This afternoon on the CBC Newsworld (channel 390 on my dial, with other CBC channels taking many of the rest of them), the so-called “news” anchor Sarika Sehgal (think of a George Stroumboulopoulos but of an alternate gender choice) interviewed perpetually state-employed CBC show host and leftist agitator Avi Lewis.For reference, Avi Lewis is the son of the image former you’ve got to be kidding party’s Stephen Lewis, who sounds very much like a communist to me. Stephen Lewis is the son of Federal NDP Leader David Lewis, who similarly sounds very much like a communist to me. Stephen Lewis is married to Michele Landsberg, a feminist activist and former writer for the leftist Toronto Star, which is perhaps the most left-wing mainstream newspaper in North America, and the liberals’ Globe and Mail. She sounds very much like a communist to me. Not to be outdone, young Avi Lewis is married to far-left-wing feminist activist and Bush-hater Naomi Klein, daughter of an American draft dodger; and her brother is a director of the far left-wing Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (the “alternative” they speak of being global socialism and an end to capitalism as we know it, which sounds very much like communism to me). Naomi Klein was also a Toronto Star writer. She sounds very much like a communist to me.
That's just the warm up.
Naomi used to be regularly featured in the Globe and Mail, another communist propaganda outlet.
Id like to see Avi hanging by those ridiculous earrings.
I think CBCpravda feels their mandate of balance is having Rex Murphy on the sensible side balancing against the plethora of deviate socialists with unspellable and unpronounceable non-anglo names on the nonsensable side.
David Lewis's politics weren't the best procurable, but he was absolutely not a communist. The democratic left in the 50s had all kinds of knock-em-down-drag-em-out fights with the commies, and Lewis was absolutely on the side of the good guys.
Joel should try and be serious here; his grandson's anti-American biases, fed by the CBC mindset, are a serious issue.
Mmmmm, I don't seem to recall the Hutterites getting a billion of the taxpayer's dollars to preach their faith.
Actually to be fair I don't think the Lewis clan are communist but rather socialists. I realize that with that statement I have opened the floodgates for all the definition gurus. But call it what ever you want, as long as it takes your money and produces nothing in return, it ain't good.
Kind of like the walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, you can call it anything you want but it's still a duck.
Jim,
How can Joel be serious when his tax dollars fund the absurbities he just witnessed on the CBC? Having a state-run broadcaster actively choosing sides in an ideological debate would be hilarious if the CBC weren't so insidious.
Well Joel summed it up nicely!
I like the way these boobs on CBC get all confused by anyone who simply states the FACTS of the matter.
They "don't get" Bolton because they don't live in the real world but rather a fantasy populated with brave heroic images of noble socialist ideologues.
Paradise The CBC Annual Picinic
Nice family. Imagine how depressing their Christmas/Hanukkah/Thanksgiving dinners are: nothing to be thankful for, just complaints about perceived injustices in the world and how evil George Bush is. Ulcers, anyone?
"I think CBCpravda feels their mandate of balance is having Rex Murphy on the sensible side ."
I've always thought Murphy was kind of a weathervane of political leanings in the country. He turned - slightly, yes, but for him it was relatively huge - against Chretien as the general population did, he turned against Martin as soon as he was in government as the population did, and he was sweetest on Harper when the Conservatives were at their highest. I don't know whether he is slightly ahead of the general public or just following it, but weathervane he is.
Which makes his weekend column (and many of his later CBC rants) very interesting:
______________
"Mr. Harper has been Prime Minister for almost a year and a half. But at least a portion of his personality seems stuck in that abrasive, querulous and sometimes petty mode that belongs to politicians stuck far too long in opposition.
Mr. Harper, and some at the top of his party, seem reluctant to part with the opposition mentality. In Question Period, for example, the Prime Minister gives off the impression that he's more interested in settling old scores with the Liberals for those days, now gone, when they taunted him.
