The Cons and Our Pathetic Hack Media

Unlike many people, I don't think the media hacks who cover politics in this country are part of a shadowy Con conspiracy.

I just think many of them are not too bright, they live in the inbred village of Ottawa, where reality rarely intrudes, and little is BIG.

They know most media organizations are in trouble, their jobs are on the line, their big bosses want corporate tax cuts, so who are they to rock the boat?

But holy Big Brother, surely this column by John Ibbitson is his master's voice. 

On all the major files – the key priorities for this government through the fall and next spring – the Prime Minister’s team is in place and doing its job. One can applaud or abhor the direction of the Harper government, but the cabinet is generally performing as a cabinet should – especially in a world where so much power is tightly held by the Prime Minister himself.

John Baird is a highly regarded foreign affairs minister. (Several senior diplomats report that, for the first time with this government, they feel they are talking to a foreign minister who has the ear of the Prime Minister.) Joe Oliver, if a bit over-the-top at times, is a passionate advocate of new pipelines, and Peter Kent has been a good and faithful servant at Environment.

For who could ever describe the grubby, scandal ridden Con cabinet as "performing as a cabinet should? " Who could call John Baird a "highly regarded foreign affairs minister?" 

When the man is a joke, wandering around the Middle East, licking the boots of the right-wing Netanyahu regime, cheerleading for a war with Iran.

Or promoting his absurd Office of Religious Freedom...

To please the rabid Con base who would hang or burn a gay man like him.

Who could ever describe Joe Oliver as simply "a passionate advocate of a new pipeline?" When he stumbles around accusing decent Canadians of being terrorists, and urging people to drink his oily waste.

Who on earth could call the dilapidated Peter Kent a "good and faithful servant?" When he's just a tool of Big Oil, who slimes his opponents, and badly needs a pair of these. 

And why does it take one of the few courageous journalists in this country to declare that the Emperor has no clothes?

What kind of message is being sent to the public when so many in the Conservative government are not held to account for their actions? What is it about Mr. Harper that makes it so difficult for him to show a degree of contrition or humility that would sit so well with the public? How much hubris is in that tank?

Or a foreign publication to call Stephen Harper a bully?

Oh yeah. Our pathetic media may not be a Con conspiracy, but the effect is the same. For in a time of darkness, what is the difference between a hack who can't see the forest for the trees, or one who doesn't dare to call a dictator a dictator, or a bully a bully, and Orwell's Parsons?

"Parsons was Winston's fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms-one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the thought police, the stability of the Party depended."

All hail Big Brother.

One day people like Ibbitson will claim that they too were fooled. But they helped fool Canadians. We will not forget.

And history will never forgive them...

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