Peter Mansbridge: goodbye and good riddance
CBC News is supposed to reflect the interests of the whole public it serves. Instead, over time, it became a vehicle for the parochial interests and biases of its omnipotent anchorman-for-life.
First and perhaps foremost, Mansbridge shaped CBC TV News into a broadcast outlet for his mostly white, well-manicured, right-wing or self-described libertarian mates in suits and ties. Commentators were plucked from the incestuous world of pundits, pollsters, consultants and academics who inhabit the Toronto/Ottawa axis....
In any event, the corollary to Mansbridge’s fetish for giving a forum on public TV to the usual reactionary suspects was the disappearance from The National of anyone even remotely to the left of Preston Manning.
Chantal Hebért, a Pablum-spouting centrist, hardly represents a dissenting “voice” from the “left.” She, and the other rotating cast of three amigos who populate the ubiquitous At Issue panel, are all culled from the same sliver of the smug, consensus-loving tribe that Mansbridge is so desperately fond of.
[url=https://ricochet.media/en/1390/mansbridge-goodbye-and-good-riddance]Mans... goodbye and good riddance[/url]
I wonder who the next elite ass kisser in chief will be?
Edited to add: CBC TV news had a "formula" of sorts. One night Mansbridge does an ass kissing interview of some member of the elite and then the next night, the actual journalists would tear apart Mansbridge's ass kissing from the night before. It was almost like the journos were in damage control mode.
For me Mansbridge will always be defined by his interviews with the 3 leaders during the last Federal election. He fawned over Harper and Trudeau with soft questions. but his hostility to Tom Mulcair was palpable, culminating with " why does (wing nut) Bruce Hyer think you're a tyrant?" Of course he didn't say "wing nut."
Come on people don't you know the CBC is unbiased. Anyone who says anything different is obviously a conspiracy theorist. Radiorahim your post talking about elites clearly says you believe in the Illuminati conspiracy theory.
I wonder who the next elite ass kisser in chief will be?
Edited to add: CBC TV news had a "formula" of sorts. One night Mansbridge does an ass kissing interview of some member of the elite and then the next night, the actual journalists would tear apart Mansbridge's ass kissing from the night before. It was almost like the journos were in damage control mode.
Not to let Mansbridge off the hook, but I did wonder how much of that was Harper putting conditions on the interview.
Though I just went back and checked. Like Evan Solomon, Mansbridge never went to J-school. He started as host of a music program. Not that I think that is an absolute impediment if one is actually good at the job, but he was not.
And yeah, I agree about the real ones going to work on the puff pieces. It is a good strategy, actually.
IMHO, the most virulently and pathological Russophobe will be chosen to replace the white guy in the chair. I'm thinking a gender change but not a change in substance. Whoever can can compare your average Russian, or the President natch, with insects, useless appendages, diseases, animals in dark corners, etc. will win the prize.
Because freedom. So keep your eyes open for off-the-wall incendiary positioning. Just as all sorts of gung-ho warmongers in the USA have been shouting from the rooftops to bomb, bomb, bomb Syria, as a way to make a job application for the expected Hilary junta, so too I would expect journos in "the peaceable kingdom" to bark what they think will get them the job.
You know. Because freedom. But I don't watch that shit channel and haven't in quite some time. There is still good radio, and some dramas, but the news is garbage.
Whoever can can compare your average Russian, or the President natch, with insects, useless appendages, diseases, animals in dark corners, etc. will win the prize.
You seem to be johnny on the spot when it comes to keeping that narrative front and centre. And you have a real knack for staying on point.
Maybe you should send in an application.
That is ludicrous. Your average bigoted "Canadian" (I'm speaking first of anglo ones) hate Indigenous people, "French" people (Québécois, Acadians, Franco-Ontarians like the very consenusal Chantal Hébert and actual French people), real or supposed "Muslims", a bit of neighbourly cpmtempt for Black people, and various other "Third World" peoples. Very little hatred for Russians, Ukranians or other Northern Slavs.
I could go into the prejudices of people here, and they are real, but none involve northern Slavic people.
I have heard far more serious prejudice against Balkan people, and of course Roma.
Haven't you heard of the "starlight express" lagatta? That's where they take Russians and drop them off in a rural area outside Saskatoon, forcing them to walk back and risking death from exposure. Or the Murdered and Missing Russian women? Or the many Russians carded by the Toronto police, or the victims of racism by the Montreal police? I'm sure those were all Russians, weren't they?
With a bit less sarcasm:
Mansbridge and the CBC have sifled diversity, It's a great shame. Maybe the CBC can look more like Canada, while still staying loyal to the dominant Canadian agenda? You know, like the Trudeau cabinet?
I'm pleased to say I actually have a serious point to add.