Likewise, the relentless war his party seems obsessively determined to wage on Stéphane Dion - new attack ads were released this week, the fourth in a series - is seriously over the top. Mr. Dion may have his failings as a party leader, but the Conservatives' continuous and nasty focus on him, in their increasingly trite media campaign, may, in fact, stir Canadians to consider that Mr. Dion must have virtues to which they have not been alerted."
______________
I guess it is about that time then when Conservatives, who have been singing his praises as the only good thing and only straight honest objective shooter at CBC, turn on him and claim bias. Because after all, only someone who is biased would ever dare to be critical of Stephen Harper and Canada's New-ish-like Government (TM)
"I think CBCpravda feels their mandate of balance is having Rex Murphy on the sensible side."
I've always thought Murphy was kind of a weathervane of political leanings in the country. He turned - slightly, yes, but for him it was relatively huge - against Chretien as the general population did, he turned against Martin as soon as he was in government as the population did, and he was sweetest on Harper when the Conservatives were at their highest. I don't know whether he is slightly ahead of the general public or just following it, but weathervane he is.
Which makes his weekend column (and many of his later CBC rants) very interesting:
______________
"Mr. Harper has been Prime Minister for almost a year and a half. But at least a portion of his personality seems stuck in that abrasive, querulous and sometimes petty mode that belongs to politicians stuck far too long in opposition.
Mr. Harper, and some at the top of his party, seem reluctant to part with the opposition mentality. In Question Period, for example, the Prime Minister gives off the impression that he's more interested in settling old scores with the Liberals for those days, now gone, when they taunted him.
Likewise, the relentless war his party seems obsessively determined to wage on Stéphane Dion - new attack ads were released this week, the fourth in a series - is seriously over the top. Mr. Dion may have his failings as a party leader, but the Conservatives' continuous and nasty focus on him, in their increasingly trite media campaign, may, in fact, stir Canadians to consider that Mr. Dion must have virtues to which they have not been alerted."
______________
I guess it is about that time then when Conservatives, who have been singing his praises as the only good thing and only straight honest objective shooter at CBC, turn on him and claim bias. Because after all, only someone who is biased would ever dare to be critical of Stephen Harper and Canada's New-ish-like Government (TM).
"Counterspin" what a frigging joke that was.
So Avi is still on our payroll eh?
One of my fondest wishes for this country is for Stephen Harper to force the CBC to hell off the public teat and earn their livlihood and live or die in the private domain.
Like fish that don't know they live in water, leftist talking sods that we are forced to pay for at the CBC don't even know they tilt only left.
"Secular progressives" as Bill O'Reilly on Fox correctly calls them.
Closet communists is what I prefer to term them.
Being compelled by the state to pay for their (CBC) existence and then to spew their leftist ideology is worse than rubbing salt into an open wound.
Rob:
I hadn't considered it might be an emotional defence mechanism ;o)
PS, in my earlier post, I didn't mean Joel's grandson...
I agree with some of the above commentary re the appropriateness of Lewis' "communism". When I was at University, I used to take David Lewis quotations and substitute the word Jewish for Oil Company, Business, Bank, or American and then ask fellow students who the author was. Unanimously, it was Hitler. Fascism or National Socialism is simply another variant of statism and it more accurately describes the older NDP Leader and much of the current NDP, Liberals, and so-called Conservatives than Communism.
As to the CBC, Canada can never be considered a mature or free country while the CBC remains on the air.
Jeez. With a pedigree like Avi's, that is one family tree that needs to be seriously pissed on.
It could form a woodpile big enough to shelter all kinds of homosexuals, vegitarians, atheists and flakes.
Anybody stupid enough to accept people like this as leaders really deserve what they get.
It drives me crazy that these guys get paid what they do....ever published what they make speaking for the poor and the downtrodden......beats the average family income by a country mile.
Probably will get a pension as well.
Counterspin was a joke and was propoganda, nothing but.
Avi was totally insufferable and how can you expect someone like him to burst the spin on the left...he is creating it.
YEech.
hey !!
Hutterites are honest and hardworking.
These fools are more like an inner city aggrieved welfare family complaining about everything and wishing for just one more basketball court and after school program.
