CBC’s The National brings Canadians all the news that’s woke

William Watson

I hope that, like me, you’re enjoying the brilliant self-parody CBC’s The National has been running as the holidays approach. Before going any further, however, I have to say, as one must these days, that this column is being written by a senior white male settler who is therefore irredeemably Privileged, Prejudiced and Past it. (I’m not actually a “settler” in the sense of having come here in a Red River wagon and broken ground to start subsistence farming on land I stole myself, but rather in that my grandparents came over on steamships just after the turn of the 20th century and settled in the country’s then-metropolis, Montreal. The rest is, as they say, neo-colonialist history.)

The New York Times claims it provides “all the news that’s fit to print.” The National produces “all the news that fits in the very narrow ideological spectrum of downtown-urban wokeness.”

There are four essential components to The National these days: something climate, something anti-Trump, something Lefty-heroic, and something Indigenous. Other news is allowed but these seem obligatory. Tuesday night’s edition was exemplary.

Susan Ormiston provided a feature piece on Jane Fonda. Yes, that Jane Fonda, who at 82 is channelling Greta Thunberg by taking Fridays off to protest climate change and its corporate enablers. Jane Fonda is definitely a woman of the Left. Why her views are of interest is not so clear. She is a celebrity, if now a minor one. But you’d think a serious state broadcaster wouldn’t cater to celebrity, a problem Ormiston finesses by asking about the role of celebrity in protest, to which Ms. Fonda provides the very sensible answer that if she weren’t famous, CBC wouldn’t be talking to her. Good for her. Self-understanding doesn’t escape everyone on The National.

Given Fonda’s views on some past matters, however, it’s not clear why we should take her advice on climate. There was a time, Ormiston mentions, when she was known as “Hanoi Jane,” for having visited Hanoi during the war and being filmed beside anti-aircraft guns, maybe one that shot down the late Sen. John McCain. Ormiston mentions, twice, that Fonda has apologized for that but when she asks about it Fonda says what she learned from the experience is “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” Not quite repentant.

full story at https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/william-watson-cbcs-the-national-brings-canadians-all-the-news-thats-woke