One question though, what if they are that naive?
Our guess is that more than meets the eye is going on here. Surely Trudeau and his team aren’t actually this naïve about how the media world works.
We’ve argued in this space that Trudeau needs to drop the platitudes and start talking about real policies. More people are joining this call. Perhaps the Liberal leader is feeling the heat and is looking for an easy way to avoid hard questions.
You know, it’s a good thing Trudeau doesn’t live in England, their tabloids would destroy a weakling like him.
One has to wonder …. which opposition leader causes the CONSERVATIVE Government IN CANADA greater concern… MULCAIR the brainiac (commie) or TRUDEAU the (self- smitten but fluffy commie WITH THE FLOWING HAIRdo )…. ??
No surprise that Ezra would finally go too far.
Even though he makes many good points and has fought many necessary battles, he shot himself in the foot this time.
Always best to check the facts before opening mouth.
My theory.
When the election campaign starts and the curtains open,
one could reasonably expect to behold some surprise version
of an action packed philosopher prince, if not king, on offer.
Whether Shiny Pony can convince anyone with a brain that such
a newly unveiled onstage persona is the 24/7 real deal will be
a good test of his acting ability and political suitability.
This whole thing isn’t about Ezra. It’s just the lame excuse Trudeau and his handlers are using.
The idiots in the MSM that continue to circle the wagons around Trudeau don’t realize that this boycott can easily be waged on them if they were to ask Trudeau some tough questions.
If that’s the way the media world works, we should all work to change it. I don’t want this BS done to Peter McKay or John Baird; therefore, I can’t support its application to Justin Trudeau, either. We’re the good guys – we shouldn’t do bad stuff. If somebody uses these tactics on me, I immediately suspect that the rest of what they say is BS, as well – and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that thinks that way.
Cato! my thoughts are similar to yours. I am thinking the paid for advice the Libranos are receiving from the U.S.A. Democratic Party includes a recommendation to avoid the hostile press. The Democrats have avoided the FOX news channel with some success.
The situation is somewhat different in Canada as the most anti-conservative media outlet is the C.B.C in all iterations. Canadians outside of Toronto and possibly Quebec understand this is the defence of the Bureaucratic/Journolistic meal-ticket. My intuition is this upcoming 2015 election will be the make or break of both CBC and SUN News.
The steady shift to a conservative electorate in many if not most industrially advanced Nations bodes well for SUN News. A large boost of capital could make the difference. If it is not a buy-out by the increasingly nervous Progressives factions trying to hold onto Canada. Cheers;
“. We’re the good guys – we shouldn’t do bad stuff.”
How naive. Do you think for one minute that Justin Trudeau and his cabal of bootlickers and trough-feeders feel the same way about us? I don’t.
Sometimes doing bad stuff is necessary in order to protect the good stuff in this world. That’s life. If Justin wants to parachute into political power by virtue of his celebrity status derived from his last name, he’s welcome to try; and we’re welcome to point out the moral bankruptcy of that approach, and of his vastly overrated father. If the poor little man-child can’t take the heat, he’s free to resign his post any day. He’d be doing us all an immense favour.
“The Democrats have avoided the FOX news channel with some success.”
Up to a point, yes. But even Obama has appeared on Fox News a few times. It’s sort of unavoidable for Obama since Fox is the number 1 news outlet in the US.
What really intrigues me is the reaction of Canadian journalists in this case vs American journalists when the White House tried banning Fox from the press pool. From what I can remember, American journalists, from all of the networks and all across the political spectrum, recognized that this was dangerous and voiced their opposition to it. Canadian journalists, in this instance, haven’t done the same. I see many of them circling the wagons around Trudeau, wagging their fingers at Ezra, but not addressing the real issue: a leader publicly declaring a boycott of a national news outlet.
I don’t think highly of most journalists but this really increases my disdain for them. They’re completely missing the bigger issue here. I didn’t realize they were this stupid.
I agree with you that the 2015 election will make or break CBC and Sun News. I’ll definitely be watching both networks on that evening. Sun News for their excellent election coverage (it’s really the only time I watch the network) and CBC in the hopes that the results aren’t to their liking. I want to see them cry and pout like they did during the last election.
If Harper refused to talk to unfriendly Press, he’d be pretty lonely.
This is reason #652 why Justin Trudeau is NOT Prime Ministerial material.
Very naive indeed. Politics isn’t for the weak and thin skinned and journalists shouldn’t be using kiddie gloves on politicians. That’s how you get an inept dope like Obama running a country.
“…looking for an easy way to avoid hard questions.”