Must be something in the water all these Toranna folks drink. Softens the mind.
"Switching to Fox News Channel now. A fella can only take so much dumbification."
Hahaha... Oh the irony.
Slow day for ambulances Ted? I'd rather have a tough competitor than a party that thinks its okay to steal.
The CBC and its career losers feeds off itself.
The relic of the 30's needs to disappear.
texas canuc anyone who advocates government control of your life is a communist there are no shades of gray
Mein Gut!... the CBC just wallows in this leftwing fanatic mire like a hog rolling in its own feces.
Reading the connections with the Lewis-klein-Landsberg-North Americanized Marist deconstructionist dogmatism networking and I can see why this lefty orthodoxy displays so much inbred thinking and fossilized idioms.
Like really CBC...how many ways can you repackage communist deconstructionist leftism without it displaying the same stench of hypocrisy and fraud it had back in the 1890s when it was a popular parlor dogma for nattering classes to pay lip service to....NO ONE takes it seriously...its a dytopian dogma...even the trendoids that pull it on like their birkenstocks don't ever belive there are any workable answers in communist utpoianism...it's just hop to associate with to be seen as cool in peer groups...but you grow out of it when you get adult responsibilities.
Problem is hard core cimmies like Lewis nver get responsible...they remain ensconced in their child-like utopian dogma firmly attached to the public teat to sheild them from the realities of their dogma's failings.
Do you realize how deparately dull and sickeningly self important all this lefty dogmatism is to the rest of us well adjusted folks?
Another reason to pull the plug on this public funded albatross...its infested with self importantant elitists who take themselves and their out-moded dogmas just too damn seriously.
Danny "fruitcake" Williams should ask the Lewis family what their secret is. They've probably commandeered enough taxpayer dollars to float the island.
Yeah - Anyone who doesn't agree with everything Joel says is a communist, simple as that. Reminds me of George Bush - "You're either with us or you're against us".
X wrote for the Globe - communist!
Y wrote for the Star - communist!
Z shared his chips at lunch in grade 7 - communist!
Q is married to X - communist!
Some real bright blogging there. Bravo and nice catch Kate - it's nice when you find all of this silly crap on the internet so I don't have to.
Sarika Seghal rocks! Oh so gorgeous too!
And yeah, Joel - keep watching Fox News Channel - you deserve it.
A few years back Stephen Lewis was gushing with praise on TV for a lawyer he had just met - he was gushing with praise because the lawyer was female and black. It was embarrassing and actually uncomfortable to watch someone be so racist and condescending. Stephen Lewis continues to demonstrate that he is a very ignorant man.
What is also of interest is that the Lewis and Landsberg families both come from a privileged economic and social background - Toronto's upper middle class - with no blue-collar hard work experience, no years of poverty, and no results gained only within the capitalist realm, ie, by competition and merit.
They've lived without competition off the gov't largesse, with all its benefits and extras, and the journalist (Toronto Star) benefits. Their children have, by virtue of the family network, moved easily into the same type of 'appointed jobs'.
Thus, as is frequent in such a privileged and naive scenario, they intellectually settle into the 'missionary mode' - a life situation where your own lifestyle is easy and assured, and you then pontificate to those whom you define as 'peasants'.
It's like the public trough is a private country club for Orwell's pigs. It's very politically incestuous.
I guess when these self-interested cabal of insiders talks about the "profit motive" of big corporations, their just jelous that a few dollars are beyond their money-grubbing reach.
I suppose conflicts of interest are what those other people suffer...
Throbbin...keep watching the Canadian version of "The View"...you get back to us when you have your own mind back and CBC gives you some 'news', instead of telling you what to think.If you are fortunate that could be co-incidental.
It is a free country...sure they should be allowed to run the program the way they want, degrade any diplomat if they chose to,
BUT NOT WITH OUR TAXES!!!
I think the CBC just keeps Rex around to answer the phones.
Rex answering the phones. yeah.
Me: Can I speak to Peter Pansbridge?
