The big dogs at the Globe keep an eye out for up-and-coming talent they can poach from their competitors. Therefore it was no surprise to see Cathal Kelly disappear from the pages of the soft-lib Star and show up instead in the pages of the more serious news organization around the corner.
I'm guessing it was this seamless melding of sports reporting with political commentary that sealed the deal.
Kelly establishes his mastery of geo-politics with the first two sentences; Vladimir Putin doesn't make entrances. Like the devil, he appears.
I'm sure that his former professors at whatever journalism school Kelly attended were cringing by the time they got that far.
It only gets worse. Kelly destroys virtually every convention of professional journalism with a non-stop propaganda attack on Putin. Did he meet or interview Putin? No, but he saw him at an arena!
That's good enough for Kelly's former bosses, and more than good enough for the new ones! Objective reporting be damned - we got a guy here who can parrot the Harper-Baird anti-Putin rants without even trying... sign him up!
Kelly went on to distinguish himself with a heart-felt plea for Canada's Para Olympic squad to stick it to Putin by boycotting the Para Olympics. Yup, it's not up to the able-bodied professional athletes to sacrifice themselves on the altar of political boycotts, but the "challenged" athletes who have been training for years should step up and make Kelly's political statement.
Cathal Kelly himself could have stood on principle and refused his Sochi assignment.
Why didn't he?
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