The Bruce Report

If I say, hypothetically, that a particular peace officer – the enfant terrible, let’s say, of a local neighbourhood beat – is a rabble-rousing, trouble-making bully, then said cop might have reason to haul my butt into court.

But he wouldn’t have a ghost-in-the-machine of a chance of persuading his buddies to bust open my door, brandish a warrant, abscond with the tools of my trade, and haul my aforementioned butt off to jail.

Then again, I’m not Charles LeBlanc, the Fredericton-based gadfly and social activist who cooled his heels in a provincial cell (for six hours last week before being released) on suspicion of criminal libel.

Apparently, the blogger had written something nasty about one of the capital city’s finest. And some policemen, though not all, suffer from a painful condition known as paper-thin dermatitis.

Of course, this was not LeBlanc’s first run-in with the law and its political masters. Over the years, he has garnered a well-earned reputation for noisy, intemperate, epithet-laced speech. It’s cost him access to the Legislature, public support and credibility. On January 16, just days before the raid on his apartment, he pleaded guilty, in a separate incident, to disturbing the peace.

But like him or loathe him, LeBlanc is not the issue. Due process is.

Invoking Section 301 of the Criminal Code – which states, “everyone who publishes a defamatory libel is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years” – is not only heavy handed; it’s absurd.

The standard for a charge of this kind in this country is so high, it’s practically impossible to prove (which is one reason why four provinces have already declared it unconstitutional; that is, its prosecution is more likely to render mischief than justice).

To obtain a guilty judgement under this section, the Crown must show, without a shadow of doubt, that the defendant knew he issued defamatory (meaning: false) statements. And with the stakes as grave as they would be, why would anyone freely admit they were aware they were lying when they mouthed off?

The best a prosecutor can expect, under these circumstances, is a concession of well-rounded ignorance from the indicted party: “I do not know what I said was wrong; nor do I know what I said was not right.”

All of which explains why libel cases are almost exclusively the province of civil court, where the wiggle room is wide, settlements are common and punishments are invariably monetary.

Still, even if criminal libel were the appropriate avenue in this case, the investigation would have to be spotlessly clean, above reproach, devoid of even the appearance of conflict. That’s a somewhat difficult feat to achieve when the allegedly offended party is a member the police force that’s collecting evidence on his behalf. (Sheesh, don’t cops have lawyers?)

“Some people are sick of Charles LeBlanc and they are happy to see something some down on him,” Fredericton City Councillor Jordon Graham posted to his blog  earlier this week. “And other people are concerned about the statement of the police force going after somebody who has clearly been on their hit list for quite some time.”

Precisely. It’s not merely the perversion of the law that should concern Fredericton Police Chief Barry MacKnight; it’s the appearance of perversion in New Brunswick’s seat of democratic government.

There’s also the chilling effect on public perceptions of civil liberties. Is LeBlanc the canary in the coal mine? When does “scratching an itch,” as Graham trenchantly muses, become a clear, if unintended, expansion of police powers at the expense of free speech. Should we all now expect a knock at the door from an angry cop, incensed by our portrayal of him in the public square, armed with an arrest warrant?

Likely, cooler heads will eventually prevail and the issue will settle with someone in a position of adult responsibility remembering what dear, old mother used to say.

Something about sticks and stones.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Once, it was a rare and much-coveted designation. Now, it’s a social disease that’s easier to contract than a case of Montezuma’s revenge from a greasy spoon.

Traditionally, “elite” (adjective) meant “exclusive”, that is: Suitable only for the very best, brightest, wealthiest, aristocratic, noble or accomplished among us. To be an “elite” (noun), therefore, was to be the cream of the crop – you know, a good thing. Today. . .well, not so much.

Writing in Slate a year ago, political commentator Jacob Weisberg observed the shifting definition of the word as a function of populist politics run amok. “Currently,” he wrote, “an elitist is someone who thinks the opinion of a minority should sometimes prevail over the opinion of a majority.”

What’s more, “It has the advantage of providing an escape hatch from the substance of issues by reframing them in cultural terms. Arguments for raising taxes, expanding health insurance, and fighting climate change are all met with by the rejoinder that some people should quit telling the rest of us how to live our lives.”

