The Toronto Star's Rick Salutin evades questions from Michael Coren

I have to give credit to al Starzeera's Rick Salutin for having the courage to appear on The Arena with Michael Coren to discuss Stephen Harper's trip to Israel and the political (and other forms of discrimination) faced by the Jewish State.

But as you will see in the segment below, Salutin has to evade and obfuscate frequently to avoid admitting his ideological opposition to Israel is based on ignorance and bias.

Hell really must have frozen over - I'm in agreement with Rick Salutin twice in the same month

Last week Salutin wrote a fine tribute to the late Toronto Sun publisher Peter Worthington.

This week, at least part of his column shows uncharacteristic (for anyone at The Toronto Star) insight into some of the discord afflicting Toronto:

...If there’s any truism I cling to, it’s that: people don’t get the leaders they deserve. Why not? Because of all the haughty intervenors between the citizens and those who govern — they generally get the leaders they select, either sooner or later. Here I come to urban guru and U of T prof Richard Florida, who I do find embarrassing in this context, but also instructive. He wrote this week in the Globe and Mail: “It is time to convene a blue-ribbon commission on Toronto’s future . . . the top leaders of all of our key institutions must step up — our banks and corporations, schools and universities, labour unions, the city, the province, and more. No one can stand on the sidelines if we are going to forge the model of private-public partnership that is needed . . . ”   

Does he really not get it — that this is exactly the mentality that led to the Ford mayoralty, out of widespread popular disgust for an unelected elect who think they have the right to gather in blue ribbon bodies and decide on behalf of everyone else?

Toronto's elites create a new Easter martyr

In this week following Easter, it is apt to think of a man who has strived to helped his fellow man,  giving his days and nights to talk to the common people. This man, himself in the center of a maelstrom of controversy, is continually beset by those asking him to alleviate their problems, and quietly, without fanfare he has helped many of his fellows. Yet for his efforts, a jealous elite are threatened by this man's appeal to the common people in whose interests the ruling classes pretend to act, while only truly serving themselves.

Yet relentless in their slander and vilification of this servant of the people, the powerful not only fail to diminish him, but have created the image of a martyr standing bravely against the ferocious onslaught.

This martyr is Toronto's mayor, Rob Ford.

In the Editorial boardroom at the Toronto Star, the continual frustration at their inability to make a dent in Rob Ford's support must be competing with embarrassment that the highest elected municipal official in their cosmopolitan city is, in their eyes, a brash, overweight bumpkin. The pile-on is abetted by histrionic invective from the socialist weekly NOW magazine and disgruntled columnists like The Globe and Mail's Marcus Gee. Despite their best efforts, and unrelenting attacks that have gone on virtually daily since the former Etobicoke councillor declared his mayoral candidacy, they have done nothing to diminish his popularity with his core constituency.

They have portrayed Ford as racist and anti-immigrant, but in his home riding, made up mainly of immigrants and minority voters, he regularly polls overwhelming majorities, exceeding 75% of the vote.

What the Star's satraps have blinded themselves to is that rather than tear Ford down, their histrionic mudslinging is actually bolstering Ford's popularity.

At this point, one wonders what the anti-Ford media is up to? To whom are they trying to make their sale? The people who hate Ford don't need daily reminders. They will hate him no matter what. But these histrionic attacks only invigorate Ford's supporters.

Making a typically hyperbolic comparison to Marion Barry, the felonious former mayor of Washington D.C., even the Star's editor Bob Hepburn conceded that their scandal-mongering against Ford is unlikely to have any affect.

But like spoiled infants throwing a tantrum. they are just unable to restrain themselves.

We hates the Ford, my Precious!

Rick Salutin, the old dinosaur of the left The Star acquired after he was unceremoniously dumped by the Globe and Mail, has made himself look like a malicious clown railing against Ford. Salutin, whose appearance is daily becoming more like The Lord of the Ring's Gollum,  before calling the mayor a "drama queen" said the Ford era has "been so much about him, it's hard to remember there's a whole city involved."

Actually, it's Salutin, his colleagues, and employers who are the drama queens who have forgotten the city. They have incessantly been trying to make Ford an issue at the expense of Toronto\s best interests and with complete disregard for journalistic integrity.

