Monday, June 26, 2006

CBC Rider : A Shadowy Flight Into A Dangerous Mind Whose World Does Not Exist

Larry Zolf has obviously had too much sun of late, or else he has been drinking or smoking something he shouldn't. He's bounced from 'we, the press can unelect Harper' to 'well, maybe we can't', to this week's completely unhinged rant on CBC's Viewpoint.

The piece is barely coherent; one pictures Zolf foaming at the mouth and gesticulating wildly as he spouts delusion after delusion.

He begins with a list of things that Stephen Harper supposedly believes. No fewer than 18 different beliefs. There is nothing at all to back up any of the assertions. No quote, no fact, not even any hearsay. No, Zolf says this is what Stephen Harper believes, so it must be.

Personal favorites:
  • Harper believes that the state is inherently evil and cannot be trusted with anything.
  • He was violently opposed to day-care centres because he saw them as bastions of socialism.
  • Oil-rich Alberta has the right to be untouched by federal regulations on climate change.
  • His enormous respect for the military [shows] how little use he has for traditional Canadian liberal values

This last point is of particular interest, because it reveals (unwittingly, I presume) some true Liberal (and liberal) thinking. Apparently, traditional Canadian values don't involve respecting the military at all. Zolf is entitled to his opinion, of course, but I really think it's a shame when a supposed dean of journalists at Canada's state broadcaster holds the Canadian forces in such open contempt.

There's some other, more predictable lies in Zolf's piece too:

'Harper claims he's only an economic conservative, not a social conservative. But here is the rub. Harper won't give the state a brake in economic matters, but on social matters like same-sex marriage and abortion, he is ready, willing and able to interfere.'

This notwithstanding that (a) nothing will happen on abortion under a Harper government (although how Zolf and his ilk wish it would), and (b) all that is proposed on same-sex marriage is what should have happened in the first place: a free vote in parliament. Of course, if PMSH really wanted to get rid of same-sex marriage, there would be no free vote, but a party whip.

I think we can be fairly sure that Zolf does know that he is an outright liar - even 40 years with the CBC can't have completely eroded his ability to distinguish truth from fiction. So it's interesting to read his conclusions: that Ontario and middle-class Canada is already so alienated from the Conservative government that the Liberals will walk back into power the second they have a new leader. This is not lies, but wishful thinking. A world that no longer exists.

Poor Larry Zolf - he's a tired old hack whose time has come and gone, and whose dream of Stalinist utopia has fallen out of his reach. However, at least his pursuit of it lasted long enough to take him from the slums of Winnipeg to 40 years of comfort living off the taxpayer, and a retirement on a fat CBC pension to boot. All this, of course, paid for by those middle classes he despises. Heck, some of them might even be military. He might not respect you boys and girls in Afghanistan, but he'll take your money, thanks very much.

The CBC is a completely objective and unbiased media organization; salmon live in trees and eat pencils and bananas are marsupials.