The CBC recently told a government spokesman that it needed more financial support. “We simply cannot continue,” the terrible Tories were told, “unless we have more backing.” How terribly sad. Perhaps it’s time for another extraordinarily expensive advertising blitz, paid for by you to, well, to make you watch them. Perhaps they should resurrect the “Think CBC” campaign of a few years back.
Yes, think CBC. Think strikes by people who are already well paid and have more job security than most of us. Think bias. Think a fortune in public money.
Think enormous wastes of cash on patronizing and terribly acted soap operas. Think greedily taking yet another FM radio spot, this time away from a black station, and then claiming to be caring and fair-minded.
Think pretentious newsroom comedy shows that are nothing more than watered-down versions of American products. Think hosts who are paid $200,000 a year with long holidays and large support staffs and then complain they work too hard.
Think revising Canadian history and belittling the achievements of millions of fine Canadians. Think about miserable failures being ignored. Think about the same people, who all seem to know one another, coming back year after year. Think of people who don’t even know what their shows’ ratings are because there is no chance of them being cancelled.
Think of people with famous mums and dads. Think of quite a lot of people with famous mums and dads. Think of weekly shows with four researchers when nightly shows on private stations have one or two. Think of people constantly complaining about how hard it is and about how the cutbacks are intolerable.
Think of people whose main job is to pour water for talking heads. Think of hosts complaining privately that they are held to ransom by lazy and petulant technicians and then stating publicly that they support the claims of their technicians.
Think of journalists who are obsessively committed to public broadcasting pretending to have any semblance of objectivity when they are interviewing politicians who oppose public broadcasting.
Think of self-indulgence. Think of mediocrity. Think of so many television critics who watch only the CBC and who count as their personal friends men and women who appear on the CBC every night. Think unfair advantages against any competition.
Think of a sterile and pompous environment where ideas contrary to the liberal mind-set are marginalized and trashed.
Think former heads of radical organizations walking into jobs. Think two liberal, pro-abortion governors-general in a row being CBC journalists. Think endless panels that reflect not the beliefs of the country, but the beliefs of the producers, who so often have tangible agendas. Think preferring Quebec to Alberta, because the former seems exotic and the latter is apparently so right wing.
Think constantly meeting people who affirm your views at the same dinner parties and book launches. Think seldom meeting real Canadians. Think despising private broadcasting. Think gruesome insularity.
Think of the absurd statement made by a CBC president that you’re the only “truly Canadian” broadcaster, somehow implying that all of the others are not genuinely patriotic.
Think of a producer who was forced to take down a photograph of his family from his office door because a colleague complained about its patriarchal tendencies.
Think that the producer was yet another American draft-dodger. Think that these draft-dodgers have to scream their anti-American and extreme views; otherwise, they would have to admit they simply ran away and left their poor, black and Hispanic buddies to do the fighting for them.
Think hockey being the one thing we really watch. Think how well any other station might package the hockey and without the public having to pay taxes for it.
Think of hockey’s advertising making the rest of the CBC’s advertising profile look much better than it really is. Think of silly, neurotic women simulating masturbation on radio and their actions being defended by CBC producers. Think of endless attacks upon the family.
Think hypocrisy, think privilege, think sheer nonsense. Think yet more shows about body piercing, homosexual singing groups, single mothers defending whales, juggling pacifists, the need for Quebec to be given more language rights and the sheer joy of having an abortion.
Think constant attacks on pro-life groups, pro-life opinions, pro-life people. Think Morgentaler as a god and God as irrelevant. Think euthanasia praised, think adultery ignored, think Christianity mocked.
Think morally conservative politicians attacked and libelled and forced into corners. Think journalists writing questions for Liberal MPs, lying about it and then not being reprimanded. Think debates that are not debates at all, but attempts to make supporters of family, public ethics and private virtue appear foolish.
Think about when you last felt fairly treated and represented. Think if your tax dollars could go to better causes. Think CBC. Think we don’t need it. Think that it outlived its usefulness many years ago. Think. For goodness’ sake, think.
Michael Coren is a columnist for the Toronto Sun, National Post and Catholic Insight and host of Michael Coren Live on CTS.