Must have been a slow news week

Nothing much in the weekend papers. Former G-G Adrienne Clarkson got a bit of self-serving twaddle into the Globe and Mail explaining why we should be grateful that she's still sucking hard on the government teat almost fourteen years after giving up that sinecure.

Elsewhere in the Globe we learn that the US will "temporarily allow" eight countries to continue buying Iranian oil after the new US sanctions kick in tomorrow. The wanton twattery of a bunch of American exceptionalists presuming to dictate to the world who can and who cannot buy Iranian oil passes without comment, naturally.

Things are pretty thin in the Sunday Star as well. Drake claims he was racially profiled at a Vancouver casino. Really? My hunch is that casinos are more interested in credit score profiling than racial profiling, and you'd think he'd be golden in that department, but whatever.

The NYT International Weekly (included at no extra cost with your Sunday Star, because actually paying Canadian writers for original copy is prohibitively expensive) makes the case for Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, a made energy industry bumboy from the get-go, taking a run at the White House in 2020. Seriously? I write more insightful shit than that.

Both Kristof and Stephens have op-eds that don't mention Donny J, to my considerable surprise. Maybe Sarah Kendzior is onto something...

Picked up a Toronto Sun just to see what the semi-literate folks are reading these days. With Remembrance Day around the corner, we've naturally got the predictable jingoistic claptrap about how the bold Canucks punched above their weight in the WW I.

What a concept, that WW I. The royal families of Europe had some differences. They're all related anyway, so you'd think they could sort things out with a family picnic or something, but no. Millions of working class schmucks on all sides had to make the ultimate sacrifice. We remember their sacrifice every November 11. Their naivete and gullibility, along with the craven cynicism of those who sacrificed them, we prefer to forget.

Further in we get a few accolades for Doug Ford's war on the poor with his Making Ontario Open for Business Act. But even that isn't enough for guest columnist Peter Gossman, who is pleased to inform us that he's planning to open his next factory in the US instead of Canada.

I'm sure Trump will appreciate your help in making America great again with the few dozen minimum wage jobs you might create there, Pete!

Gossman also informs us, via a quote from another PostMedia title, that "...oil, gas, and coal remain the fuels of the future."

Huh?... oh ya, we're reading the Toronto Sun...

Pres of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce Rocco Rossi gets a guest column too, although it's largely incoherent. Since it's in the Sun maybe the readers won't notice. His members are experiencing both a labour shortage and a skills shortage, so the Ford government's war on the working poor is going to create a lot of jobs...

Or something.

The Sun still has their Sunshine Girl, but she's near the back of the paper now. Used to be on page two or three if I remember correctly. That was a great gig for the photographer back in the day, at least till he got charged with attempted rape or something. I think he went to jail for a spell. Today's Sunshine Girl, Lavender, "is a Sagittarius who is all about Sunday, smiles, and sunshine."


Good to know!

Canadian women give up on equality, have lip-filler house parties instead

Lip-filler house parties? Yup, apparently that's a thing. After all, what Canadian gal wouldn't want to look like one of those vacuous plump-lipped Jenner airheads?

I wouldn't have dreamed, back in the heady days of the great feminist awakening in the sixties and seventies, that it would be conceivable to read such a story in 2017.

Progress?

What progress?

This is pathetic!

And here's another story that underlines how far we haven't come, about the suicide of a Spanish trophy hunter who happens to be a woman. Here's a few quotes from a very brief story in the Toronto Sun:

- the title refers to her as a "hot hunter"

- in first paragraph she is a "sexy Spanish hunter"

- para four tells us of her "smouldering looks"

- in para six she's "a rifle-wielding beauty."

Practically every other paragraph (and in the Sun the paragraphs are really just sentences) contains a gratuitous reference to the hunter's appearance.

I wouldn't have thought I'd be seeing "journalism" like that in 2017 either.

Doubly pathetic.

Another fucked up French-Canadian tries to stab a soldier, and therefore Canada must prepare for Jihad?

Yup, Tarek Fatah spells it out for you in the Toronto Sun.

Maybe one reason the SunPostMedia brand of journalistic hysteria is sinking like a stone is because the vast majority of Canadians recognize this as the rancid fear-mongering bullshit that it is.

It will be interesting to see who buys the Toronto Sun out of the scrap-heap of bankruptcy after that Paul Godfrey engineered trainwreck that's been going on in slo-mo since 2010. After all, the Sun is probably a viable stand-alone title.

I'm thinking it might be a great side project for the Ford Brothers.

Plump white politicos shake their booties to lure black votes at Toronto's Caribana/Carribean carnival

Where exactly did that "Carribean" stuff come from?

This party has been around forever and it's ALWAYS been Caribana...

Not "Carribean."

Be that as it may, the Toronto Sun, flagship of the SunPostMedia conglomerate, National Post pretensions notwithstanding, is full-on with the new nomenclature, as you can see here.

And what up with those two roly-poly white guys trying to snag a few votes here?

No harm in trying, I guess...

Peter Worthington well past best before date

Mr. Worthington has had a good run. But there comes a time when the decent thing to do is fold the tent.

An excruciatingly lame defense of the American Empire recently makes this more than obvious.

Peter asks himself a question. Then he gets an answer!

Then he writes an opinion piece about the experience.

Dude, it's time to step away from the Underwood.

Peter came of age in an era when the Empire stood for something. Even Peter must admit that the America of WWll is not the America of today. During WWll and Korea, it was at least plausible that the Empire had enemies, and that we would all be better off if those enemies were vanquished.

Half a century later, what is obvious is that America has absolutely no challengers on the global stage. Who is threatening the US with embargoes or sanctions or quarantines? Who is cruising their battleships off America's coasts? Who is overflying America with their drones?

Nobody.

The world has changed, Mr. Worthington. And America has changed.

The America you fought for in Korea now officially employs torture and allows it's own citizens to be executed by presidential decree.

No trial, no due process. Is this the America you fought for?

No. It sounds more like the totalitarians you were fighting against.

You've had a good run, but the world you're writing about isn't the real world anymore.

Time to fold the tent.