On the previous two occasions Canada has hosted the Olympics, I was thrilled by the prospect of the Games and filled with a mix of national pride and that “family of man” camaraderie the Olympic movement is supposed to symbolize.  This time not so much.

The official commencement of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games celebration was marked yesterday by the arrival of the Olympic torch in Victoria.

Over the next 45 days the flame will be carried from one end of the country to the other (and presumably back) by 12,000 proud Canadians we’re told are honored to have been chosen to represent their nation and all that the Olympic spirit represents.

Like sponsorship money.

Earlier in the week, CTV, supposedly cash strapped but somehow still able to shell out $90 million for the right to become the official host broadcaster for the Games, (more than double what CBC paid for the far more lucrative, longer and more sports filled 2008 Summer Games) brought us live coverage of the Olympic flame being lit in Panathenian stadium in downtown Athens. 

During this, the commentator referred to “the sacred flame” being prepared for its journey here from its home “in Ancient Greece”. How the Olympic movement became a recognized religion or the method by which such holy fire would travel through time from Ancient Greece to our modern era remained unexplained in the welter of hyperbole already being rolled out by whoever is writing this crap for CTV.

The rest of the network’s crack team of Olympic embedded journalists immediately swung into action from morning show through hard newscasts to gossip mongering magazine hosts to let me know every detail of the flame’s flight and the exciting journey it would take into the hearts of Canadians once it got here.

Here we see the flame enjoying an in-flight meal of Oxygen. I believe the sacred flame has the aisle seat while its backups cope with a lack of leg room. In contrast to recommended Canadian flight safety standards, however, none of the flames appear to be wearing seat belts.

What CTV’s meat puppets glossed over in their excitement was that 2500 of our 12,000 torch bearers would be employees of CTV, the Globe and Mail and other corporate entities who have ponied up the cash to pay for the torch run.

In other words, what has been presented to us for months as a generous corporate contribution to national pride is really little more than a tax-deductable marketing expense.

More than 100,000 Canadians applied for the honor of carrying the torch, agreeing in the process to pay their own expenses to get to whichever 300 metre strip of pavement had been designated as their portion of the route.

But 2500 of them, including eager school children, former Olympic athletes and anybody who worked for a rival media outlet were turned away, so the likes of “e-Talk” hosts Ben Mulroney and Tanya Kim could take their gossip show on the road.

Above, the cast of CTV’s new series “Splash Park Boys” carries the torch.

Speaking on Canada’s foremost sports program, Bob McCown’s “Prime Time Sports”, Globe columnist and torch runner Stephen Brunt defended his journalistic integrity by saying, “This is all part of the machinery of the Olympic Games and the money machine that is the Olympic Games”.

In other words, don’t expect to see Mr. Brunt wade in on the recent revelations by China’s Sports Minister that he got IOC President Jacques Rogge elected on the condition that he land China the 2008 Summer Games or that the IOC head has since been quite vocal in his support of the Chinese crackdown in Tibet.

Or maybe, just don’t expect his column to be featured all that prominently if he does.

Didn’t Mr. Brunt lose as many tax dollars on the failed Toronto 2008 bid to this corruption as the rest of us?

Or is that all just part of the “money machine” that is the Olympics too and forgivable now that some Canadian company (like his own) is finally making a buck off it?

The full text of the discussion can be found here in Prime Time’s Monday podcast. McCown’s website also hosts a column by William Huston stating that Globe editors were so concerned about the negative backlash of all this that they pulled a torch relay section that was supposed to run in today’s paper.

I’ve always been a fan of Mr. Brunt’s writing, particularly his superb books, so it’ll be interesting to see if he skews far from what was offered in today’s G&M by their first torch bearer, Gary Mason. After describing a relay organizer who gets teary eyed just talking about the torch, Mr. Mason offers the following…

“Our group represented a true cross-section of Canadians. There were former Olympians, such as skier Allison Forsyth. There were moms running for daughters who had died. An aboriginal teacher and a diabetes researcher. There was Morgan Tierney, a former UBC goaltender, who spent four years on her hockey team and didn't play a regular season game, though she got into the team's last playoff game of her final season.

Lloyd Robertson, the CTV anchor, also ran with us.”

Gee, let’s not miss a chance to slip in that corporate reminder, huh, Gary? One big happy family doing all we can to tug the national heartstrings for ratings.

Mr. Mason also mentions the many who cheered him along the route, while failing to remind his readers that one of them could have had his place in the spotlight --- if only they’d had his company’s money and connections. His full column is here.