What are the issues the Star has been so worked up about? That Ford may have been drinking? That he solicited charitable donations on City letterhead he paid for from his own pocket and from which he derives absolutely no personal fiduciary gain? That he might have smoked a joint when he was on vacation in Florida?  None of the accusations, even if they are true, suggest that Ford has ever done anything improper for enriching himself.

Ford has devoted himself, while facing ridicule and scorn, to doing what is right for Toronto's taxpayers. He has fought hard to keep taxes and costs down for Torontonians, and he has been as successful as anyone could be given the magnitude of the opposition he's faced.

Today, when Ford was the voice fighting back against proposals to raise taxes, which had skyrocketed under his predecessor, David Miller, The Star published a spiteful article focusing on the way the mayor expressed disdain at imposing taxes on Torontonians while neglecting the detrimental affect of the new levies.

When Ford said there is corruption at City Hall, the Star was more interested in trying to vilify the mayor than serve public interests by exposing the corruption.

Something the media elites in Toronto don't realize is that people aren't as stupid as they think they are; nor will they believe everything they are told, just because it comes out of the mainstream news.

There isn't a major city in the world without some level of corruption at the municipal level.  And people know it.

In Toronto, billions are being spent on condo and commercial developments, often over the objection of local residents. A lot of money is being thrown around amid interests that are tied to that development and it may not be coincidental that more than one downtown "left-wing" councilor is living awfully well for someone supposedly making $102,608 per annum.

Ford has said he is willing to act for the will of residents when it comes to development. But rather than pursue potential corruption where it actually may exist, The Star, which makes a tremendous amount of money carrying advertisements for condos, is more interested in pursuing Rob Ford for potential technical errors in his efforts to help underprivileged kids with his school football foundation.

Just because Torontonians have ignored the will of the media elites doesn't mean they are stupid, or nuts as Star columnist Heather Mallick shrieked around the time she wrote a bizarre, disturbed, imagined wretched sexual tryst with Ford. Nor are they "hordes" conjuring up the images of barbarity attempted by the Star's resident condominium aficionado, Christopher Hume.

People aren't as stupid as Toronto's media elites would like. Voters not obsessed with their own insecurity are not afraid to have opinions that aren't sanctioned at One Yonge Street by the Toronto Star.

Ford was elected by a city fed up with social engineers and special interests who wanted to impose their vision at other people's expense, while telling the public they knew what is best.

What Rob Ford represents is the common person saying "we don't need a pompous, self-interested political class to tell us they know more about what's best for us than we do ourselves."

And as much as a sanctimonious political and media elite may hate it,  what they are telling us to think isn't turning people against Ford as much as turning him into a hero.

Blogwrath among the Khadrites

From experience, I warned Blogwrath that a night with the asinine moral and cultural relativists who advocate for convicted terrorist Omar Khadr would be inane and boring.

An apology is owed.

I grossly understated the risks. Sorry Blogwrath. I should have warned you enduring the tedium of a Rick Salutin lecture falls somewhere between water-boarding and having your fingernails pulled in terms of cruel and unusual punishment.

The National Post`s Jonathan Kay wrote about Salutin before the latter was dismissed from the Globe and Mail, ``After 17 years as a Globe columnist, one suspects, Salutin apparently has gotten to the stage where he simply throws a bunch of buzz phrases in the air — imperialism, Guantanamo, oil, Omar Khadr, "honest broker" — and lets his readers write their own column``

Evidently not much has changed.  The rest of the panel didn`t sound any more interesting, but Blogwrath`s colorful account is excellent and will make you grateful he attended on your behalf. 

Rick Salutin returns to a major daily newspaper.. and no one notices

The Looney Left went crazy a few months ago when the Globe and Mail replaced Rick Salutin's column with one from Irshad Manji.

"A blow to "progressive" (read: regressive) voices in the media" was the gist of their shrill cries. As of last Friday, Salutin has been writing for The Toronto Star. His first column for the Liberal-leaning paper was ostensibly a review of a TV series called NCIS, but Salutin being Salutin, it was filled with undertones about the evils of the United States.

One would think all those people who decried Salutin's firing from the Globe would be cheering his return with great fanfare.

But such was not the case. In the 3 days since his article was published online, it managed to draw only 3 user comments and virtually no attention.

