Friday Funny: Nixon, Nixon, Nixon!
When Richard Nixon lost the race for governor of California in 1962 (having previously lost the presidency to some rich guy with a funny accent), hetold the press, “You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” As on so many other occasions, Nixon was wrong. Thanks to YouTube, it is still very much possible to […]
Doug Ford and Ezra Levant: when do you stop listening?
The student press was briefly consumed by controversy last week when the Canadian University Press (CUP)—whom we wrote about this year—announced that Ezra Levant would be a keynote speaker at its national conference. The Link at Concordia was less than pleased about this, citing Levant’s propensity for getting sued and generally being awful. CUP mounted […]
Benghazi and the case for an ombudsman
Image via USA Today. At the end of last night’s 60 Minutes, Lara Logan kind of apologized for an earlier report on the Benghazi attack that has been shot through like Swiss cheese. As Craig Silverman and Jay Rosen have pointed out, Logan’s 85-second segment did not sufficiently address the many problems with the original […]
Falling revenues and falling axes: layoffs at Rogers Media
For the bean counters in Canadian media, it just keeps getting worse. Rogers Media—a division which includes the corporation’s radio stations, TV channels, magazines and baseball team—announced yesterday that it has laid off 94 employees, or about two percent of its workforce. The announcement comes just six months after Rogers laid off 62 workers. Consumers […]
Gawker had the story first. So what?
Edison did it first, but Westinghouse did it better—just as Gawker did it first, but the Toronto Star did it better. After reading this email exchange between Gawker features editor, Tom Scocca, and Star publisher, John Cruickshank, about the Rob Ford crack video, you have to think that being compared to the most prolific inventor […]
The Fords vs. the truth: an unfair fight
Never has an unfair fight gone on for so long. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and his brother, councillor Doug Ford, want you to believe that they are the victims; that they are trying to fight for “the little guy” in the face of fierce opposition from the left, the unions and—of course—the media. Doug Ford […]
Rob Ford’s poll numbers and the convenient narrative
Nearly as shocking as Toronto police chief Bill Blair’s press conference last week were the results of a poll which suggested that Mayor Rob Ford’s approval ratings had gone…up? Yes—from 39 percent to 44 percent, according to a poll conducted by Forum Research a few hours after Blair’s press conference. This counterintuitive bump has been […]
‘It’s real, and Ford is in it’: did the Star spike the football?
“We do not have a vendetta against Mayor Ford,” Toronto Star editor-in-chief Michael Cooke told the Ontario Press Council in September. “We simply don’t.” Does Cooke’s boss know that? On page two of Friday’s Star, publisher John Cruickshank high-stepped into the end zone, taking shots at the mayor, his brother and the “Ford acolytes” who […]
Don’t let words get in the way of commentary
“Pedroia…makes the play…throw home, two out, over to third, it gets away, Allen Craaaiiiig…is gonna come to the plate, here’s the throooowwww, he IS-” Well, what is he? In the brief and excruciating interval between Allen Craig reaching home base at the end of game three of the World Series and the obstruction call becoming […]
Controlling the answers—and the questions
In the acid trip that is Yellow Submarine, The Beatles stumble upon Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD—the “nowhere man.” One of the first things Jeremy says is, “Ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo! So little time, so much to know!” Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a well-known Beatles fan, must have been watching this at […]
