Fox News says boycott Canada

[Tingkai]

There's a bun fight going on between the Globe and Mail's TV columnist John Doyle and a guy from Fox News named Bill O'Reilly and now Fox News wants to boycott Canada.

Now I don't know anything about this O'Reilly, but I checked out his stuff and it's a good laugh. Here's some of his stuff:

"Canada is now on notice. Undermining the American military by giving sanctuary to deserters will bring action by the most powerful force on this earth, the American people. "


Or how about:
"Now columnists on the far left "Toronto Globe & Mail" wrote: "Bring it on, we're all in a good need of a laugh. We'll find out if this Bill O'Reilly fellow is as stupendously pompous and preening as he appears to be in the rare clips we see of FOX News."

The Globe, far left?

Is this guy serious or is this a satire of crazy right-wingers?

Here's an article about the bun fight:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/weekinreview/25krau.html

[Nubclear]

Sadly, he's probably serious.

[Imran Siddiqui]

How does O'Reilly equal Fox News now?

And O'Reilly isn't really your ordinary right-winger. He's pretty left on a variety of issues.

[Cyclotron]

Left or right, I think it's unquestionable he's a d*ck.

[The Mad Monk]

How about a link that dosen't require registration?

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
How does O'Reilly equal Fox News now?

He tends to, yes.

[Cyclotron]

Oh, and could we get the article posted? I don't really want to sign up for the NY Times website.

[The Mad Monk]

Here's one:

TODAY'S PAPER


Canadians shouldn't be denied Fox News


By ROD LOVE
Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - Page A19

Canada made The New York Times last weekend, and that is never a good thing.

Whenever Canada is mentioned in the Times, it is either because something bad is happening (last month's "Sponsorship Scandal Rocks Governing Party"), or something quirky is going on -- quirky in the sense that our American friends think we are acting in a strange, but quaint sort of way.

Canada won the coveted half-page "Word for Word" column in Sunday's Week In Review section because the nationalist culturecrats at the CRTC continue to try to exercise an outdated mandate to control the television that Canadians can watch.

To recap, U.S.-based Fox News wants to broadcast its 24-hour news channel in Canada, the CRTC turned them down, The Globe and Mail's television columnist John Doyle applauded the CRTC decision and, at the same time, fired some of the usual broadsides that the political left reserves for Fox.

That prompted a flood of cross-border e-mails between supporters of Fox and The Globe's John Doyle, which appeared in the Sunday Times. Entertaining reading to be sure, but the larger issue that is at play here is hardly quirky. Set aside for the moment that Fox News is the dominant news network in the United States, leaving the increasingly dreary CNN far behind. (Never mind CBS, ABC and NBC, which have been reduced to marginal status, sandwiching tame news items between ads for new products for seniors.)

Set aside also that Fox anchor Bill O'Reilly then called The Globe's readers "pinheads," and that The Globe's TV critic responded with the cerebral rejoinder that Fox News is actually "hilarious" and its viewers "uncivil, abusive and foul-mouthed creatures."

The real issue for Canadians in all this is that in the year 2004, there is still a federal-government agency, stacked with Liberal patronage appointees and bureaucrats, that actually has a mandate to try to determine what Canadians may or watch on television, or not.

Social engineering, not free speech, is alive and well in Paul Martin's Timid New World.

You think that the sponsorship scandal is a scandal? The CRTC's budget, mandate, power and very existence is a scandal.

The global television signals that Canadians desire to watch belong to no government. A country that is secure in the knowledge of what it stands for, a society that is comfortable in the values it represents, and a culture that is robust enough to entertain criticism, would normally be strong enough to welcome the competing views of the rest of the global community.

That is not what the CRTC is saying as it frustrates a controversial but thought-provoking channel from broadcasting in our country.

Far from strengthening our so-called cultural sovereignty, the CRTC weakens our culture by essentially telling Canadians they are not mature enough to watch what they want.

When Fox first applied in 2000, the CRTC told the network it could broadcast in Canada, but only a Canadian version.

Huh?

Did anybody tell CBS to broadcast a "Canadian version" of the Evening News with Dan Rather? Did the CRTC tell that to ABC or NBC?

Did Ottawa instruct the Beeb to add more Canadian content before Mishal Husain does her BBC World News gig?

Our beloved CBC runs more clips from Al-Jazeera than from Fox News, and Al-Jazeera is not exactly a beacon of objective journalism.

Let's cut to the chase, shall we?

