At the moment I have CBC radio on - a show featuring Brent Bambury called GO - and they're playing tape of people phoning in about "What's Great About Alberta."
There is banjo music playing in the background.
Dear Canadians from central Canada*: this is what we mean by CBC bigotry towards the west. It's pervasive and insidious and it's a major contributor to what you know as "western alienation" and what we are starting to think of as "time to get the hell out".
Imagine if Foxnews were to play sound effects from a West African whorehouse as background for "man on the street interviews" in downtown Toronto. I bet you'd like that, eh?
(*With the notable exception of my enlightened Ontario readers, of course.)
Nothing wrong with banjos, ('Deliverance', etc.)
But Do check out the west African whorehouses in Toronto- I hear they are very good, ( and they get government funding).
Well Kate I work a block and a half from the CBC building in toronto....and I can attest to the fact that the air around it is rarefied and different. It creates a sense of super well being and that you know all and are at the peak of your powers and all lay prostate at your feet.
It is quite the little bubble. Lots of things of value go in but little of value emerges.
I eat lunch with a number of them in the area, they are easy to spot. The employees work in a Potemkin village.
Now given that they care deeply about this stuff, offending people etc, I would write to the CRTC and to the CBC ombudsman, I think they will actually fall all over themselves apologizing. You describe something all Albertans should take offense to. Brent couldnt work anywher but the CBC anyway.....
LOL & well done, Kate. But my mind boggles trying to visualize (auditorialize???) the suggested sound effects for downtown Toronto.
Hey there missy jest what might be that whorehouse's address .Gonna be in Trawna this week comin after charch.I was out in Saskabush in 1980 playin golf the greens might be sandy but the folks there were damn fine !
Well, Candace, you'll probably hear it as often in downtown Toronto as you'll hear banjo music in the west.
It reminds me of a different "skit" a few years ago on CBC radio, in which the characters suggested Red Deer as head office for the Reform-Alliance party.
Again, what kind of assininity does it require to work at CBC, where simple mentions of place names are synonymous with ridicule and dismissiveness?
Thanks for the asterisk. I love the west.
Banjo music in Alberta! Sheesh, don't they know that the banjo is only played in Saskatchewan?
(Just kidding, honest! Don't shoot!)
Enlightened Ontarian.
And Kate, this is from the Party that holds national unity so near and dear to its heart. Could it be that our federation is a marriage not-so-gay?
The noises really should be from a Romanian whorehouse, and you ought to hear a zither in the background.But, I see your point ;-)
Maybe I should have written that as "gun fire from West African street gangs"...
Banjos!! Don't those greenhorns know that'll stampede the buffalo?!
kate
jesus h. christ! this non-issue is worth blogging space?!?! hell, i hear the same shit from my red-neck alberta cousins when the subject of saskatchewan comes up. and YOU are whimpering about the same nonsense being dished out by a cbc non-entity? i'm not sure which sort of whinging i find more disgusting; the hand wringing simpering of the left or the self-righteous outrage of the right. people afflicted with either condition need to get a life.
Angus, I'm just curious. Are you paying for Kate's bandwidth?
Angus, I pay for the CBC. That makes it my business, and I'm sick of their use of cultural perjoratives when it comes to the west, to rural lifestyles and conservativism in general.
Scott Brison exemplified it on the election night in 2004 when he spat out the word "rednecks" - it's an attempt to dehumanize those who disagree with his politics, quite a different use of the term from those who toss it around in jest with each other or in self-deprecation.
Noted Italian journalist and former communist, Oriana Fallaci once pointed out that terms like "right-wing" and redneck are used to delegitimize and dehanize an opposing viewpoint. That is no small observation.
Watch for the use of those words by leftist politicians and media pundits - they are not mere adjectives.
Me shall not lay my prostate at their feet, Stephen.
NealeNews:
MP John Reynolds says "Liberals are whores".
Q: What is a Liberal?
"Canada & "Hate Speech" Codes:
--- the propensity of liberals to use law to outlaw the words of their opponents.
http://www.newsisyphus.blogspot.com
Apropos, in view of the above, methinks.
And while we are exchanging insults, there are a group of marginalized, demonized, overtaxed, individuals in this country that only the Western Standard EVER defends - who might that be? - why all those disgusting, selfish, stinking smokers. If demonization knows no bounds in this country it is reserved for anyone who smokes. 'Put that in your pipe and smoke it' makes little kids scream with laughter because it is worse than swearing.
Jema54
Hey, if it makes those collectivist toads feel superior. I say let'm. When we take over we'll tax their stench of self-rightousness. (sarcasm off)
And now... the continuing story of Olivia and Jack...
... a heartbreaking saga from The Beaches (TO's trendiest leftist enclave) ... on the morrow, Jack has to take the subway to meet Payola...
Olivia wants to go along...now the argument begins....
Script by Co-Op Housing of Canada. TM Reg'd.
Bribery by: Union Local # $4.6 Billion, CAW.
