Couldn't have said it better myself

Thank you, Russell Wangersky, for your column today in which you write in part:

Shall we have a list of “acceptable columnists” and a provincial blacklist? Approved opinions and unapproved ones? Dictating who is allowed to speak isn’t reasonable discourse or an honest analysis of what’s being said — whether what’s being said is right or wrong.

It’s jingoism, it’s intellectually bankrupt and it’s dangerous.

It's a relief to see that somebody else besides me recognizes the absurdity of some of our local rabid nationalists and government partisans giving CBC the gears for merely interviewing a national pundit with sensible opinions on how this province, and our premier, has been conducting itself.

It's bad enough when the everyday rabid partisan (of any stripe or variety) attacks the very idea of raising an alternate point of view. It's disconcerting and alarming when the highest elected official in the province repeatedly lambasts pundits, not for the points they raise, but for having the gall to raise a contrary point at all.

It sets a disturbing tone and a socially enforced "speaking with one voice" political single-minded monoculture that is stifling and counterproductive.

35 years after the end of the Smallwood regime, you think we would have learned our lesson.

Apparently not.

Seriously? Or irony?

The other day, Bond Papers brought to my attention the editor's column of the Telegram. In it, Russell Wangersky concludes with:

That would give us a media that specializes in cheerleading, printing speeches and delivering political adoration — and I don’t think it is disdain to suggest that that sort of media will serve our politicians very well, but our population not at all.

In part, that conclusion would be based on some observations of the latest shenanigans of The Independent and its Managing Editor, Ryan Cleary. For a sample of those observations, you can check mine here and those by Meeker on Media here.

So when I was tossing the trash this morning, my eye caught this from P3 of the Indy (click to enlarge).

It was the last line that grabbed me - "Maybe they agree with Danny ...".

I really can't tell if this was meant to be irony (because the gentleman quoted expressed a sad sentiment that I've heard frequently from all walks of the business community) or if the editor intended it seriously.

Then again, that question could be asked for most of the paper these days.