Maybe it's because in the Globe, his column stood out. Whereas in the Star, among raving fanatics like Linda McQuaig, Haroon Siddiqui, Antonia Zerbisias, and James Travers, Salutin gets lost in the crowd. In fact, he seems relatively sane compared to his new colleagues, particularly when considering that Heather Mallick is one of them.

Feeling More Marginalized: Looney left goes crazy over Irshad Manji replacing Salutin at The Globe

Canadian “progressives” infuriated by the replacement of a privileged white male with a gay Muslim woman-of-color

Let Freedom Rain's Jymm Parrett originally titled his post  "Globe and Mail replaces Rick Salutin with piece of shit"  but after being taken to task by one of his own readers, calmed down slightly and changed the title to the more straightforward, if grammatically incomplete, " Globe and Mail replaces Rick Salutin Irshad Manji"

However the prose lost none of its demented color with:

Irshad Manji is a clueless bore of an ideologue who is the leading edge of the new Globe & Mail campaign to out fox Fox News. Forget Kory and his TV dreams. This is much worse. The Mop & Pail has flown the coop.

(it goes on, getting better ..or worse, here .. and here )


"Eugene Forsey Liberal" offers:

I beg of you Globe, stop this folly. The world needs less Manjis, Teneyckes, Lavignes, etc., and more brains, more originality, more wit, more insight, uh, like...hmm, who again? Ah yes, Salutin!

"Orwell's Bastard"  gives us:

At a time when the reinvigoration of civil discourse is more important than ever, why in god's name is the Globe jettisoning its most thoughtful, original and engaging columnist? Are focus groups and demographic targeting and tokenism more important to Canada's self-appointed National Newspaper than raising the tone of the national conversation? Sadly, the answer seems to be yes.

In losing Rick Salutin's voice, the Globe isn't just getting rid of a genuinely original and progressive thinker. It's abandoning the whole notion of intellectual curiosity, leaving us with hacks like Blatchford and Wente.

Antonia Zerbisias, in her usual exhibiton of unintentional radical leftist self-parody, characterizes Manji's efforts to reform and liberalize the form of orthodox Islam that imposes the Niqab and condones suicide bombings as "Muslim bashing."


If there was a prize for idiotic interpretations of this event, it might go to David Beers at the tyee.ca who wrote:

Why did The Globe and Mail fire Rick Salutin? Without a better answer from the newspaper's brass, we're left to read Salutin's last two columns and ponder how power behaves when the politics of fear, and those who wield them deftly, are ascendant.

The two columns Beers refers to were critical respectively, of Stephen Harper and Rob Ford. If that were grounds for dismissal at the Globe, they would have no one left on staff but Christie Blatchford. But for Beers to know that, he would have to actually read The Globe and Mail.


What's behind the hysterics, of course, is that the old-school radical left realize that they are being regarded as less and less relevant to public discourse. In the US, Barack Obama knows he can ignore them or take them for granted, depending on the circumstance.

Salutin in the Globe was the way that these people could delude themselves into thinking their voice was being taken seriously. Propping a corpse up and putting it into a chair doesn't make it a living person. The Globe finally decided it was time to bury the corpse.

UPDATE: Manji's first column as a regular Globe columnist. An interesting and balanced discussion about the Tea Party's growing popularity and its Canadian applications.

The usual suspects  (see above)  have flocked to the online comments section to say how awful they think she is. With their usual deficit of irony, some claim they will permanently abandon the Globe because of its replacement of Salutin with Manji, then return two hours later to post another disparaging comment.

The Word at the Globe: Salutin out - Manji in

The Coast in Halifax reports that Rick Salutin's being fired from The Globe and Mail was a long-standing plan in order to replace him with Irshad Manji.

Manji, the author of the best selling The Trouble with Islam Today,  is one of the most intelligent voices of a non-politically aligned generation of Canadians. A strong advocate for free speech, a defender of women's and human rights, and a reasonable voice in a politicized wilderness.

She will make a big positive addition to The Globe and Mail and the change is a good one!

UPDATE: this is driving the Looney Left crazy!

Laugh of the day: The wing-nuts at rabble.ca demand the re-hiring of Rick Salutin at The Globe and Mail

It was interesting to learn yesterday that Rick Salutin had been canned from his gig at the Globe and Mail.

