil where a gerbil shouldn’t be. It’s a poison tree. Weirdly transfixing as Glenn Beck is, when you eat the Fox apple, it eats away at you.Mallick also complains about a previous run-in with Bill O'Reilly during his famed attempt at a boycott of Canada.
And it’s a news cartoon. When real journalists make a mistake, we feel a sickness in our soul. It’s humiliating, it should, and will be, publicly corrected and so-workers avert their eyes. Fox isn’t like that. They seemingly make up numbers, flying unburdened through their fenced-in no-fact zone."
Other than that, the substance of Mallick's argument is that Fox is bad because she says it is. More or less.
Of course, that isn't all Mallick has to say about Fox News. She apparently thinks that this is an opportunity to re-write the history of her career, when she broke a Mighty Wind, and wound up sharting all over her journalistic reputation:
"When Sarah Palin appeared at the Republican convention in 2008, I wrote about her honestly, an online CBC.ca column that would have disappeared into the ether as usual, except Fox News found out about it. I said Palin was a dangerous idiot. It made me the target of the worst Americans and Canadians, men with a violent hatred of (see list above). The attack was organized, as all Internet attacks are. And online anonymous hate is like a poison gas.Of course, Mallick didn't merely say that Palin is a "dangerous idiot". She also wrote:
It was the same as my previous experience with Fox, but hotter and filthier. I’m happy to be called a pig by Greta Van Susteren, whatever. But this time people, really were hunting not just me, but friends, which made me frantic with guilt and fear. They were trying to find out where I lived. I’m only writing this now because I’m in a building with security guards."
"...Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are..."The sad thing is that this is quite literally the most substantive comment in Mallick's hate-filled rant. The rest of it is basically filler. Terse, brutal, hateful, unreadable filler.
"...She isn't even female really."
"John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I'd had the wit to come up with it first. It's safer than 'white trash' but I'll pluck safety out of the nettle danger. Or something."
"Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look ..."
"Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the 'pramface.' Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting."
"The conventioneers are nothing like the rich men who run the party, and that's the mystery of the hick vote."
"Republicans dream of a personal future that involves only household staff, not equals who need to be persuaded to vote."
Perhaps Mallick actually feels vindicated to have been swept out of the CBC's dunce corner -- where the CBC promptly parked her after doing the responsible thing and removing her column from the website (although Mallick still maintains the source of her shame on her own site) -- and into the loving arms of the Toronto Star.
But like so many columnists at the Toronto Star, she isn't there because she produces quality work. Quite the contrary. Mallick is at the Star because she produces rhetoric that is ideologically soothing to the far left. Those like Mallick who are filled with an irrational, seething, and soul-consuming hatred of anyone who doesn't share their views, find her vitriolic invective especially soothing.
And no matter how many cues life sends her, Mallick never seems to figure out what her problem is:
"Being the target of Internet swarming is paranoia-producing and lonely-making. I got no sympathy from girlfriends—they eat for comfort like normal people—for my subsequent weight loss. I spent the winter not eating and thinking gloomy thoughts."Apparently it's never occured to Mallick that she never received any sympathy from her friends because they examined what she wrote and found it to be genuinely repulsive. God knows that every single sane individual who wrote it -- including Dr Jeffrey Kargel of the Obama campaign -- recognized precisely this.
As for Mallick's gloomy thoughts, one can only imagine precisely hateful those thoughts must have been.
The rest of Mallick's column basically consists of the vapid, razor-thin rhetoric she specializes in. For the most part, the entire column consists of her substance-free ravings.
The only thing worth noting in her column is her complete inability to ever admit having done anything wrong. Heather Mallick is the classical lunatic far-leftist who would never dream of taking responsibility for her actions.
That she would seek to portray herself as a victim two years after her hateful Mighty Wind hit piece is purely indicative of that.
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