As Weisberg noted, the conceit is absurd, as people who deploy the word as an insult are, in most cases, similarly kissed by privilege: “In practice, conservatives are no less inclined than liberals to adopt superior stances or to tell people how to live their lives. Such hypocrisy is based on the construct of a pre-political state of nature, where we lived in abstract freedom until government arrived to limit and control us.”

Written like a true elitist, perhaps. But, then, it’s going around.

I notice, with some interest, that a few of the more popular, if still well-educated, Canadian newspaper columnists are lashing the word like whip.

In a screed provocatively entitled, “With Keystone, it’s Harvard vs. the heartland”, The Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente wrote recently, “These environmentalists don’t really care about safety matters such as oil leaks or possible pollution of the aquifers. It’s the oils sands they hate – the water-gulping, forest-devastating, carbon-spewing monster that’s despoiling Mother Earth.”

In other words, they are elites. Specifically, they are “the urban elites of Toronto and Vancouver” as opposed to “the kind of people who vote for Stephen Harper.”

Who knows what the college-educated scribbler, who holds an MA from the University of Toronto, really means by this? (Paradoxically, many elites don’t actually write very well). But, it is possible to infer from her characterization a fundamental bifurcation between the swelling ranks of principled snobs and the dwindling ones of the rank and file, even as it’s not possible to merit her notion with much credibility.

The Harper government recently labeled the mass of opposition against the Keystone project as “radical environmentalists”, foreign interlopers and their domestic dupes bent on destroying industry, gross domestic product, good jobs, apple pie and dear, old mother, herself.

In fact, a large constituency who wants the pipeline stopped includes truck drivers, office workers, farmers and homemakers who live and labour along its proposed route. They’re not elites, per se. But they can read and form opinions just as well. And, apparently, they don’t want to be poisoned or otherwise inconvenienced by an industry with tens-of-billions of dollars at its disposal for development.

Indeed, compared to them, how would we describe those who run the political offices and big banks responsible for juicing the monopolistic enterprises that ply Alberta’s tar sands with private capital and tax dollars purloined from the public purse?

What would we call the geologists, engineers, accountants, management consultants, and chief executive officers who will earn more money in their lifetimes from Big Oil than will a million “radical environmentalists” in theirs from donations?

Elite: “(Occasionally spelled élite) (Latin, electus – ‘chosen’) refers to an exceptional or privileged group that wields considerable power within its sphere of influence. Depending on the context, this power might be physical, spiritual, intellectual or financial.”

Yup. That sounds about right.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

If I noticed a large woman in a plastic breastplate, brandishing a toy sword and screeching like the air brakes on a tractor-trailer, trooping up my driveway, I might barricade the door and call for reinforcements.

But only if I had never seen an episode of CBC’s weekly satirical news show, “This Hour has 22 Minutes”, and, so, did not recognize the comical stylings of Mary Walsh – a.k.a. Marg Delahunty, Warrior Princess – she of ersatz armor and saucer-sized spectacles.

Apparently, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford – who called 911 after encountering the formidable Ms. Walsh and her cameraman outside his home the other day – doesn’t watch a lot of Canadian public television. Or, perhaps, he just doesn’t care for it.

In either case, the otherwise amusing incident provided perfect cover for more sober reflections on the CBC’s taste, judgement and even relevance in the age of mounting government debt and broken funny bones.

Opined Globe and Mail regular Margaret Wente in her October 26 column: “The Princess Warrior (who should have been put out to pasture years ago, in my opinion) crossed the line. Not even bona fide investigative journalists are entitled to harass whoever they want on their own property. . .The fans of Rob Ford and the fans of Mary Walsh tend to be on different sides of the culture wars. And the CBC can no longer assume that most Canadians are on its side. Its $1.1-billion budget is under serious threat, and its enemies are more powerful than ever.”

That’s a shame, for despite its pretensions and occasionally irksome attachments to socially progressive causes that ceased to resonate with most Canadians a generation ago, the CBC is still the best bang for the media buck this country in the morning, noon and night has going for it.

Now, having just survived its 75th birthday, we might count the blessings it continues to bestow on a vast land.

I’ll admit, apart from election coverage, Sunday morning marathons of “Corrie Street” and the aforementioned “This Hour”, I don’t avail myself of much of what the public broadcaster proffers on the tube. But that’s not its fault; I just don’t like TV.