Fox News is applying once again to broadcast in Canada. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (an anachronistic title in 2004, if there ever was one) is applying a separate standard to Fox News than it does to, say, the woolly-headed lefties at the BBC, for the simple reason that Fox News is an unabashedly conservative news network.

You can just hear the bureaucrats in Ottawa discussing in apocalyptic terms what they fear would happen if Canadians were exposed to a steady diet of televised, pro-American, conservative debate. "They might begin to believe it for goodness sake!"

This and any future federal Liberal government will warily entertain a certain amount of non-threatening, liberal-sympathetic, non-Canadian media, but they are deathly afraid of conservative cultural competition, and they are using the state, through the CRTC, to deny Canadians the right to choose. That, by any other name, is censorship -- a new Canadian value.

The reason last Sunday's New York Times page on all this was so entertaining was that it represented an exciting and robust debate about issues that matter. Which is exactly what the CRTC doesn't want you to see on television.

Rod Love, a Calgary-based political and communications consultant, was chief of staff to Alberta Premier Ralph Klein and a senior adviser to former Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040428/COFOX28/TPComment/TopStories

[notyoueither]

Yeah! Rod Love sticks it too 'em! Oh oh, the *****ing is gonna start fast and quick real soon now.

[notyoueither]

I didn't remember registering for the NYT. Oh well. here is the article.

When a Canadian Insults Fox News, Them's [Expletive] Fighting Words!
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Published: April 25, 2004


ORONTO — American-Canadian relations have seen better days. Canada opposed the war in Iraq, and got a stern public lecture from the United States ambassador, Paul Cellucci, in return. The Bush administration does not like Canada's liberal drug policies. Trade disputes involving beef and softwood lumber continue to fester. But such frictions rarely get much television coverage at a time when Washington has a barrage of international problems to worry about.

That may be changing. Two weeks ago, the Canadian cable industry filed an application with the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to begin including the Fox News Channel among its listings. That would bring the channel to a country with a very un-Foxian knack for legalizing same-sex marriage and teasing Yanks for burning down their own White House in the War of 1812. The cultural divide burst into raw insult when Fox News' Bill O'Reilly recently got into a public brouhaha with John Doyle, the television critic for The Globe and Mail, Canada's most influential newspaper.

American news junkies couldn't help but get into the cross-border food fight, with many Fox News fans seeing red and, in response, other Americans feeling the need to apologize for their less-than-polite countrymen. The mess, without some of the more colorful language, is on display below.


•

It all started with Mr. Doyle's column on Monday, which poked fun at both Fox News and Mr. O'Reilly.

The other day I read in this newspaper . . . that some honchos in the cable-TV racket are applying for permission to offer the Fox News Channel in Canada.

Beauty. Bring it on, I say. We're all in need of a good laugh. The barking-mad Fox News Channel is something that most Canadians have only heard about. It's time we saw it for ourselves, and made up our own minds about the phenomenon. We'll find out if this Bill O'Reilly fella is as stupendously pompous and preening as he appears to be in the rare clips we see of Fox News.

That prompted Mr. O'Reilly to respond in kind on his evening program, "The O'Reilly Factor." Noting that Canadians only occasionally get glimpses of Fox News, Mr. O'Reilly takes aim at the "far left" Globe and Mail.

So they see rare clips, but think we're laughable. The Globe and Mail sounds like a real responsible enterprise, doesn't it? Hey you pinheads up there, I may be pompous, but at least I'm honest.

It was a mild response, all things considered, but some American fans of Fox News apparently thought a gauntlet had been thrown. According to Mr. Doyle, hundreds of e-mail messages from south of the border began pouring into his Globe and Mail account - and continued to do so through the end of the week.

Some attacked Mr. Doyle personally:

To: Doyle, John

Subject: you are a [expletive]

Please don't sleep on your side, because your tiny little brain will roll out your ear, you communist [expletive].

To: Doyle, John

Subject: Fox and your newspaper

. . . I imagine you are one of those middle-aged creeps sitting on your fat [expletive] drooling with envy at the success of others. From your photo it appears you have a receding hairline.

Charles

And several summarily withdrew their states' welcome:

To: Doyle, John

Subject: Fox News

Your [expletive] attitude exists because you are Canadian. Canadians are worthless. Canadian equals coward. You don't need just Fox News Channel. First you need to stop being Canadian.

Steve

In Texas. Stay Away.