Actually, from what I understand, Salutin technically was never on staff at the Globe, but was a freelancer whose column was placed weekly in that paper.

It's understandable why the Globe would want rid of him. His columns were tedious and repetitive.

Jonathan Kay nailed it well two years ago when he wrote:

After 17 years as a Globe columnist, one suspects, Salutin apparently has gotten to the stage where he simply throws a bunch of buzz phrases in the air — imperialism, Guantanamo, oil, Omar Khadr, "honest broker" — and lets his readers write their own column.

Throw "right-wing" and "neo-con" in the mix, along with the propensity to presume to understand the hidden, un-evidenced, conspiratorial motives of everyone in the political spectrum to the right of Leon Trotsky, and that pretty much covers everything I've ever read from Salutin.



But the news of Salutin's dismissal doesn't sit well with the radical socialists at the online propaganda bureau that Judy Rebick built, rabble.ca

In a piece by Murray Dobbin demanding the re-instatement of Salutin at the Globe, we get some hilarious histrionics:

There are also not many touchstones for progressive Canadians still intact -- things that give us some comfort that the world hasn't completely fallen apart, at least not yet. Every time I hear the theme music to As it Happens, I get that feeling -- or when I go to the doctor and don't have to pay and he doesn't get a bonus for denying me service.

Rick's column was like that. He may well be the best in the country. Each time I saw that column in the Globe -- a hard-line neo-liberal paper in most ways -- it allowed me to believe progressive voices were still part of the mainstream debate -- a place at the table that we might be able to expand.

This invites the question of how many of rabble.ca's devotees of Karl Marx have a subscription to "a hard-line neo-liberal paper,"  but that is a minor point.

It must be frustrating for over-the-hill Marxists mired in the outdated radicalism of the 1960's to be getting the message, over and over, that they're no longer relevant.

It appears to be like the death of a loved one for Dobbin, because he's going through all five stages of grief in his one article:

Denial: Not many columnists in this country have achieved icon status but Rick Salutin is one of them.

Anger: I've always wondered about that popular slogan -- Speak truth to power. We've been doing that for years and they don't give a shit 

Bargaining: We should demand the Globe reinstate Rick Salutin. Some of us are still speaking.

Depression: I can just imagine the suits at the Globe having a brief conversation about Rick's column: "By the way, why are still publishing Rick Salutin?" Long silence. "Rick who?" I wonder if any of these guys ever even read him.

Acceptance: For the suits, the deal was signed long ago -- it's just taking a while to implement it down to the last remaining article.

I am of course having a bit of fun here and slightly altering some of the context and order of the statements. But I am not exaggerating the verbal conniption fit.

Goodbye Rick. I'll miss your columns too, because I used to get a laugh out of them. But evidently, someone came to the realization that I and the handful of rabbleoids with a subscription to The Globe were the few people left reading them.

UPDATE: The email I hated to send

As much as I welcome the idea that Salutin's tiresome paranoia will have fewer venues, as a matter of principle, I felt compelled to send the following email to the Globe and Mail's Editor-in-Chief:

Dear Mister Stackhouse

I am aware that there are some orchestrated campaigns going on at rabble.ca and with a few of their affiliated bloggers to try to get you to re-instate Rick Salutin.

These people probably very rarely buy a copy of The Globe and Mail.

Personally, I found his columns tiresome, predictable and repetitive. As that previous sentence suggests, I have a very different political outlook than Salutin. I should add that other than on the basis of rumour and scant non-mainstream media reports, I know nothing about your decision, so I apologize and want to clarify that this communication is on that basis.

The people orchestrating the “keep Salutin” campaign are mainly politically motivated and see him as one of the advocates for their point of view. A point of view that I believe to be distorted and outdated, and based on his biases rather than fact.

But I would not want to advocate that a person be removed based on his political views. If removing Salutin was a sound business decision, then you should stick with it. If his columns were uninteresting because of their predictability and inane repetition of themes while introducing misplaced ideological prejudices, then stick with it.

But if he was a valuable contribution to The Globe and Mail and was removed because he offended someone, then, much as I loathe to do so, I would advocate in the strongest terms that he be re-hired.