I’m a radio fan and, notwithstanding years of cuts at newsrooms and to programming, no other Canadian mass medium fills the airwaves with more thorough reporting, intelligent analysis and thoughtful commentary than the CBC. And if the nation struggles, every so often, with its sense of identity, it invariably finds it on the national news, “As it Happens” and “Cross Country Checkup.”

For many in rural areas, especially those who inhabit the north, CBC Radio is the essential tether to their communities, providing a constant bitstream on regional government, current affairs and local events. The formula has worked magnificently well     and continues to faithfully fulfill the broadcaster’s mandate to “provide services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains;

be predominantly and distinctively Canadian; reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions;

actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression; be in English and in French, reflecting the different needs and circumstances of each official language community, including the particular needs and circumstances of English and French linguistic minorities; and contribute to shared national consciousness.”

Still, for me CBC Radio’s greatest attribute is its lodestone for memories. When I listen to the current crop of hosts, I recall the ghostly whispers of men and women now gone. I hear Peter Gzowski, rumbling genially about some arcane, yet fascinating, point of Canadiana. I conjure Barbara Frum and Alan Maitland and, of course, the inimitable Allan McFee whose late-night program of music and jokes defiantly rejected what its host contemptuously called “philosophy”.

Canada’s public broadcaster is an easy target for those who believe that culture is a commodity and should, therefore, always provide fungible value to all taxpayers all of the time. After all, if we pay for something equally, shouldn’t we appreciate it equally?

Tell that to Marg Delahunty. But, first, lock your doors.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Now comes the age of retribution, courtesy of one of the most powerful men (for the moment) in the world: An Australian press baron with no more practical sense than a pregnant kangaroo on a shooting range.

Rupert “Skippy” Murdoch – the octogenarian owner of the multi-billion-dollar News Corp., which owns, among other trinkets, The Wall Street Journal and Fox Broadcasting – is dismantling, bit by bit, whatever remains of public confidence in the mainstream media.

It’s not the revelation of journalistic misdeeds at the News of the World. It’s not even the unceremonious and transparently strategic shut-down of that paper weeks ago. It’s everything that’s happened since in this tawdry melodrama that makes people wonder whether governments should impose tighter controls on the Fourth Estate, itself.

It’s a bad idea, but, under the circumstances, can you blame anyone for raising the question?

The top three executives at the company’s newspaper division – Murdoch, his son James and former editor Rebekah Brooks – faced a parliamentary committee in London this week convened to get to the heart of the phone-hacking scandal that has rocked Britain’s political establishment.

Brooks is actually under arrest on allegations that she participated and, separately, bribed police officers. She told members: “Of course I have regrets. The idea that [a] phone was accessed by someone being paid by the News of the World, or even worse authorised by someone at the News of the World, is as abhorrent to me as it is to everyone in this room. And it is an ultimate regret that the speed in which we have tried to find out the bottom of these investigations has been too slow.”

As to whether she ever bribed a cop, she insisted: “I can say that I have never paid a policeman myself. I have never sanctioned, knowingly sanctioned, a payment to a police officer. In my experience of dealing with the police, the information they give to newspapers comes free of charge.”

For his part, James Murdoch testified, according to a report in the Globe and Mail, “he did not know that his company had paid confidential out-of-court settlements to two victims of phone hacking. Nor, he said, did he know that the company was paying the legal fees of Glen Mulcaire, a private investigator under contract to The News of the World who was convicted in 2007 of hacking into the phones of staff members of the royal family. He said: ‘It’s a real matter of regret that the facts could not emerge and could not be gotten to, to my understanding faster.’”

Finally, the pater familias, himself, appeared simultaneously apologetic and combative, interrupting his son at one point to declare, “This is the most humble day of my life,” and stipulating at another, “I feel that people I trusted – I don’t know who, on what level – have let me down, and I think they have behaved disgracefully. And I think, frankly, that I’m the best person to see it through.”

So, no one in a position of power and responsibility knew anything about anything when it mattered – a conclusion that may have prompted an observer, a clown who goes by the name of Jonnie Marbles, to rush the old man with a cream pie at the ready before being gob-smacked by Murdoch’s 42-year-old wife.

