Employees of Canada’s unofficial state broadcaster keep scraping away, but the barrel appears to be bottomless.
StuntTV has it all: production values not worthy of high-school theatre, the unfunny Ezra Levant in drag, Michael “Black thugs” Coren’s latest on the Moozlum threat, Krista Erickson’s self-caricature, interviews with neo-Nazis, low-budget StuntNews program co-hosts Alex Pierson and Pat Bollard, who recently brought us the faux-citizenship ceremony—even a photoshopped staff shot. One expects an exclusive with Bat Boy any day now.
I do admit that Bollard rather appeals to me, trick moustache and all. Any moment I find myself expecting him to stare the camera and revert to an English accent: “Nudge, nudge, wink, wink! Know what I mean, squire? Know what I mean, hey?” But I suspect he wants to be taken seriously, like the rest of them. Good luck with that.
The diversionary lie that CBC is purveying porn, however, when all the while StuntTV’s parent company has been rolling out the hard stuff, proves that the shark is by now beached, long-dead and reeking. And this sort of thing just helps the stragglers across the carcass.
Remember the dystopic alternate world of Pottersville in Frank Capra’s kitschy weep-fest It’s a Wonderful Life? This could be Pottersville TV: cheap gimmicks, sniggering commentary, braying opinionators on the downward slope—cut-rate political vaudeville, a parade of the false and the fake.
But worse than that, it’s a colossal failure. There are bad dreams as well as good dreams—if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. Even Harper’s loyal Taco Bell-munching base were never that interested in the project, and fewer and fewer of them remain.
The problem with opinion silos, as anyone who peruses the average Blogging Tory offering knows, is that you begin to think the rest of the universe is in there with you, or just about to be. But those on the outside can recognize a closed delusional system when they see one, and steer well clear. Surely even Harper’s ministers must be thinking of erasing SunMedia’s dizzy guys and gals from their speed-dials by now.
[H/t deBeauxOs]