Rex:" What would be the purpose of your attempt to converse with that person if I may be so bold to ask"
Me: "I like to thank him for not spawning with Wendy Mesleu"
Rex: "Good Sir, MYOB on the spread of CBC DNA"
I wouldn't mind the left-wing/Liberal bias of the CBC quite so much if there was a little balance the other way. As it stands now their bias comes through loud and clear. It seems that whatever spin the Liberals put on something is echoed immediately by the CBC. As soon as Dion was elected Liberal leader and started spouting off about Global Warming, it was immediately picked up by the CBC as the Most Important Issue.
I have to admit though, that I watch and enjoy "The Hour" with George Stroumb...po...los. He seems genuinely interested in what his guests have to say and is a very skilled interviewer. A little "too cool for school" maybe, but entertaining nonetheless.
"A few years back Stephen Lewis was gushing with praise on TV for a lawyer he had just met - he was gushing with praise because the lawyer was female and black."
I watched Peter Mansbridge do this recently when interviewing Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia's president and the first elected female head of state in Africa. You'd think it was Oprah interviewing Maya Angelou rather than an anchorman interviewing a head of state who was formerly vice president of Citibank.
Are Keith and Nick Spicer related?
Nick is currently with CBC, reporting from Russia often.
Keith...many connections,including the CBC, CRTC
If these are the front line connections, what might one find for familial ties in the decision rooms?
I really appreciate Joel Johannesen's ongoing work. It's an aggravating task, but when it comes to CTV/CBC it's not like "if you ignore them, they will go away."
I too saw Lewis' "interview" with Bolton last night. It wasn't so much an interview as a chance for an immensely smug and arrogant Lewis to unleash a litany of cookie-cutter anti-American assertions, and to practically laugh off anything Bolton said.
I can only assume Bolton was unaware, when the interview was booked, of who he'd be talking to; he probably just knew the request was from a journalist at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He certainly wouldn't have known that some smug uber-leftist would be throwing eggs at him on national television.
I didn't see the follow-up in-studio tut-fest between Lewis and Sarika S, but Joel is absolutely correct that Bolton didn't say anything remotely resembling "I actually don't care if this locks in a sectarian bloodbath in Iraq", and in fact he pointedly made quite the opposite case, that there needs to be stability so that Shiites and Kurds, not just Sunnis, can benefit from the resources.
For Lewis to casually put his own mischaracterization/lie in Bolton's mouth when Bolton could no longer reply is fraudulent journalism at its worst.
On an actually positive CBC-note, Wendy Mesley, who is by far the National's best anchor, seems to be anchoring more frequently these days. I hope the trend continues. Yesterday she interviewed, in mid-broadcast, a typical CBC "expert", New Yorker Jonathan Hafetz who, in formidable and contiguously unaccountable pseudo-legalese, excoriated the US approach to detention of enemy combatants.
His language was that of a high-priced lawyer-shark defending a wealthy client, only in this case he was -- in effect -- defending every single al Quaeda member who might ever be detained by the Americans. Mesley managed to acutely and on the fly ask the questions that were hanging unaccountably in the airless void of his impressively dense statements. At one point she asked for what seemed to be a pointedly necessary clarification: "So...do you see this as the end of military commissions? They're going straight to regular court?"
Not that he really answered; "Well, I would hope it's the end, but I...I...more likely it's another chapter in a continuing failure to..." etc.
What stood out to me was that in stark contrast to the typical CBC anchor approach of stentoriously asking pre-scripted questions, and attempting to steer the response back to the narrative assertions inherent in those questions, Mesley showed an impressive ability to listen carefully and to draw out, on the fly, some of the more important massive elisions buried in his "expertise".
The woman can clearly think on her feet -- she's not a PR flack -- and best of all, you don't get the first clue about what her political leanings are, which is frankly a huge positive change for The National. Whenever Mansbridge introduces Earnscliffe J. Boag, it's in the manner of a hand-off; the tone is sort of, "okay, I've been doing my bit, and the team has been doing their bit, now it's your turn, Keith, let's see if you can get the ball further up the field, and do some more damage to the Conservatives." With Mesley, it's more of a "well, here's a guy named Keith Boag saying something" -- not that she's even slightly rude, or anything, it's simply neutral. The effect, somehow, is that Boag self-presents as the sour fraudulent note he is, rather than being framed as the living embodiment of some underlying national grand harmonic theme.