But the question becomes: Why didn’t they know? Where they naive, negligent, lazy or otherwise preoccupied? Where they too busy protecting and building “shareholder value” that they lost sight of the other crucial obligations of upper management: To protect the public interest, especially from the rogues and charlatans even the finest and most responsible companies sometimes employ?

All of this feeds the blanket perception that news organizations owned by distracted multinationals can never be trusted to do the right thing, and the dangerous notion that press freedoms should be administered, even curtailed, by third parties.

Thanks, Skippy. That’s all we need right now.

As the age of “citizen” journalism dawns for every fruitcake in possession of a web log, the New Democratic Party’s deep concern about the incipient threat of “false news” in the mainstream media seems almost quaint.

But its determination to ensure that a CRTC regulation, which bars broadcasting incorrect or misleading information, remains intact also borders on irrelevance. It knows the number of horses that have already bolted from this particular barn; perhaps it should now shut the door on the holstered few that remain.

The controversy, which bubbled up this week, involved a parliamentary committee’s efforts to persuade the commission to dilute the purpose of the rule by adjusting the language accordingly: A designation of “false news” should henceforth apply only when broadcasters know the information they present is wrong (not, as is currently written, regardless of their intent) and, even then, only if their irresponsibility poses a danger to the “lives, health or safety of the public.”

So, if I were to report in my nightly newscast that an increasing number of food “experts” had concluded that Listeria is not a potentially fatal bacterial infection, but rather a nutty-flavoured additive that can, under the right circumstances, promote bone growth among the elderly and infirm, I’d be in direct violation of the rule.

If, on the other hand, I were to state, as fact, the prime minister’s heretofore hidden agenda to transform the Northwest Passage into a theme park for weary business travelers who missed their connecting flight to Alpha-Centauri, I might be a barking lunatic. But, at least, the CRTC can’t touch me.

That, said NDP MP Charlie Angus in a news conference, is utterly unacceptable: “What’s disturbed us with this proposed regulation change is that it’s happening very quickly and there’s very little awareness of it. It seems astounding that the CRTC would consider such a move at a time when we see the growing backlash to the poisoned levels of political discourse in the American media.”

In fact, as amusingly imbecilic as this watering-down is, the imbroglio is absurd from every perspective.

The “false news” directive has been around since talking heads first mounted the air waves. And there is no evidence that it has prevented or curtailed journalistic excesses in professional shops that already self-regulate their conduct and content with the kind of zeal otherwise reserved for cops and firefighters.

That’s not to say all, or even many, journalists are paragons of virtue. It is to say that those who sin are almost always uncovered by their peers and excoriated, often publicly. And they suffer the reporter’s worst possible fate: For the good of the brotherhood, their calls don’t get returned. Ever.

The NDP’s mewling is pure political catnip. It knows Sun-News, a cable TV channel modeled to some degree after the ridiculously popular, far right-wing Fox News in the United States, is set to launch in a few months. It seeks to derail these plans by institutionalizing the principle of journalistic ethics, appealing to the phony integrity of a toothless rule on the books of a broadcast regulator whose influence over such matters is light, at best – especially in the weird, wooly, rollicking Internet era where everything that can go almost always does.

If the NDP’s white knights are truly concerned about the future of “political discourse” in this country – and not, which is more likely, the drubbing it expects to receive at the hands of Sun-News’ Glen Beck wannabes – it might address the way it comports itself in the House of Commons, in parliamentary negotiations and on the hustings. The same goes for every political party with a taste for power in this country.

Citizens don’t elect the CBC, or CTV or Sun-News, for that matter, to represent or reflect their interests. If, somehow, these broadcasters manage to speak more compellingly and persuasively with their truthiness, than members of parliament do with their hysterical, blog-worthy ravings, then this nation’s third party is not merely quaint in its irrelevance.

It’s downright sad.

When a few hundred-thousand people (give or take) gather under a perfect sky in that most imperfect arena of western democracy to declare how frustrated they are with being frustrated, you know that satire – the trusty steed of the rational and level-headed – has finally galloped into the big top of the American political circus.

