On Oct. 21, the brisk morning air met an assemblage of the media innovation vanguard as its members made their way into the CBC/Radio-Canada's Annual Public Meeting (APM) in Vancouver. The plan was unspoken, but the wry smiles exchanged amongst us were more than enough to acknowledge our purpose. After all, while insidious, our goal was quite simple; infiltrate the CBC and make it more community based, participatory, and awesome.

My guess is it's pretty easy to arrange lunch with the Prime Minister. No doubt Stephen Harper often lunches with labour leaders and advocates for the homeless.

So it should be considered no big deal that, among those the PM has lunched with, is U.S. media billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who has probably done more than any single individual in recent years to push American politics sharply to the right.

It's interesting to imagine, however, why our Prime Minister would want to meet with Murdoch, whose Fox News TV channel has poisoned U.S. political debate and nurtured America's extremist right-wing Tea Party movement.

Point 1 about David Frum, who was set adrift this spring by much of the U.S. right, for mildly criticizing them: He acknowledges he has changed. As he told The Globe's John Ibbitson, "On some of the issues, I have different answers than I would have had a decade ago." That's impressive in someone who is primarily an ideologue, and has been his entire adult life.