Elsewhere in the paper of record, reporters describe upset children who didn’t get to see the flame pass by because…

“About 400 anti-Olympic demonstrators wound through the downtown core. The zombie-themed march zig-zagged unpredictably through the streets, keeping police on the move to keep rush-hour traffic at bay.”

Interesting journalistic slant isn’t it? Globe and Mail sponsored torch runners “a true cross-section of Canadians”. Anybody opposed --- Zombies.

It’s sad that the values of the Olympic Games have apparently fallen so out of favor that their worth can only be realized through the furthering of somebody else’s corporate agenda. Although this isn’t the first time that’s happened.

 

The original torch relay was conceived by Adolf Hitler as a way of promoting the dominant Aryan race propaganda of the 1936 Berlin Games and carried through the capital cities of European countries he would subjugate not long after, symbolically reminding the world that all roads would soon lead to the home of the true master race.

You don’t hear CTV mentioning that they’re following in Hitler’s footsteps in their import dripping coverage of the torch relay. But by having their staff doing the running their message is much the same. Some of us are more important than the rest of you. Some of us are better than you. Some of us have a rightful place in the spotlight you paid for --- just like we have a right to more of your money through carriage fees to bring you even more of our endless, self-referential, self-aggrandizing drivel.

And those rights don’t just include basking in the warmth of a sacred flame and a snazzy tracksuit and toque.

Although the province of British Columbia has a shortage of H1N1 vaccine, it was revealed that the Torch relay team (including a phalanx of “Zombie-fighting” cops who surround the runners every step of the way) was at the front of the needle line, vaccinated prior to far more at risk groups like pre-school children, pregnant women and those with underlying health conditions that would have made them expendable to the inventor of the original torch relay --- and apparently just as easily shunted aside by those in charge of the current one.

“Bread and Circuses” were a mainstay of the Roman Empire as it crumbled, with one Emperor after another keeping a restless populace placated by free loaves of bread and free admission to their Gladiatorial spectacles. The process continues today --- except for the “free” part. Now we all pay the freight ($6 Billion and rising for Vancouver 2010) so the Emperors can be entertained.

And that process apparently includes co-opting respected journalists, making sure your network stars trot through tiny towns towing a “Support Local TV” banner and otherwise pretending this is all just the way the world works nowadays so you might as well just enjoy it.

Well, you know what I’m going to enjoy most? I’m going to revel in all those scrubbed “wouldn’t say poo if they stepped in it” CTV celebs and jock-sniffers showing off a torch that was clearly designed to represent the host Province’s major export in the form of a giant stylized aluminum BC Bud Marijuana joint.

I can’t wait for Ross Rebagliati to take a final toke off it before handing it to Senator Nancy Greene to light the official Olympic flame in 45 days.

Can a solution to the Nation’s deficit be far behind?

I’m also going to take comfort in the knowledge that people now know that each CTV Celebrity and Globe and Mail columnist running the torch represents one kid in a wheelchair, one Canadian whose father died of Cancer or one past or future Olympic athlete who was denied a chance to express their personal love of their country in the name of Corporate greed.

Way to thank the people who buy your product, guys! 

And then I’m going to root for a Men’s Hockey Final between Russia and Sweden.

Not just because it looks like both those two countries will have a better team in Vancouver than we will. Not just because all that foreign content will more accurately reflect normal prime time programming on CTV. But because it might make the network finally realize that you can’t buy blockbuster ratings, no matter how much you stack the deck in your favor.

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Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper caused a frisson of outrage among the country’s chattering classes by stating that he didn’t watch Canadian television news. Many of these were the same people who had cheered vociferously when American President Barrack Obama declared that he didn’t watch the most popular newscast in his own country.

Interesting comparison that, how one head of state is placing himself out of touch by not getting his news from the same sources as the majority of his constituents while the other is not --- for doing the same thing.

But Mr. Harper’s problem might soon start afflicting more and more of us since, as of last night, CBC Television made it clear that it wasn’t covering the news anymore either.

After months of tinkering and weeks of excited promotional announcements, CBC debuted its revamped and modernized “CBC News Network” on Monday, climaxing in the debut of the new nightly news hour “The National”, hosted by Peter Mansbridge.

The old nightly news hour was also called “The National” and was also hosted by Peter Mansbridge, so it would seem they didn’t revamp and modernize everything.

But it was clear from the opening seconds that they’d gotten rid of the lengthy intros and the big honking news desk. In the hour that followed, it also became clear that they’d also gotten rid of anything that could be construed as news.

Now, I’m all for change. And I totally get that everything needs a fresh coat of paint or a new approach from time to time. But what appeared on Canadian TV screens last night was little more than a white flag, a surrender of anything that could be labelled journalism in favor of offering style over substance.