Or was that Jon Stewart and his partner in irony Stephen Colbert prancing and whinnying last Saturday afternoon during their “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” to the amusement of a grinning throng that jammed D.C’s National Mall from the Capitol Building to the Washington Monument?

The brainchild of the comic geniuses behind the nightly “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report”, this three-hour extravaganza – which attracted attendance from across the continental United States – was designed to prick the bloated balloons of extremist punditry and partisan politics that now block the light of reason in the good, old red, white and blue. And neither the left nor the right were spared the rapier.

But perhaps the funniest commentaries issued from the crowd, itself – through its collection of arch and sometimes absurdly amusing placards: “I’m somewhat irritated about extreme outrage”, “Moderation or death. . .or cake”, “More beer nuts, less paranoid nuts”, “Does this sign make my butt look fat?”

And, my personal favourite: “On the whole, I’m rather gruntled.”

It’s tempting to dismiss an event like this as so much tender-hearted bonhomie – harmless mischief, silly fun, but hardly consequential. After all, where were the political endorsements and policy planks? Apart from a few musicians and comedians, where were the big name celebrities to lend their reputations and cast their auras of approval? What, exactly, was the mainstream media supposed to cover? How, precisely, were election-obsessed Congressmen and women expected to respond?

Even Stewart seemed momentarily flustered when he announced at the rally’s outset, “I’m really not sure what this is all about, but I’m happy you all showed up.”

And yet, in this musing suddenly appeared the answer: It was about reclaiming the high ground of classic liberal democracy for those who, for generations, have been responsible for its stewardship; it was about celebrating the quotidian struggles and communitarian achievements of the moderate, moral majority of Americans.

And, yes, they exist in droves (as this crowd proved) beyond the beltways of political pandering, special interest outrage and media manipulation. They exist in villages and towns and cities; on farms and rivers; in bank towers and universities; in schools and small businesses.

Just as they do here.

It’s been a truly bizarre couple of years for Canadians. The image of my country I too often perceive through the dispatches from the front lines of partisan warfare bears no resemblance to the one I apprehend as I go about my day earning a living, helping my children, chatting with neighbours, donating whatever time or money I can to causes I deem worthy.

I’ve never met a supporter of the Petitcodiac head pond who wants to eviscerate me just because I disagree with him. I’ve never encountered a proponent of the long-gun registry who wants to shoot me in the face (figuratively, of course) just because I believe we can make better and more effective use of our public dollars.

Most people are reasonable. They agree to disagree. And then they do lunch. That’s how our system has survived for hundreds of years. That’s how it thrives when we’re not distracted by ad hominem attacks and outrageous hyperbole wardrobed in the raiment of fateful urgency.

Not every issue is a tempest. Not all disputes signal the end of days. A Muslim is not a terrorist. A Christian is not a bigot. A Liberal is not a communist. A Conservative is not a fascist. Not every cloud needs a silver lining. And not every dark tunnel leads to Paradise.

Sometimes, as Jon Stewart cracked wise last Saturday, it just leads to New Jersey under an imperfect, but perfectly reasonable, sky.

Headlining the National Post’s website last Thursday was a piece that confidently declared the federal Conservatives had pulled slightly ahead of their Grit nemeses, a claim made credible by the results of two, hot-off-the-presses public opinion surveys.

An EKOS poll “found Stephen Harper’s Tories are widening their lead over Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals [among] 34.4 per cent of respondents, while Liberal support dropped [to] 27.8 per cent.” Meanwhile, the article reported, “Nanos Research today puts the Conservatives at 36.6 per cent among committed voters, followed by the Liberals [at] 32.4 per cent.”

To which I might have shrugged and commenced surfing for the latest on the rescued Chilean miners, or Brother Andre’s elevation to sainthood, but for a nagging question: When did so much of political journalism in this and other countries become so stupefyingly uninteresting?

What’s particularly edifying or newsworthy about polls that show Messrs. Harper and Ignatieff enjoy essentially the same level of popular support today than they did last week, last month or even last year? What am I to conclude about findings whose variances fall within their own statistical margins of error?

Yet, care I must lest I miss the big picture in the pollster’s social contract to bore, bother and otherwise bewilder the general public.