To: Doyle, John

Subject: Your article

This article was written by an idiot. Canadians are far too dumb to appreciate Fox News anyway. Don't confuse their little heads with the facts. . . . My husband has been forced to work in Canada for awhile this spring. He said most Canadians are [expletives].

Have a good day.

Ruth, from the wonderful state of Colorado.

(Don't come for a visit.)

But most simply accused Mr. Doyle and his readership of being inferior, envious or worse . . . Canadian!

To: Doyle, John

Subject: what a joke - Fox

. . . Clearly you believe Americans must be stupid. But clearly not as dense as Canadians, who are spoon-fed their news by heavily tilted "non partial" partisans such as yourself.

Your problem, you creep, is that you are Canadian.

Regards,

Ron

To: Doyle, John

Subject: nice try [EXPLETIVE!]

{hellip}True freedom of speech and diversity of opinion TERRIFIES you left-wing [expletives]. That is why your "1st Amendment" equivalent has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. You Canadians are really quite sad to us Americans. We generally feel sorry for you and your weak, dependent country.

John

Springfield, Va. ****USA****

To: Doyle, John

Subject: Your article

Why don't you just shut your damn mouth. Your lucky we don't attack Canada next. We hate communists here.

Mr. Doyle responded to the flood of e-mail - and to Mr. O'Reilly's comments - in another column on Wednesday.

The very idea that The Globe and Mail is "far left" only proves my point that the Fox News Channel is the most hilarious thing on American TV since "Seinfeld." . . .

The people who support Fox News must be the most uncivil and foul-mouthed creatures on the planet. This is an informed opinion. They'd give soccer hooligans a run for their money.

And so began a new flood of e-mail from Americans to Mr. Doyle, this time apologizing for the less-than-genteel tone of their compatriots. Most - though not all - were genteel themselves.

To: Doyle, John

Subject: May I apologize?

Dear Mr. Doyle,

. . . Whenever I hear of something like this happening, I feel compelled to apologize on behalf of civilized Americans throughout the United States. Most of the people who live in this country are neither extreme liberals or extreme right-wingers. Most of the people who live in this country do not believe the political or social dialogue is advanced by name-calling. Most of the people who live in this country are friendly folks who would invite you - a complete stranger - into their homes for dinner or, at least, a cup of coffee. . . .

Elizabeth

To: Doyle, John

Subject: Your Article regarding Americans

. . . There are [expletives] on both sides of the border. But we're not all automatically jerks just because of our country. . . .

I do apologize for the anti-Canadian comments you received, you'll never hear one from this American.

Sincerely,

Jami - Omaha, Neb.

To: Doyle, John

Subject: Fox news viewers

I saw your column on the Internet and I want to apologize for the rudeness of O'Reilly and his viewers. In TV terms, I think most of these people live in parts of the country that "C.S.I." couldn't use for their story lines because all the DNA is the same and there are no dental records.

To: Doyle, John

Subject: Fox News Channel

. . . It has been my observation that the people who trust Fox News are the religiously insane, the rabid conservatives and those with the attention span of a cocker spaniel being shown a card trick.

Warmest regards,

Steven

For all the apologizing, however, it was Mr. O'Reilly who, by week's end, was clinging to the last laugh. Responding to Mr. Doyle's Wednesday column, Mr. O'Reilly produced a letter writer of his own for his TV audience.

Earlier this week we told you that many Canadians want the Fox News Channel, that so far the government up there has blocked. . . .

Now I receive scores of letters like this one from Donna in Toronto:

"We need fair and balanced news from Fox because The Globe and Mail and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are so far left. The CBC is called by many the Communist Broadcasting Corporation. Please don't use my last name because I don't want the government to know that I'm illegally watching Fox on the satellite. You see, we're allowed to hear only what they want us to hear."

So Doyle, spin that. You're clueless.

[Drake Tungsten]

They have TV in Canada? I'll be damned...

[Nubclear]

Well, if Japan has advanced to the point where it has computers...it seems kind of obvious that Canada would have TVs

[Frankychan]

Fox News isn't nothing more than a pulpit where the Christian-right can spout their ideology and mask it as "news".

Ever actually listen to the reporters? In interviews, they use a LOT of leading questions.

"Fair and Balanced" my a**.

[The Mad Monk]

Shouldn't our Brothers to the North(TM) be allowed to make up their own minds on that matter?

[Nubclear]

Sure.

Unless they choose to defy our lord god Bush