Don’t pay for the Sun. There you have it. If you read it – and I do for about five minutes a day – read it for free.
In my view the Sun is a mixed bag of boring and trite local news of the dog bites man variety, business boosterism, global cultural mediocrity and far right propaganda. There are lots of good reporters and writers but few good stories. Go figure.
Margorie Nichols would be ashamed to be seen with today’s Sun in her hands. So would Jack Webster.
It’s the editorial pages that drive me around the bend. The chairman of Ghaddafi’s favourite prison builder and alleged bribe recipient, SNC Lavalin – also Christy Clark’s advisor – is a frequently featured writer. The Fraser Institute has a direct pipeline, as do unidentified lobbyists shilling in their clients’ interests.
And then there is the editorial pages editor Fazil Mihlar. Did anyone besides me read his piece Monday? My condolences to you.
There’s something about Mihlar’s writing that makes you cringe as soon as you start reading. He’s like the guy at a party who makes a mis-timed, inappropriate and just plain bad joke every time he opens his mouth. You know immediately he’s really screaming “like me, like me, I’m funny, I’m confident, I’m smart, I need a girlfriend.”
He’s the guy who coined the term “banana” to attack environmentalists. Banana stands for something not very funny and very right wing that I can’t remember because it’s too cumbersome. Isn’t that pretty much the definition of a bad writer?
Now it seems he’s dropped banana – praise the lord – in favour of another light, comedic approach to the topic of resource development. He’s become the leader of a fake political party – although that’s what I thought his previous employer the Fraser Institute is.
His new fake party represents the 90 per cent against the ten per cent who are holding them down.
And the 10 per cent are?
The environmentalists, the labour unions, the non profits, the left wing policy institutes. These are the new elite in Mihlar’s mind. And he’s going to take them on.
Funny how his friend Gwyn Morgan from Encana isn’t among the elite. Gwyn Morgan who’s made his millions and retired to a $30 million gated estate on the shoreline just outside of Victoria.
Gwyn Morgan’s no elitist because he’s a job creator. A guy who provides the high income jobs of the future, like building those prisons in Libya for his business partner Ghaddafi.
This would all be pathetically funny in a kind of ‘what a pathetic goof he is’ way if it weren’t so untrue. So patently false.
Over at Talking Points Memo, they’ve published a graph from a study of inequality in the US, a graph that closely mirrors the situation in Canada. The graph illustrates the uncoupling of productivity gains and income gains that started in the 70’s.
Prior to that all shared in the economic gains that accrued through productivity gains. Now, the benefits pretty much accrue to one small class at the expense of everyone else.
That’s the world Mihlar is lying about. Without doing something to restore the connection between productivity growth and income growth, job growth alone won’t do a thing to change inequality.
The Northern Pipeline is a perfect example: Many of the workers needed to build it will be imported – lets call a spade a spade – and it will take few workers to run it. The profits will flow and will be reaped in the boardrooms alone, mostly abroad. Finally, the commodity it supplies will be building someone else’s economy.
But British Columbians will bear the cost of any environmental damage from building the pipeline and operating it.
When Mihlar says he stands with the 90 per cent agains the 10 per cent opposing these kind of deals he’s lying on behalf of the real one per cent. That’s not what an editorial page editor should be doing in a real newspaper.
Fazil Mihlar is no editorialist. There’s a difference between editorialist and propagandist. Mihlar is the latter. Don’t forget it when you read him in the Sun you did’t pay for.
We must’ve had the same nightmare last night because I woke up with Gwyn Morgan on my mind today. The CBC has proof that the Board was well-aware of the corruption going on.
My question is, Will the RCMP investigate all the way to the top? And will the “Press” unravel the long financial trail of Mr. Morgan’s support for the current regimes in Ottawa and Victoria?
Providing Morgan and his ilk with a platform without balance is like asking the Hell’s Angels to write about drug policy.
Since we still have Mihlar and his narrow bias, we can only assume that the Vancouver Sun under new editor-in-chief Harold Munro will bring us the same old, same old.
That was already indicated when Munro’s first article after his appointment talked falsely of British Columbia’s crisis of productivity. I don’t expect the Sun to carry any alternative views on that subject.
Gwyn, I thought was helping Christy with the “families first” agenda.
Now I find out he`s helping the Ghadafi family?
Stopped paying for the Sun about a year and a half ago, only felt bad about the early morning delivery person loosing another delivery subscription from his route. Don’t miss the paper at all. If I want a spin I would rather go ride a bike than read this once respectable paper. Can always find interesting and informed reading at your blog Ian (and others) and thoughtful comment as above by Norman Farrell and company.
Sick and tired of being being BSd by the Fester Institute and their Vanc. Sun Puppteer.
Thanks very much.
Ian You mention the Northern Pipeline. Please excuse the tangent I go on about. You are right BC will get no to true benefit from this project. What is truly alarming, is the project legacy will potentially leave us. have a view of the link:
http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/11512-pipeline-legacies
BC stands to get all of the costs associated with an oil spill cleanup. Enbridge does not have a great track record. The legacy is potentially very tragic. The link displays how Enbridge has approached previous spills.
I quit reading The Sun 10 yrs. ago. It wasn’t the paper I had grown up reading. The editorials are just a joke. I don’t know if Milhar thinks he can actually get people to believe the bulltwit he writes but who knows & who cares. He acts as a shrill for the fraser institue & that is about it. The Fraser Institute has been funded to the tune of $500K by the oil baron, Koch brothers.
Milhar’s take on the 90% vs the 10%, I don’t know what he is smoking but it must be bad. The pipe lines & tankers will not be good for the people of B.C. & they know it. I think people have gotten to the point now, after having seen what oil spills look like, via t.v., they are not so anxious to place their enviornment at risk .
People know they can make more money for a longer period of time by keeping the land & sea free of bitamen. If the Vancouver harbour were to be covered in bitamen how many cruise ships would come? How many conventions would book? How many tourists would come? I can tell you the property values of the lower mainland would tank. The movie industry, which uses Vancouver’s beautiful scenery as back drops for the films would hve to go elsewhere.
How many people would want to see Stanley Park?
I see no need to destroy the enviornment of B.C. so foreign corporation, China, & a few others can grow even richer.
Milhar sounds like a kid who wants into the club but they won’t ever let him so he might as well realize he is just like the rest of the 99%ers. He isn’t one of the 1%ers, he just wants to be.
How’d Kathryn ‘n’ Ezra escape mention?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lYUd7WOdjyU
Too funny!
Oh — that Sun :-0.
Two peas, same pod
Yes it so true. Mr. Mihlar tries hard to be some one he is not. Sounds like he will take anyside just to get some attention.
Of course Mr. Mihlar is a flip flop confused political opinionist.