Certainly, the Sunday morning news shows on both CBC and CTV had a field day reading fine print. How is it possible, the talking heads bleated, for Harper to remain in the good books of one-third of Canadian voters when his government has just suffered a humiliating setback at the United Nations (its failure to obtain a seat on the Security Council), the utter repudiation of the United Arab Emirates (its eviction from a strategic military base in that country), and mounting opposition to its multi-billion-dollar purchase of first-strike fighter jets?

More shocking still, the chattering class opined, is Ignatieff’s inability to benefit from these policy gaffes. What does this say about his advisors, his political acumen, his leadership? What does this say about Canadians in the breaking years of the 21^st Century?

In fact, the questions reveal more about the big, wide world of punditry than they do about electoral sympathies. In the rush to become more relevant, more “engaged” with readers, viewers and listeners – more determined than ever to maintain a productive “conversation” with “consumers” and advertisers – all media (both mainstream and online varieties) have ironically missed the point of their own conversion.

The ubiquitous poll is now the preferred means to impose the preoccupations of the press on the great unwashed and not the efficacious instrument to understand what’s really on the minds of most people. It’s how such an open-ended, utterly meaningless query like, “If an election were held tomorrow, which party would you vote for?” rates serious media scrutiny.

Uh, gee, I dunno. Ask me tomorrow. Meanwhile, my savings are gone, I’m about to be evicted, I’ve lost my job, and my kid is sick. I’ll probably vote for the candidate who can help me out with any one of those things. Now, don’t phone me again.

Not long ago, a prominent polling company in the United States – knowing how voracious its clients in the press were to report on public opinions about Barack Obama’s religious affiliation – asked a sample of American conservatives whether they believed the U.S. president is a Muslim. Nearly 20 per cent said “yes”. And the “news” made headlines around the world, despite the fact that a sizeable percentage of respondents also said they didn’t care, as “being a Muslim” was hardly pertinent to the highest office-holder’s job description.

Most (though not all) public opinion surveys these days serve the prurient interests of many members of the media and the sometimes pernicious objectives of public figures seeking to retain or obtain power. As one Canadian academic penned more than a decade ago, but which resonates marvellously today, “Polling is to the politician and policymaker what the stock market is to the financial analyst.”

It’s an indicator. But what, exactly, does it indicate?

His prose, both breathless and authoritative, announces the latest iteration of a newspaper that continues to demonstrate an almost feline aptitude for survival. What is this now: The Globe and Mail’s ninth life in as many years?

Neverthless, writes Editor-in-Chief John Stackhouse in an open letter published in two Friday’s ago edition, “Welcome to the most significant redesign in [our] history. . .For a moment, look beyond that. The redesign is not just about design, or paper quality, or our new online navigation, or social media groups. It’s about confidence.”

No news there; every makeover in business, life, even kitchens, is in some sense an expression of mustered courage and conviction. But Stackhouse (with whom I once served as a fellow Associated Editor of the Financial Times of Canada back in the Stone Age, a.k.a. the pre-Facebook era) is on to something bigger, as he usually is.

Since the beginning of the century, oddsmakers have given traditional print media scant years on life support before predicting their inevitable demise. The future, it is frequently promised, is in the online world of blogs and websites and integrated social networking. It is most certainly not in paper and ink. Anyone who thinks it is clearly lives in the past.

But are we not actually getting back to the future?

Worldwide, newspaper advertising is up (though, admittedly, this claim may be difficult to credit if you are a small-market publisher competing with free, online platforms for classifieds). Still, in the United States, the number of print magazines – now incorporating 9,400 separate titles – has increased since the beginning of the Great Recession. And while the total volume of “old school” media outlets has dropped, this trend has been decades in the making – not the comparatively few years since the arrival of the web – and largely the result of rationalization in the face of unsustainable industry over capacity.

In fact, left standing now in the world of print are higher-value, better-quality and more smartly managed products whose publishers and editors understand how to make the principle of supply and demand work to their advantage. Specifically, they understand that if you create enough diversity, cost-effectively, in the supply chain of goods and services, you increase consumer appetite, and therefore demand, for cool, new stuff. In this way, print versus online is a false dichotomy. Instead, the proposition becomes: “For a nominal fee, I can give you fries with that hamburger.”

Besides, people – especially the growing ranks of older people – simply like their print papers and magazines. They like the feel of them, the smell of them, and the fact that they can take them anywhere without worrying about wireless access, battery power or screen resolution.

