A million ain't what it used to be

Back when I was coming up, a million dollars was a lot of money. If you were worth a million bucks you were considered "rich." In a town of 50,000, there might have been a few dozen millionaires and half a dozen or so folks with a net worth of ten million or more.

Those were the "super-rich" of the era.

Today a million bucks won't buy you a house in Toronto or Vancouver.

I'm contemplating these numbers because of something I read in my Globe and Mail today.

The story quotes a Conservative Party website as saying "Justin Trudeau has made Khadr one of the wealthiest men in Canada..."

As you know, Khadr's lawyers negotiated a ten million dollar settlement with the government for violating his Charter rights.

Lot's of folks are having shit hemorrages over this. Go to Twitter and search "Khadr settlement" and you'll be mightily impressed (or depressed) at the bile emanating from your fellow Canadians.

You'd think Khadr was personally responsible for writing the Charter of Rights and then finagled his way into Gitmo, just to trick the government of Canada into violating his rights so he could sue them big time.

But back to that hoary claim that a ten million dollar settlement has made him "one of the wealthiest men in Canada."

Not likely. In that town of 50,000 I came up in, which is now a small city of 130,000, there are today many dozens of folks with a net worth of ten million or more. Extrapolate that across the country and you've got tens of thousands of men with a net worth of ten million, and more than a few women too.

So when you claim that this settlement, which is entirely in line with previous settlements our government has made with other Canadians who have had their Charter rights violated, makes Khadr one of the richest men in the country, you're engaging in something that used to be called "yellow journalism."

I might expect to see that in Ezra's arch racist Rebel Media, but I'm surprised to find it, unchallenged, in Canada's putative newspaper of record.

And I'm profoundly disturbed that the Conservative Party would stoop to this level of hate-mongering.

This is journalism?

Kevin O'Leary is a moron.

But he's a moron who is very well paid for playing a successful investor on TV. Because he's a moron who understands the ins and outs of celebrity culture, he has managed to build a facade of credibility around his imaginary financial acumen.

Kevin had a great run of luck back in the '80's, when the digital era was in its infancy. A top notch flim-flam artist could go a long way on very little other than flim-flam back in the day, and there is no doubt that Kevin has always been a really great salesman.

In fact, if I were selling air conditioners in the Arctic, I'd want Kevin to head up my sales team.

But, there's the world 'o sales and flim-flam and reality TV... and then there's the real world.

The Globe and Mail, Canada's newspaper of record, ostensibly operates in the real world. Today they've got a fawning story about Kevin on A3. Yup, a mere three pages in we've got a third of a page dedicated to Kevin thinking out loud.

Unpaid intern Laura Stone has never before been this close to the front page, so I imagine she is thrilled. It's not clear from the story if she actually talked to Kevin or if she relied on press releases from his PR firm. In any event, Kevin is boldly staking his claim to the front ranks of the Conservative Party leadership battle... on the basis of exactly nothing other than his thinking out loud.

And what a sad indictment of Canadian news media that is.

The Globe reports that the mighty O'Leary has summoned Tony Clement to his Muskoka cottage to discuss the future of the Dominion and maybe have a guitar jam. What the fuck? Check it out on A3 of today's paper, folks.

I couldn't believe it either!... he is just like the Godfather; he "invites" those leadership wannabees to his dock where maybe he's gonna make an offer they can't refuse, or maybe they're just gonna sit on the dock and play their guitars, because that's how we do politics in Canada?

We're treated to this level of imbecility by page three? Does no one appreciate the fact that I paid three dollars and fifteen cents to read this newspaper?

The more you dig into Kevin's alleged business prowess the more you wonder why he is not in jail. Here's a brief synopsis of O'Leary's business career.

I'm guessing Laura Stone didn't dig that far and just wrote her story around Kevin's latest press release.

That's journalism in the modern era.

Why Kevin O'Leary is not Canada's Donald Trump

Michael Den Tandt is a local boy who made good. He's one of the few professional journalists still drawing a paycheque from that floundering colossus, SunPostMedia, the media empire that just keeps giving back to the hedgies who bought its corporate debt for pennies on the dollar a few years back. Most of what you read in Postmedia properties these days is courtesy of unpaid interns, but Den Tandt is the real deal, and his opinion pieces play coast to coast and are generally worth a look.

Folks who follow this stuff will know that Kevin O'Leary was thinking out loud the other day about throwing his hat into the ring to replace Big Steve in the big chair at Canada's Conservative Party. Today Den Tandt offers an enthusiastic endorsement of O'Leary's delusions of grandeur.

I think Michael's got it right that O'Leary is not Trump, even though they superficially have that same "blow-hard" persona. Where I think he's got it wrong is in how they're different. True, O'Leary has yet to disgrace himself with xenophobic clap-trap geared to the prejudices of the baying masses. Instead, he is a man of principles.

And that's the problem. His principles are the tried, tested, and manifestly failed pillars of the Thatcher era; welfare state too generous, unions too powerful, government too big, and taxes too high. We can only bring back prosperity by slashing and burning and cutting taxes.

It's a recipe that hasn't worked since the Thatcher era, and there's no reason to think it will work with just a little more slashing, burning, etc.

So while Trump fill stadiums with his rancid appeals to emotion, it's hard to imagine O'Leary doing the same with his appeals for more austerity.

Not only that, but what really makes Trump important is that he threatens the very foundations of America's sclerotic two-party system. He's the only candidate telling the public that the system is broken. O'Leary leading the Conservative Party would be a more engaging personality bringing you four or five more years of Big Steve.

And who needs that?