World Politics

Catching up after the great royal funeral hiatus

Catching up after the great royal funeral hiatus

Who botched it in Saskatchewan?

The RCMP stayed true to their motto (“Maintiens le silence”) during the murders on James Smith Cree Nation and nearby. The suspects had the same last name, but Mounties wouldn’t comment on any relationship. That was farcical and it turned into travesty when the second brother (as indeed they were) was caught and put in a cruiser, unhurt. There he died from what the Mounties called “medical distress.” They declined any further comment.

Yeah, it’s infuriating — but the RCMP are doing what institutions do if they can. What I don’t comprehend is the passivity of the press. In the U.S. or U.K., some at least would’ve been howling about the “incident” in the cruiser. Rumours would’ve leaked. A journalist would be en route to making a career by breaking the real story. (Our press is capable of such disruption: Global News correspondent David Akin was deliberately rude to Pierre Poilievre for refusing to take questions and got somewhere.) At the very best, it showed a lack of professional curiosity.

I’m not sitting shiva for CNN.

There’s alarm on sites like the Guardian over CNN firing on-air figures like Brian Stelter and John Harwood and its supposed turn to the right. When Ted Turner started CNN, it had an independent leftishness that eventually turned to the usual mainstream sludge. After former U.S. president Donald Trump, it’s been less left-leaning than a propaganda ministry for the Democratic party.

CNN took to calling Trump’s claims about a stolen election “lies,” which I’ve no problem with. What irks me is they don’t use the term on anyone else, making it seem like all others are telling the truth. Nor do they explore how Dems like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama betrayed “ordinary” voters and favoured the rich in, e.g., the 2008 crisis, thus making Trump quasi-inevitable. One final irritant: their ability, widely shared, to report catastrophes like Puerto Rico this week, with little to no mention of climate change. This is lying by omission; it’s not overt. But in the long run it may do more harm than any and all outright “lies.”

“Women Talking.”

The new film by Sarah Polley (a good friend) is a feminist triumph. It’s also probably the most political film I’ve ever seen in this sense: it implies that politics is about consultation and discussion, versus stuff we’ve come to assume it’s about like elections, power and big issues. A group of…

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