Indeed, when was the last time you mopped up spilled coffee with your smart phone, or slipped your laptop under the leg of a wobbly chair, or used your kindle to line a bird cage? Or as one online media wag from WebProNews.com aptly quips: “Newspapers are convenient for entirely different reasons than online news sources. When they develop a computer screen that a puppy can pee on, then print is surely dead.”

And here’s what Joe Pulizzi, an American author, speaker and strategist for content marketing, had to say on the subject in a recent post to his website: “Social media, online content and iPad applications are all part of the marketing mix today. Still, what excites marketers and media buyers is what IS NOT being done.  They want to do something different, something new. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve heard many marketers talk about leveraging print as something new in their marketing mix. Unbelievable!”

As for the good, grey Globe, its print readership is up by five per cent since 2009; its mobile traffic is up by 20 per cent; and it keeps winning national and international awards. Editor & Publisher recently named its website the best of its kind in North America.

All in all, it’s not bad for an old cat with lives and confidence to spare.

It wasn’t that long ago when aspiring to an elite standing in any field – academics, athletics, politics, business, even journalism – was the proper way to order one’s priorities in a society that honoured individual merit and achievement.

What was the promise of the American Dream, the freedom to become anything one’s heart desires, if not a tacit acknowledgement of the mind’s mastery over matter, of the supremacy of brains over brawn and craft over circumstance?

What, after all, was so honourable about ignorance, mendacity and mediocrity? Didn’t we want the smartest guys and girls in the room running our schools, industries, sports teams, and political parties? Or would we prefer a night-school drop-out, to a board-certified internist, at the helm of our emergency appendectomy?

Sadly, we don’t seem to ask ourselves these questions anymore. Ours is an anything goes era in a world where near universal access to Google, the blogosphere, Facebook, et.al., confers automatic expertise and perspicuity on all subjects, to all people, all of the time. Just ask Fox News munchkin, Glenn Beck, who understands at least three things less psychotic pundits fail to appreciate: Everything now is relative; everything now is a matter of opinion; and those who scream the loudest, and reach the widest (and wildest) audiences are, according to the new rules of rhetoric, the “correctest” in their “truthiness”.

Is it any surprise, then, that over the past five years or so, “elite” has become as dirty a word as there is in the lexicon of North American politics? It no longer connotes accomplishment and seriousness, but connivance and fecklessness. It does not inspire; rather, it offends the burgeoning legion of Canadian and U.S. citizens who – having been brutalized by rank corruption, joblessness, and poverty – seek vengeance anywhere they can.

In this purpose, they’ve been ably assisted by partisan hacks and ideological bullies on the far right wing of the political agenda, but also no less so than by talented, cynical manipulators of popular discontent – ciphers, whose only long-term interest in their body politics are their own self-aggrandizement and quenchless thirst for power.

Over the past six months, former U.S. vice-presidential candidate and Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin has blogged and tweeted the phrases “liberal elites”, “Washington elites”, and even “Republican elites” no fewer than 200 times to ensure, if nothing else, she cannot be associated with the objects of her calculated taunts and rants. She of stadium rallies, prime-time TV punditry, and multi-million-dollar book deals and speaking engagements is, apparently, of the people, by the people and for the people. And if the people are dumb, incoherent and angry then, gosh darn it, so is she. This is democracy in action, don’t you know; who are “the elites” to say otherwise?

Indeed, it’s happening even up here, in this once moderate and reasonable land. Since federal minority rule, all political parties have repudiated the ancient, big-tent inclination towards discussion, collaboration and compromise, and embraced, in their place, rabid hound-dogging, character assassination and vituperous debate over minor points of difference in the public square. Suddenly, the “to-be-or-not-to-be” bull-hockey about the long gun registry is the apex of Canadian domestic policy just as Stephen Harper seeks a seat for the country on the United Nations Security Council. Given the broader issues of poverty, economic recovery, productivity, innovation, education, and health care – all of which still task this nation – Ottawa’s latent, multi-party preoccupations do seem just a tad. . .well, “elitist”.

But, in fact, that’s the wrong word to describe what ails us. It’s not elitism that infects us; it’s demagoguery.