Yours,

All I can say is I hope they got rid of the boring socialist old goat because he was a boring socialist old goat that no one read anymore and not for any other reason.

UPDATE 2: Murray Dobbin is encouraging people to send a letter to the editor  (letters@globeandmail.ca)
at the Globe in support of Salutin. I just sent this, which I'm pretty sure is what Dobbin had in mind:
 

Dear Editor

I found the writing of Rick Salutin to be that of a tiresome, outdated polemicist mired in the politics of 1960’s radicalism. I stopped reading his columns with any regularity quite some time ago, as one could predict their entire substance from the headline.

If that was the reason the Globe and Mail got rid of him, then I commend your decision.

However, if he is a popular columnist who was fired merely for being politically objectionable, then I would ask you to reconsider that decision. That way, I could still check his writing out from time to time in The Globe to mock the irrelevance of the self-described “progressive” movement.

UPDATE 3: The Globe made a great call. Salutin is being replaced by Irshad Manji, who is a big favorite at Eye on a Crazy Planet. Great move, Globe and Mail!

Anti-Semitism among the regressive imbeciles at rabble.ca

rabble ca is not noteworthy for its ideas. That online clearing house for the ranting of humourless, paranoid Marxist stooges hasn't proposed a single idea worth serious consideration.

But rabble is noteworthy for providing insight into the mind-set of prominent individuals on Canada's far left. Naomi Klein, Rick Salutin, Maude Barlow, and Linda McQuaig are all regular contributors to the histrionic mouthpiece founded by Judy Rebick and currently published by Kim Elliott, the spouse of  NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies.

One of the regular themes of rabble is a pathological institutionalized obsession with, and hatred of  Israel that verges on anti-Semitism. Now they are venturing further into that territory. Today rabble is promoting Michael Keefer's book Anti-Semitism, Real and imagined.

The show notes from their audio presentation describe it as:

In his book Antisemitism: Real and imagined, Michael Keefer details Canada’s history of real anti-semitism, and challenges attempts to equate political criticism of Israel with a “new” anti-semitism.  At stake is the right of Canadians to exercise free speech on the issue of Palestine and Israel.

It's natural that the fanatics at rabble want to sell the lie that single-minded focus on Israel that eliminates the context of the Israeli/Palestinian dispute and places all the blame on the Israeli side has nothing to do with its being a country of Jews.

They say it's racist for a country to have a Jewish character, but have absolutely no complaint about the Islamic character of countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, but that has nothing to do with them hating and singling out Jews.

They are concerned about colonization where it doesn't exist because the Jews are behind it, but have little to say where it does, as in the Chinese colonization of Tibet.

They talk about a "genocide" of the Palestinians, which is factually ludicrous, since the population of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories has tripled since Israel took over, while they ignore the actual genocide in Darfur. But this couldn't be motivated by their Jew-hatred.

And if anyone complains about the hypocrisy of the far-left, that's just more proof of the international Zionist conspiracy.

These bigots want to persuade anyone stupid enough to take their word that the Marxofascist left's single-minded focus on Israel not only isn't anti-Semitic, but that criticism of their bigotry is somehow an inhibition of free speech. This is part of a current regular theme of the nutcase left. They are pushing the absurd, McCarthyist claim that they are allowed to say anything the want without any basis in fact, but if you so much as criticize them, you are repressing free speech.  In other words, it's more of the totalitarian left's  "free speech for me, but not for thee."

And let's look at the credibility of Michael Keefer, whose book is also being heavily promoted by Mohammed "Elmo" Elmasry's The Canadian Charger.

Keefer is a 9-11 conspiracy theorist who has claimed that George W. Bush not only won the 2000 election by fraud, but that such was the case in 2004 election as well.  He is on the Editorial Board of Elmasry's The Canadian Charger, so it is not unreasonable to assume that he is in agreement with their recent printing of a column on "Jewish sensitivity" by nutcase journalist Alan Hart, who contends that Israel and Jews were behind 9-11.

These people are laughing stocks, but they are also bigots trying to cloak their prejudice in what they call a social justice movement. If mullah-controlled Iran is your idea of a just society, you will enjoy what the brain trust at rabble.ca would have in store for us if anyone descends to the point of taking them seriously.