The opening story, the one old Pete needed to make sure we got before anybody even had a chance to reach for the remote, was the arrival of Swine Flu vaccinations. After a summer of flogging the Federal government for dragging its feet on getting the population immunized, for supplying aboriginal outposts with body bags instead of hand sanitizer and not properly promoting the coming danger, the CBC suddenly didn’t seem to know what spin to put on the story.

We were shown endless lines waiting for hours to be immunized in Calgary. Didn’t these people know that kids and pregnant women were supposed to go first? Then to a Vancouver clinic where there were no lines because they only got 80 doses for their population of hugely at-risk aboriginal women and addicts with HIV. Okay, it turns out they could get a shot if they just walked a couple of blocks to a Public clinic or waited until next week when another shipment arrived, but according to the reporter aboriginal women and folks with HIV won’t do that.

Okay, so I’m getting confused. Is the problem too much demand and not enough shots or…

Never mind.

We move fast on the New National so it’s on to Toronto, where, despite a poll that says half of us don’t think we need a shot, everybody was being urged to line up as soon as possible by the local director of public health, who, although not being a kid or a woman who appeared pregnant or even aboriginal was interviewed while getting a shot that I had just been led to believe could have been better used on some junkie with AIDS in Vancouver.

I think…

Isn’t the News supposed to make you less confused about what’s going on?

Was the CBC’s take that the drug distribution system was messed up? Were a panicked population not co-operating out of fear of the impending pandemic? Was it that the elites were elbowing aboriginal women out of line to make sure they were safe? Do we really need to get a shot or don’t we?

Couldn’t tell you. Because under the new “Let’s get on with it” format we were already moving on to story number two.

No context. Little content. Why? I guess it interrupts throwing all these important stories at you as fast as possible.

All the news that can possibly fit or something like that.

Okay, so…

Story #2 was a poll showing that 80% of Canadians had no interest in next week’s visit of the Prince of Wales.

Really?

That’s important News?

And if 80% of us already don’t give a fuck why is it the CBC’s second lead?

No idea.

But we still got 2 or 3 minutes of some British newspaper editor opining that it was “the worst possible news” for the Royal family.

Seriously?

Do you think it’ll stop them acting like pompous assholes?

Nobody asked.

Toward the end of those three minutes, however, the CBC reporter glossed over one astonishing tidbit, that Canadians pay more per capita to support these inbred aristocrats than the British.

What!?!

But did anybody at the CBC add any more information on that? Nope. Instead, Mansbridge lowered his tone to one of hushed concern and asked “Does the Palace know?”

Does the Palace know?!!!

Dude! your reporter already said 80% of your audience doesn’t fucking care!!! Why would we give a flying fadoo what the Queen thinks?

Could you ask about the money?

No.

Moving on.

Story #3: Frank Stronach wants a weaker dollar.

Why?

Could it be because it might cost him less to borrow money from American Investment Banks to buy Opal from Germany?

Again, and despite having the new host of the flagship business show on the revamped network present in person, Pete didn’t ask. And she didn’t act like she’d have known anyway. Instead they both gushed at how cool it was to stand around doing the news instead of doing it sitting down and moved on.

Oh, and a note here to CBC Production --- if you’re going to shoot Peter Mansbridge standing up instead of sitting behind a desk, could somebody either tailor his cuffs or get him to hitch up his pants during the commercial breaks? I mean, if all’s you got’s style, get it right. Just sayin’.

Story #4: was protestors in Ottawa disrupting the House of Commons. No footage of the incident because the cameras in the House didn’t catch it. No details on the Bill they were yelling about either. Apparently six of them were fined 60 bucks.

Six people fined sixty bucks and it’s story #4.

Other news out of Ottawa yesterday was of a Conservative Senator under investigation for fixing government contracts. Elsewhere in the country, the Mob apparently has a stranglehold on Montreal City Hall and the Quebec construction industry. In world news, massive car bomb attacks killed 155 people and injured more than 500 in Iraq and Fidel Castro’s sister admitted she was a CIA mole.

None of that made the CBC National news on Monday night, let alone was deemed more newsworthy than 6 idiots in Ottawa being fined 60 bucks.

Story #5: Jerry Moyes agrees to sell the Phoenix Coyotes to the NHL. Mansbridge comments that this likely means the team will not end up in the hands of Canadian Hockey wannabe Jim Balsillie.

Duh.

I guess Pete’s been so busy learning how to stand around with one hand in his pocket that neither he nor any of the show’s many producers was aware that an Arizona court had ruled Balsillie was ineligible to get the team and Jim himself had announced he was giving up more than two weeks ago.