A few years ago, The People's Radio Network (TPRN)had a Friday PM show featuring David Wilkie and sometimes Cindy Church (maybe it only aired in AB, I dunno). At that time both resided in the Turner Valley area, and perhaps still do (Tyson's Ranch - same area).
So in TPRN corridors of logic, banjo would equal western music, although Wilkie prefers mandolin.
"Listen to David Wilkie�s album Cowboy Ceilidh and what do you hear? No pedal steel, not a yodel or a Nashville twang.
Instead, a lilting fiddle tune, airy mandolin, tin whistle and harp are kept true to the beat by a bodhran (Irish skin drum). Lyrical and haunting, these tunes are lighthearted, dancy and many of them are familiar � High Noon, Buffalo Gals, Streets of Laredo. Is this cowboy music? Folk music? Country?"
http://www.cowboyceltic.com/articles.reviews.htm
"The gravel road runs from Ian Tyson�s ranch house in the foothills of the Rockies south of Calgary. It�s about a mile away from the stone cottage that he uses as a writing retreat, and the daily walk � in good weather and bad � is a time for thinking, for watching the sky and the birds and the deer, and for writing songs."
http://www.iantyson.com/pages/biography.asp
NealeNews:
MP John Reynolds says "Liberals are whores".
I personally think they are the Johns buying services.
kate
i agree the cbc is painfully liberal, toronto centric and watched by.....generally no one. but apparently YOU watch it. hmmm. must be for the same reason i enjoy reading conservative bloggers. good points nonetheless. i especially like this one:
"Noted Italian journalist and former communist, Oriana Fallaci once pointed out that terms like "right-wing" and redneck are used to delegitimize and dehanize an opposing viewpoint. That is no small observation."
i agree totally. i often see comments like "looney left", "left wing", "moon bat" in the comments section on this blog, and worse in articles and rants against liberals on many different conservative blogs, in obivious attempts to de-humanize and delegitimize liberal and left wing commentary and viewpoints. all by conservative commentators and bloggers. are you telling me that you will not only refrain from such actions but sensor your colleagues in the conservative blogosphere for doing so? good to hear. i look forward to two things:
1) reading your apology for morphing the head of our prime minister onto baghdad bob's body, thereby implying he is the equal of saddam's henchman, (delegitimization on a grand scale, not unlike some idiots calling the american president 'bushitler')
and
2)reading your denunciation of anne coulter in the near future for equating liberalism with treason and advocating the bombing of the nyt building.
or does dumb shit like this only count if its done on the tax payers dime?
If she apologizes for putting Martin's head over that of, I thought it was Hussein's ministers, not that it matters, does she also have to apologize for putting in a link to a conservative blog that pasted Harper's head over Godzilla's (or was it King Kong, and does it really matter?) Where's your sense of humor?
Take a powder, or cut back on the caffiene, Angus. If you're surfing conservative sites for the hell of it vs. your viewpoint is conservative, you can't really expect to love everything you see, can you?
You chose to come visit; you can choose to not come back. Whatever. Kate's paying for it, she can post whatever she wants. You & I can choose to visit & read & comment... or not.
I'm not a politician. I'm not a public broadcaster. But as a Canadian, I'm obliged to live in the Land Of The Politically Correct - as defined by the left. Therein lies the distinction, you see.
I don't have a problem with the Robert McLellands and Warren Kinsellas - individual citizens - using whatever terminology they wish when they spew their hypocrisy towards the right. Any more than I have a problem with political cartoonists who mock up Jean Chretien as Jeancula. That's individual speech.
The CBC recieves public dollars, yet they in no way represent the diversity of culture in this country - they represent the faux diversity of leftism and are openly contemptuous of the west and dismissive of rural culture.
The Human Rights Commissions and the politicians who would deliberate over terminology like "Kemosabe" and fine Churches for the outrage of placing bible verses in local newspapers have no problem with words like "redneck". And they use it not in jest, but in deprecation. They have nothing against cultural bigotry, so long as it's bigotry towards the right.
As far as watching the CBC - no, I don't. In fact, despite a billion a year in tax payer funding, CBC TV cannot produce a television signal that reaches 30 miles outside Saskatoon. I actually cannot pick it up on my antennae, so CTV it is. (I don't watch enough TV to pay for cable).
About once a month, I flip to CBC radio. It seldom stays on for more than an hour, because frankly, it's the Monotone Network Of Leftism and I find infomercials less irritating as background noise.
None of which would matter, if the Welfare Case we know as the People's Network had to pay their own way in the world.
The idea of the CBC, since the advent of cable and satelites, has become an anachronism. It only serves one purpose now, to launder taxpayers money into a sophmoric-leftist-green propaganda machine aimed at justifying it's own existence (sounds like the Liberal Party). With the NHL on strike, the only thing it was decent at is gone.
Can we count on the Conservatives to sell it off or at least de-fund it or will they wimp-out and continue to bleed and beat us with it?
I agree john
If the CBC can't fund itself then it should be gone. We have enough other canadian tv stations. The CBC has lost its purpose. We don't need it and certainly don't need to pour my tax dollars into it.
I think Cindy Church was more recently in Toronto, singing jazz.
Rod