More on “calling a spade a spade”

By William Corden

When I first arrived in Canada way back in 1974, I quickly homed in on CBC radio, PBS and NPR.

Of the three, CBC radio was by far the best , PBS had some really good stuff (mostly imported from the UK) but even then it was obsessed with allotting more than a fair share of broadcasting time to black issues.

NPR was (and still is) full of looney tunes with all sorts of axes to grind.

Slowly but surely CBC degraded into a minority rights buffet and you couldn’t turn it on without landing yourself in the middle of a gay rights, refugee or  feminist program hosted by advocates hand picked from those special interest groups.

It’s become  “unlistenable” (if that’s a word. )

It was bearable for quite a while, when top notch, intellectual hosts like Peter Gzowski held sway.  Their news programming, such as  “As it Happens” was streets ahead of any American show and morning news shows were a nicely balanced play out of contrasting views

Sadly, once Gzowski was gone and the new politbureau moved in, the wheels fell off and it’s been all downhill since the mid 80s

Even though they had some of the funniest radio comedy shows (Danny Finkelman’s Saturday morning show was consistently brilliant satire), I couldn’t stand listening to the filler ideological crap they were starting to peddle.

I stopped listening for many many years but I gave them another  chance about 6 months ago, only to tune into a show about the angst of being a transgender….. GMAFB!

Pity because they had a fabulous comedy show called “This is That”  and it was hilarious. Once that was done I stopped listening to the station completely.

It would be a mistake to say that PBS had the same steep downward curve but it did start to show more and more leftist bias and it became a chore to watch the political stuff so’s you could watch the quality entertainment. It’s still the only open channel that has top quality concerts, documentaries and travel shows, but it is wildly left these days.

As for NPR ? Well I’ve tuned in a couple of times but I’ve been unable to listen to a full length program no matter what the subject. I don’t know where they get there hosts from but they could even make slapstick other- worldly serious.

So now we are left with you tube or the streaming entities who have  such a crop spraying  effect on dissemination of news and entertainment that ANY thin skinned listener can take offence to ANY word or action.

There’s no editorial filter systems on these types of  broadcast, or reactions to them, so hate and intolerance have as much access as as sober minded comment.

Lately I’ve been watching more than I should, of you tube videos about gas station customers or corner store customers in ghetto type environments (usually from the States and  they can portray the culture of rudeness very well.) Boy-oh-boy are there plenty of examples of people who cash in on the racist card.

If we are realistic about the ways of the world , there is no solution to the problem.

The only thing we can do is manage it and each generation of leaders, be they left or right, has no more success than the previous bunch, they inevitably make it worse.