But tonight that’s suddenly “new” News.

Mansbridge then got into what appears to be a new rapid fire format that repeated a couple of times, allotting about 10 seconds each to three or four stories in a row, offering absolutely nothing beyond a couple of brief sentences of copy.

Again, no context. No detail. No insight. All those things CBC News with its several hundred million dollar a year budget is supposed to offer that other competitors and the Internet cannot.

We then moved on to a series of what I think are supposed to be feature reports even though they’re really short. In these segments, female correspondents turn up like wet-behind-the-ears cub reporters called into Editor Pete’s office to talk about their awesome day of newsgathering.

First up was “What’s in our drinking water?” Turns out it’s a antibiotic resistant bacteria. Now that’s news!

Except it’s not.

Seems it might be a problem in 20 years, if the scientists we were shown working on a solution don’t find one.

So….this might be news in 20 years.

Not now.

And after Peter goes all Fox News on how “brutal” the bacteria looks in the slide show we got, the reporter buttons her own apparently now complete non-story with --- and I quote --- “Just drinking the water won’t make you sick. But Superbugs, IF they do develop, they CAN BE serious --- especially to the SICK.”

Before the next feature with Wendy Mesley, which has been hyped three or four times now, because she’s like a CBC Star, we get another quick hit story.

Ontario has imposed a cell phone law prohibiting all but hands free systems while driving. I live in Ontario so I’ve already been bombarded with this for weeks. And I doubt many people in the rest of the country care.

But CBC augments this snippet by letting me know the province has also revamped the Amber Alert laws so cops can issue one if they simply “believe” a child has been abducted. And they also don’t have to have a description of the abductor or the kidnap vehicle anymore…

Um, excuse me, Peter, but could somebody let me know how that works? I got Bluetooth, so if I’m driving and see an Amber Alert, I can call. But if I don’t have a description of the Perp or know what kind of car he’s driving, do I just dial 911 if I see any kid in a car?

But Mansbridge has no time for such nonsense. He’s already got a reporter in Winnipeg going “in-depth” on all the stupid things people do in their cars.

Said reporter starts out sitting in a cruiser with a 20 year Winnipeg cop who’s “seen it all” to watch for people doing stupid stuff. And the cop promises that we won’t have to wait long.

But apparently we do, because what follows is a montage of people doing stupid stuff, most of it from Youtube clips that went viral two or three years ago.

This is the new CBC News Network!?! Youtube clips and a reporter describing what he once saw this one time – at band camp…

Anyway, the cop buttons that piece, warning people not to do anything stupid – which apparently they already weren’t because he and the reporter didn’t actually shoot any original footage.

Okay, Peter announces we’re getting to Wendy Mesley’s feature soon – right after a gadget CBC has been “scrutinizing” that doesn’t cure cancer. Only it turns out that this story will be appearing --- uh --- later in the week…

Then ten seconds on the Karadich genocide trial, another ten on people in Pakistan starving, five for the new elections in Afghanistan and about the same for 14 American soldiers and DEA agents killed there.

Um – isn’t all of this more newsworthy than people driving while having sex and drinking water that isn’t really dangerous?

Isn’t this still the respected world news service that all our tax dollars have supposedly paid for?

Apparently not.

Instead, Peter does a stand-up interview with former Canadian General Rick Hillier who’s got a new book out, about things that went on in Afghanistan five years ago and then buttons the interview by letting us know that Gen. Hillier will be interviewed for a much longer time and in far greater depth on “The Hour” which is coming up in, uh, less than fifteen minutes…

So --- why did The National bother? Slow news day? The guy was already in the building, so what the hell?

Geez, aren’t ratings for “The Hour” low enough without cutting them off at the knees like this?

Never mind.

Moving on.

To the weather.

Okay, I’m Canadian. I love weather. What’s coming tomorrow?

Don’t know.

The entire weather report is about a tropical storm bearing down on the Philippines.

I kid you not.

And our trusty meteorologist then throws things back to Mansbridge with “That’s your forecast. Back to you, Peter.”

Lady, it’s not my forecast! I don’t live in Manila. And neither does anybody else who’s watching!

By now, I just want to see this Wendy Mesley story they keep hyping and try to find an actual newscast.

But first, Mansbridge has to pepper me with another flurry of ten second stories. The internet will soon allow non-Latin domain names. Great. Including me, how many people watching this show don’t write in Hindi? NASA animation shows astronauts arriving on the moon in 2015. Good. Still lots of time to plan the party. And somebody pretended a meteor landed in Latvia. Wow, bizarre Baltic hoaxes are now important news stories at the CBC.