It’s the relentless campaigns against common sense and basic decency being waged against the moderate, rational mass of humanity by the radical reformers, the tea baggers, the Christian fundamentalists, the Islamist Jihadists, the suicide bombers, the Zionist assassins, the stoners of women, the killers of children, and the laughing, drooling destroyers of souls in every place, in every time, all over the world.

Fortunately, in Canada, we manage to avoid the worst of the global orgy of pain. Despite our political failures, our internecine mud-slinging and bickering, we remain one of the world’s great havens. Our elite standing stands, unbroken by those among us who would coo, in callow self-interest, to our baser selves in our darker moments.

Ultimately, we always manage to embrace the light that merit, achievement, learning and tolerance shines on all of us.

The polls in New Brunswick close in 40 minutes.

He was game, honest, organized, principled, and responsible. That’s why the winner of Tuesday night’s first New Brunswick leaders’ debate was none other than. . .the CBC’s Harry Forestell.

Then again, the moderator of a dog and pony show like the one just witnessed always appears statesmanlike compared with the other guys in the room. After all, he already has a job, which serves to explain why the stench of desperation hung like bovine flatulence over, and only over, the candidates that evening.

But, really, what did we expect?

If we want decorum, courtesy and consideration, we’d have more luck finding it at an inner city schoolyard during recess. Nothing brings out one’s inner bully more convincingly than a televised opportunity to nail one’s political rival to the pavement. And while he’s down, why not give him the boot once or twice for good measure?

Still, the experts insist, leader debates have become crucially important fixtures in North America’s democratic landscape over the past 30 years, providing the public with a chance to see how good (or bad) the candidates are on their feet, how well (or poorly) prepared they are to discuss major issues, and how willing (or unwilling) they are to dish dirt and talk trash.

Occasionally, they even generate moments of rich, rhetorical flair.

When, in 1980, the moderator of a Republican primary debate instructed a soundman to “turn off Mr. Ronald Reagan’s microphone,” the latter thundered to hoots of applause, “I paid for this microphone.” Later, the 40^th U.S. president characterized the incident as a “brief and seemingly small event” which, he nonetheless conceded, “helped take me to the White House.”

Years later, when Republican vice-presidential candidate Dan Qualye stipulated that he had as much experience in the Congress “as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency,” his Democratic rival licked his chops and mewed, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” The GOP eventually won the election, but no thanks to Mr. Qualye.

Closer to home, who can forget the moment in the 1984 debates between Prime Minister John Turner and his Tory opponent Brian Mulroney when the latter demolished the former’s claim that he had no choice but to approve certain patronage appointments? “You had an option sir to say ‘no’ and you chose to say ‘yes’ to the old attitudes and the old stories of the Liberal party,” the PM-in-waiting blasted. “That sir, if I may say respectfully, is not good enough.”

Ah yes, those were the good, old days. And, judging by the performances of Messrs. Graham, Alward, Duguay, MacDougall, and Austin the other night, these clearly are not.

Only the premier seemed ready to address the substance of any of the questions posed, and even then, he seemed broadly ill-at-ease. Alward, meanwhile, just seemed ill, refusing his nemesis the opportunity to speak, frequently interrupting with shotgun-like imprecision, and generally lowering the tone of the proceedings to such a juvenile level, it became impossible to judge the political craftsmanship, let alone ideas, on display.

The presence of the three minor party candidates might have provided an efficacious buffer against the lamentable, if entirely predictable, Tory and Grit histrionics. But they, too, were sucked into the vortex of name-calling, character assassination and bizarrely truncated logic. At one point People’s Alliance Leader Kris Austin blurted, “I have a six-year-old son and I’m concerned he can’t find work here,” apparently unaware of the province’s manifestly strict child labour laws.

It’s clear that Mr. Graham needed to hit a homerun to reverse the course of the Tory juggernaut. He didn’t get one. It’s also clear that all Mr. Alward needed to show was a quiet confidence, a supple appreciation of the game, which is, at this point, only his to lose. He didn’t do it. Still, nearly two weeks remain in the campaign, and anything can happen.

At least, that’s what they tell me about an election that has, so far, surprised no one for its lack of honest, principled, responsible discourse.

Sorry Harry, old boy.