In an almost heroic effort, Selley waxes almost poetical in his description of Jack Layton’s funeral and the role of the press in the days preceding it.
I’m not above rolling my eyes at excessive displays of grief, or of anything else. Since Monday morning, I’ve seen very few — certainly fewer than after Pierre Trudeau’s death. The hundreds of chalk messages at Nathan Phillips’ Square weren’t orchestrated from NDP headquarters; most weren’t overtly partisan at all. Thursday night, when Layton’s casket arrived at City Hall, the gutters weren’t running with tears. What I think I saw on the couple of hundred faces in attendance — including that of Mayor Rob Ford — was appreciation and compassion for a decent man’s dedicated service to the city and the country. I saw little mawkishness, little insincerity, and no evidence of some unhealthy perceived social obligation to mourn excessively ― “teddy bear grief,” as one of my fellow columnists put it.
Frankly, it’s easy to imagine many of the complainers mourning Layton’s conservative equivalent just as passionately as Canadians mourned Layton — if only it was possible to imagine a conservative equivalent of Jack Layton. I only met Layton once, in his final and finest office on Parliament Hill. Judging by the stories and anecdotes I saw this week, in print and in voice and in chalk, two million or so Canadians knew him better, and believed he was genuinely interested in their lives — “a man of the people who made everyone feel special,” as Shawn Atleo said. Love him or hate him, this is pretty much what politics is supposed to be.
I’ve become even more disappointed this past week with our media, not so much for the antics of the Post and Sun medias but from those journalism gurus and pundits who circled the wagons around instigator Blatchford and protected their own at the expense of us, the readers.
It’s no wonder journalism has lost so much of its sheen – and profitability. It’s not because it is an outmoded model but because it is operated by a crew of less-than-honest brokers. It is a highly partisan political operation that hides its true intentions. Social media, for all its faults, is for the most part honest, sometimes brutally – and rudely – so. It’s a breath of fresh, raw air in the face of the decaying model of modern journalism.
That’s why the few professional writers in the business today who write about their subjects with a keen and rational eye are so rare and so precious. They are so few. Thank you, Mr. Selley. You have done yourself and all of us proud. Too bad about your compatriots in the business.