I heard a radio piece on CBC some years back (tried to find it, but unfortunatley couldn't) from a local researcher who found that Ukrainain immigrants at the turn of the last century had exactly the same stereotypical racial slurs levelled at them, and the same deep social mistrust that is directed at Native people now - lies about laziness, untrustworthiness, violence, drunkenness - virtually the same as the lies we now see.
Even before the war and the internment camps, this was the case. One of the points the researcher was making is that that old racism has receeded to the point that people now barely even remember it, and people of Eastern European culture are practically in the majority in some parts of the prairies. The implied hope, of course, was that if deep racism like that can end, perhaps there is hope that racism against Indigenous people can as well.
So yeah, there are some cold war prejudices, and of course some great concern over the war that is happening over there. It would be a bit easier to deal with, I think without all the noise from the troll house.
Whoever can can compare your average Russian, or the President natch, with insects, useless appendages, diseases, animals in dark corners, etc. will win the prize.You seem to be johnny on the spot when it comes to keeping that narrative front and centre. And you have a real knack for staying on point.
Maybe you should send in an application.
lol. Documenting Russophobia isn't the same as providing new examples of it. Nah.
My prediction is Susan Ormiston. Ormiston went on a "Mission to Moscow" and really "showed them Russkies". The new CBC host will have to show that she really knows how to "take orders".
Let's see what we see.
Cold war 1946 to 1989. Ukrainan internment 1914 to 1920.
Yup I can see how they are related.
I didn't say there was a direct link (though certainly both are cases of xenophobia).
lagatta said that there was very little prejudice against eastern europeans.
I said that while that is the case nowadays it was not so 100 years ago, even before the war. There was great concern about non-anglo immigration, and great prejudice.
I mention cold war prejudices because they do exist, even if they are nothing like what was directed at eastern Europeans in the early 1900s, and nothing like those crying "Russophobia" pretend they are.
That is ludicrous. Your average bigoted "Canadian" (I'm speaking first of anglo ones) hate Indigenous people, "French" people (Québécois, Acadians, Franco-Ontarians like the very consenusal Chantal Hébert and actual French people), real or supposed "Muslims", a bit of neighbourly cpmtempt for Black people, and various other "Third World" peoples. Very little hatred for Russians, Ukranians or other Northern Slavs.
I agree with your main point that neither people of Russian or Ukrainian descent face major problems with bigotry at least in the five different provinces I have lived in. In fact when I lived in Saskatoon Ukrainians were one of the dominant cultures.
However I think you should give your head a shake before you lump all of Canada together. The average BC bigot hates First Nations people, people of South Asian and Chinese descent and blacks. There are so few French people in BC they aren't even on the radar.
Unionist had a very good idea that people from other parts of Quebec should maybe not comment too much on Quebec culture because they are not part of it. Posters from Quebec might try the same. My experience of the Maritimes tells me that even in their homeland Acadians especially the youth who speak Chiac face the most bigotry from Quebec tourists not Anglo's. My Acadian cousins who were born and raised in Montreal and whose mother tongue is French told me they experienced a lot of bigotry from some Quebecois when they were growing up in the '50's and '60's. A good friend from law school told me about her experiences with bigots as a First Nations person growing up around Quebec City and it echoed the stories from other parts of Canada.
Sadly one thing I think all Canadian bigots share in common is a hate on for First Nations people.
So, none of you heroic enemies of bigotry are willing to stick your neck out and make a prediction for the replacement of the white guy in the chair? Fine. Whatever. You realize that I'm going to be even MORE annoying if I'm right in my somewhat random pick, right? lol.
Who here actually watches this a-hole anyway? OK, let me re-phrase that. Who actually watches the CBC (TV) News - in particular, for foreign coverage? I mean, I'm willing to admit that I will READ a headline, scan a story, etc., from their website. But actually listen to their MSM bile?
No way. I mean, practically speaking, important stories, especially complex ones, are covered in such a biased way that I really need a good shower to wash the neo-liberal scum off my flesh before I can scan a variety of sources with the idea of getting at the truth. And watching the Mother Corp just ... slows that process down.
Plus, I don't get that time back.
I have no idea who will replace him. I'm more interested in whether the CBC can correct the systemic biases that took place under his watch.
I am partly Ukrainian and have felt no prejudice arising from that with the exception of a few school yard taunts decades ago. But prior generations of my family did suffer from anti-ukrainian prejudice. I remember my uncle telling me that he endured the taunt: "works like donkey. Looks like
monkey. Must be hunkey."
Maybe someone will CBC will wake up and take a hint from the direction the BBC is going.
There was A LOT of serious prejudice against Ukranians and other Northeastern Europeans in decades past. But I don't think it is nearly as virulent as it used to be (this, not just an uninformed comment, but based on input from social scientists I know of those ethnicities).
kropotkin, I'll just ignore your weirdness about Québec. I've heard far worse, through the decades.