Mesley's professionalism -- what a concept -- is certainly a welcome contrast to the pre-set partisan activism of Avi Lewis, Boag, Paul Hunter, etc.,
Just like the Hutterites,and with the recent ruling in Alberta that the Hutties don't require a photo on thier licenses,completely interchangeable identities.Without the picture who can tell any of these clowns apart,And I don't mean the Hutties.
"the CBC just wallows in this leftwing fanatic mire like a hog rolling in its own feces."
I agree that CBC is wallowing in some sort of dung, perhaps their own or perhaps that of other left wing fanatics. But that statement is just out and out unfair to hogs who, if well cared for, are actually quite meticulous. And even if we change the talk to feeding habits, the CBC are much bigger troughsters than hogs.
And when they get to your dinner plate, hogs are pretty easy to swallow. The CBC is never easy to swallow.
No, if you want to talk about hogs and the CBC, on just about any comparator, the CBC comes out much the worse.
I have no doubt that all these people sound like communists to Joel Johanessen but the man is profoundly ignorant in these matters.
Avi is a certified idiot (I've seen the certificate :-)) but you have to admit, that Sarita chick is a fox!
George
Avi is a certified idiot (I've seen the certificate :-)) but you have to admit, that Sarita gal is a fox!
George
oops, sorry about the double post above (edited "chick" to "gal" but pushed send too soon)
Maybe there's a lot of inbreeding, but at least the Hutterites started out smart, hard working and pious. Unlike our friends on the Left.
Don’t know who Sehgal and Lewis are since I don’t watch television that much and zero seeebeeeseee. Though from the excerpt of the chat between them, I would say, that if they want to shoot the shit as it were, perhaps they should do it on their own time with their relatives or something. To go on taxpayers funded media and talk nonsense, I oppose and demand replacement of said persons with some others that are interested in bringing higher quality information like what’s the third quarter prospect for trading in GW credits.
The middle Lewis is Canada’s and perhaps worlds (if he is on UN payroll) foremost freeloader. Every so often, the guy comes with stupid announcements like ‘the Americans don’t send enough condoms to Africa’ so he can claim some activity to be paid for. How is it that some people have no trouble sucking money from public, for no apparent production of anything useful.
"For his significant contributions to public service, in 2003, Stephen Lewis was named a Companion of the Order of Canada, our country's highest honour for lifetime achievement. In the same year, he was chosen by Maclean's magazine as their inaugural "Canadian of the Year." Time magazine named Stephen Lewis as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has received the Jonathan Mann Health and Human Rights Award for the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care, and the Pearson Peace Medal given by the United Nations Association in Canada for outstanding achievements in the field of international service and understanding. He holds twenty-four honourary degrees from Canadian universities."
https://www.umanitoba.ca/student/records/convocation/spring07/Lewisa.shtml
Hollywood is full of commies why else did they make that crappy movie REDS a few years ago to glorifi americas infamous communists JOHN REED
such enlightened comments here, thanks for the laughs....
To clarify - my reference to Hutterites was in the context of the close knit clan/intermarriage aspect.
You forgot to mention that the whole family have been known to visit a department store known to be frequented by a peculiar character openly dressed in a red uniform and going by the name of S. Clause. He hovers around and propagandizes children promising free gifts if they are "good", an obvious Communist lure, you may think. You should let the ladies know who attend the Central City Mission to oversee the distribution of barley soup (free market barley) to the deserving poor, so they can alert the authorities. You can't be too careful in these times.
"Sarika Seghal rocks! Oh so gorgeous too!"
Hey "throbbin" keep nursing that chronic case of virginity and good luck to you if you curing it if you think commie adolescents are "interesting" or woese: "sexy".
Like you, they take themselves far too seriously.