But finally, it’s time for Wendy Mesley. And her big feature is about people who are profiting from the Swine flu. Okay. Goddamn opportunist sonsabitches! Let’s have at ‘em!

But it turns out the profiteers are Glaxo, who made the vaccine that was so damn important in the lead story. And Purell, who’ve sold $22 Million in hand sanitizer since the CBC started hyping the importance of hand washing last Spring.

Guys, this isn’t news. And they aren’t profiteers. Where are the scam artists and the cheerleaders of doom?

They don’t name any. Instead, Wendy puts on a Hazmat suit she bought online (probably with your tax dollars) and goes to a bookstore to buy a book on keeping your kids from getting sick.

The National even adds a bouncy whistling theme to all this so you know it’s supposed to be really funny even if it’s not.

Done with her little bookstore prank, Wendy then goes online to show you all the other silly stuff you can buy to keep the flu at bay.

Not only was Wendy’s exposé complete bullshit, I’m sure it cheered up the family of a 13 year old Boy in a Toronto suburb who died of Swine Flu earlier in the day.

I’m certain it must have also offered some insight to the kids on his hockey team and school he went to who are now under quarantine.

Perhaps it will lighten the load of the relatives of a ten year old girl from London, Ontario, also a Swine Flu victim, who will be buried tomorrow.

But then, those kids died far from the centre of CBC news coverage in downtown Toronto, so nobody at The National probably even noticed.

Mansbridge’s response to this utterly insensitive tastelessness --- and I quote --- “Good story. We can expect more of these?”

Wendy: “You bet” chirped out with the glee of somebody who’s just realized that trivializing the news is way more fun than actually reporting it.

Jesus Fucking Christ, Wendy! You’re better than this!

You already divorced this Mansbridge ass clown once! What’re you doing co-signing his bullshit?

You used to be one of the CBC’s best reporters. Why are you suddenly trying to become the next Samantha Bee?

I reached for the remote. But there was only one more story to go, so why not see if the new format could somehow redeem itself.

And this is where we went from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Mansbridge introduced the tale of a Venezuelan Symphony conductor who has apparently set the music world on fire. And he’s about to be interviewed by Jian Gomeshi of CBC radio’s “Q”.

Wait, isn’t that the same radio station that stopped playing Classical music because they said nobody listened to it anymore? And isn’t the CBC the same company that fired all of its classical orchestras for the same reason?

Is somebody having a change of heart? Is Classical music making some kind of profound return to popularity?

Don’t know.

Y’see, first Pete and Jian talk about how astonishing this guy is and Gomeshi goes on at length about what an amazing interview he just did. Then we get the interview.

Or rather, one sentence of the interview.

One single sentence.

Then it’s back to Gomeshi and the news that you can hear the whole thing on CBC radio on “Q” and it’ll be repeated on the National “later in the week”.

WTF?

Guys this is not news. It’s self-promotion and the kind of news omission and trivialization even Fox News doesn’t stoop to presenting.

This is abject, ”We don’t have a fucking clue about what’s important anymore!” and “We also have no idea what we’re doing!”

I finally turn the shit off, having officially watched my last CBC TV newscast.

What’s the point? I can learn more in five minutes surfing the Internet. And it won’t cost me and the rest of the country hundreds of millions in taxes that might be better used --- I don’t know --- maybe getting Swine Flu vaccine distributed in a more timely and organized fashion so 10 and 13 year old kids don’t have to die.

It’s clear that CBC News has completely lost its way. No wonder the journalistic rank and file have already publicly rebelled.

And no wonder the Prime Minister doesn’t bother watching.

Maybe he’s not as out of touch as some at the CBC would have you believe.

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When a screenwriter finishes a script, he doesn’t have to go to a lot of trouble making it presentable. # 5 Brads. 20 lb. Hammermill paper. Maybe a cardstock cover (I recommend “Proscript” – they come pre-punched).

Some screenwriters, at the end of a series or later in their careers when they want to remind themselves that they actually had a career, will bind their produced scripts in leather with a gold imprint approximating the final product’s title font.

The unproduced scripts stay in a drawer awaiting the inevitable “Have you got something with a woman in jeopardy that can be shot in Bulgaria?” call from your agent.

But there are people who take the printed page further, pulling you up with inspired awe.

Such is what follows.

For those who love books, who cherish a rainy afternoon exploring musty shelves of long forgotten masterpieces, this is “Book Porn”.

And I have a feeling even those who have traded paper for a Kindle, audiobooks or MP3 downloads may feel a twinge of loss or even a whispered “Really? Daddy wants…”

Only $4600 a copy.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Pictorial Webster's: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

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