I’d say that he’s pretty safe in this country. No need to run and hide like his old man did.
Justin isn’t a fit in the tough world of politics, that’s the kindest thing can say.Politics can ruin the best of people, only the tough survive and are successful. PM Harper is tough, he’s shown he can handle whatever they toss at him, he knows who his friends and enemies are. In spite of most in the media being less than respectful of the man and the Office, he keeps doing what we elected him to do and confounding the lot of of them. Canadian media hacks are full of vitriol and give him no credit for being the best economic manager in the G7.
Justin cannot fill Harper’s shoes, he’s showing no sign of being close to up to the job. IMO he’s a hopeless case as leader.
Also for I.M.
Naive? Yeah, probably. But I worry about the tragedy of the commons aspect of this.
If journalists use the “politics isn’t for the thin-skinned” as an all-purpose shield, then all we get is – thick-skinned. Like, say, the Clintons.
Also concerned about Ezra’s messaging: if he uses the “Jane you cheap slut who did you sleep with to get this job anyway?” meme, either (1) those who aren’t true believers dismiss him as a self-parodying jerk, or (2) those who aren’t true believers file everything he says under the heading “Ideological BS.” Either way, nobody outside the tent listens.
I’m a functionalist on this – if everybody else is tuning him out, he has no impact. That’s why the good guys shouldn’t do bad stuff.
While I agree that Ezra may have been mean and stooped to a level of name calling, I believe this to be irrelevant to the reaction of Trudeau. An appropriate reaction may be to boycott Ezra, but to boycott an ENTIRE network is ridiculous and simply a convenient excuse to shield Justin from difficult questions. It would be much more impressive if Justin showed some gumption and took Ezra on, face to face – this would be the mark of true leadership.
Some in the Justin camp say that Harper does the same thing. The day that Harper boycotts all of CBC over one, two or three employees OPINIONS is the day that argument holds any water. Until then, it is also ridiculous. Again, it is reasonable to argue that Ezra was being rude, but the reaction of the Justin camp simply shows how fragile this person is. Getting Ready to Lead Indeed.
If Trudeau can’t take the much-needed scathing a COLUMNIST like Ezra Levant dishes out, he should return to the supply teacher list. He is coddled to the nth degree, rather like Obama (and we know how that turned out). Other press agencies (like Putin-approved agencies) will not be nice to this velvet glove bully and his slimy friends in the Liberal party.
Furthermore, it’s time to turn up the heat on Liberal voters who make it impossible to own nice things.
My thoughts as well. Trudeau has come to the table with nothing of substance in both accomplishment and policy.
His only attribute, if one could call it such is, ‘look at me’…and as such leaves little to have grownup discourse on other than to deride him and his less than stellar party on having the low moral audacity to attempt to foist this charade on the mature citizens of this great but fragile country.
I’ve given some thought to what Ezra did here last week and although part of me says ‘low blow’, the more thoughtful side says go for it since the only tangible thing that has gotten Justin to where he is now is his father’s name and his mother’s hair,and both their propensity as media whores in one form or another.
Maggie’s problem isn’t bipolar disorder so much as it is shame that when she was younger she cast aside all pretense to being a woman of morals and allowed the showbiz glitteratae and public to get a glimpse at just who she really was.
She thought she was being cool…everyone else was laughing at her while many used her as one does a blatant fool.
So in that capacity Ezra was only doing what he does so well and that was showcasing the vacant notions of the trust fund kid whose mother is equally vacant and whose father married a young airhead for strictly entertainment purposes.
As for the youngster, he would do well to grow a thicker skin and realize that if you can’t bring reasoned policy to the table then you are going to be unmercifully mocked.
I applaud Ezra.
The boy has offered us nothing, except “I am Trudeau”.
So what was Trudeau?
A pathetic Natsi loving, draft dodging weasel.
Until the child offers up some reason for his lust for power over Canadians, we have nothing to evaluate this boy ,who the Presstitutes are trying to ram down our throats as they try to tongue bath him all in the same breathe, with.
So who is Justin? What has he accomplished that I should trust him, to govern over me?
A drama teacher? A good start I suppose, as all politicians are actors, who beg us for the opportunity to perform the roles and rituals necessary to prolong civilization.
But is this actor able to perform any of these roles?
So far no evidence of competence has been shown.
As for the Ottawa Press corpse, they are talking to the hand, as they have shown us they care nothing for truth, fairness or even basic ethical standards.
After all these years of deliberate lying about conservative canadians, Christian Canadians and their hatred for white working males,one has to wonder, who are they addressing now?
As their readership and viewers vanish.
Of course they are running cover for this vacuous man child.
He is 42 and they are selling him as the great hope for the youth vote?
Well he is amongst the youngest in his “new” party.
Let the wagon circling begin! Poor Justin has a right to ignore an ENTIRE NETWORK because of Ezra according to Jonathan Kay. Again, the point is not whether Ezra went over the top – he may have. I question the response to ignore the entire network. How is that justified.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/09/25/jonathan-kay-justin-trudeaus-sun-boycott-is-morally-justified/
What is with these little, pathetic gasps we hear, every four or five words he speaks? Is this some kind of dramatic effect he learned in drama school? Whatever it is, it is very annoying, and I suspect, a nervous condition from someone incapable of speaking straight-forwardly.
“You know, it’s a good thing Trudeau doesn’t live in England, their tabloids would destroy a weakling like him.”
That’s an interesting thought Lance but if you consider this tards position on China, terrorists and even Quebecers being better than the rest of Canadians, maybe instead of ‘weakling’ the correct term is ‘quisling’.
The young Dauphin has more less been boycotting Sunnews since day one. Now he just has a convenient excuse to pin it on.
Just watch all Canadian Journolisters rally to the defense of Sunnews. /sarcoff
His dad may have been a pompous, arrogant ass, but he was never afraid to engage a reporter, even a hostile one. Run Pretty Boy run. It’s not going to make the issues go away and its not going to stop people asking the questions.
This is all about Baby Trudeau avoiding the one news organization in the country that doesn’t want to help get the boy blunder elected, thats it and thats all. Baby Trudeau and his handlers are cowards and have nothing but contempt for the Canadian electorate and this “hurt feelings” stunt attempting to avoid accountability is just further proof of that contempt and arrogance.
I suspect the real story here has more to do with a specific question regarding the government’s recent crackdown on ISIS recruits leaving Canada to go overseas. Justin took the typical liberal position believing that the world community, and particularly the community organizer in chief, would advocate sitting down with ISIS for tea and buns to talk about root causes. But then it went all south and even the UN is starting to realize there is a terrorist threat and it needs to be dealt with by the use of military force. Justin realizing he was getting in front of the wrong parade, and he may have been able to pivot unfortunately, there was SNN asking an inconvient question and effectively slammed shut his escape hatch.
With no way to get out of this bind he was left to go mute and wait for an opportunity to blame someone else for the cone of silence. ..Ezra just provided the excuse…perhaps rather crudely. ..but nothing he said was factually untrue, it merely provided a way for Justin to not be pressed on the issue and insuring only easy questions from the plantation journos would be forthcoming.
JT is just using this as cover for his desire to avoid direct tough questions from SunNews. SunNews has been showing all kinds of clips of JT just ignoring any thing remotely tough from them. Now in his opinion he is justified and faithful airhead followers will oblige and give him support.
Trudeau The Younger walks and talks like a guy who has the head of every media company in the country on speed dial.
He gets filmed only from his good side. He gets asked only questions that have been selected and vetted by his staff. Everywhere he goes, he’s got an instant crowd of newsies hanging on his every word.
All by arrangement.
One, and only one outlet he doesn’t have an arrangement with. Sun News. So obviously, he won’t talk to them. Because no arrangement. If they make a deal with him, he’ll chatter away like a magpie.
But if they keep asking him questions like “Do you really prefer Communism to Canadian democracy? How’s that going to work if you live at Sussex Drive?” his handlers will move Heaven and Earth to keep him away from Sun News. Because if he gets an unscripted question, he will step on his tongue.
And that’s what makes you wrong. Collusion at the highest levels of politics and media in this country has been going on since forever. You want it to stop, you better be prepared to do whatever it takes, including smear more, better and faster than the Liberals do.
Trudeau is a kid, and a dumb one. You want to let a dumb kid run this country, just so you can keep your lily white hands clean? You should just sign over all your money to the Liberals now, save you the trouble later.
Remember when Trudeau mistook a CBC reporter for a Sun News one? Good times!
http://youtu.be/c_dPffKSoOQ
If this is the ONLY time you tune in to SUN NEWS, why do you care what goes on?
Yepper! Cato; Cheers;
Late to the thread but the thing that caught my ear was the word ‘slut’ that was used by Ezra. Slut is the proper word but in the age that we now live in ‘slut’ is deemed far too judgmental a word to be used in polite company.
“Slut” is pretty blunt word in common parlance. A better word would have been “Libertine” – defined as having few moral constraints. Then again most of Ezra Levant’s rube-like audience wouldn’t know the difference between a libertine and libertarian.