Lucky Sperm Club

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

Hey kids! Is your daddy a former prime minister of Canada? Then maybe you too can land a place in the media spotlight, just like Ben and Alexandre and Justin.

All this to say that Catherine Clark, daughter of Joe and Maureen McTeer, is back with a regular TV gig, this time on CPAC. This is from the release:

CPAC's Sunday Sound Off gets a fresh new face this Fall! Catherine Clark will be in the driver's seat when the live, coast-to-coast, bilingual, phone-in public affairs program returns on September 17th in the CPAC studios across from Parliament Hill.

The fluently bilingual Ottawa native is no stranger to the public eye having hosted a live, daily talk show in Ottawa, and occasionally hosting Sunday Sound Off during the last election. "As a young, bilingual broadcast professional, Catherine is keenly aware of the changing world and the importance of engaged citizens," said Colette Watson, President and General Manager of CPAC. "She is very much in-synch with CPAC's ongoing commitment to open and fruitful debate."

"I'm looking forward to speaking with Canadians from one end of the country to the other on topics that concern them and providing a live forum for them to speak directly with key experts," added Ms. Clark. "I hope Sunday Sound Off will become the destination for Canadians who want to voice their opinions about public affairs."

Clark's last national TV job was on the moribund digital i-channel, as one of its inaugural season hosts.

Now I am not suggesting that these political ''kids'' aren't smart or talented. But isn't amazing how they all landed such interesting jobs, jobs that ordinary slugs like us have to kill for? I mean, what are the odds?

UPPITY DATE: Somebody in the comments mentioned Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper. A very very rich woman, most famous in modern times for designing tight jeans. I am amazed that nobody yet has brought up David and Linda Frum or Jonah Goldberg, son of Lucianne Goldberg.

Oh please, start one about me

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

Whoa! Somebody doesn't like the Globe and Mail's Margaret (Peggy) Wente. Whoever that somebody is started a Wente Watch blog, the kind of site which proves that, as a columnist, she must be doing a great job if she is provoking people enough to give up their free time to pick apart her scribblings.

Seems that the blogger was tipped over the edge by Wente's words on AIDS and Africa, specifically this sentence: "Changing the behaviour of African men is probably hopeless." Complains the Wente Watcher:

Margaret Wente has made many ugly remarks during her career as a columnist, but this is the one that finally angered me enough to start this blog.

If someone had said that of "white men", or even just "men", can anyone doubt that Wente herself would be the first one screaming about radical feminism? But change the skin color of the men, and misandrist remarks become fine with her. Her jeer has no basis in fact; Uganda's famous ABC campaign proved that the sexual behavior of Africans, both men and women, could and would change with a community-based program of education.

But to Margaret Wente, this doesn't matter. Facts contrary to her ideological worldview don't exist. She is a writer who sees the world through the prism of good guys and bad guys. The good guys are capitalists, the United States, and white people; the bad guys are activists, critics of the US, and people of color. With that blinker in mind, her columns often follow a predictable formula:

1) Find a social issue, preferably one dear to the heart of liberal-leaning activists;

2) Blame it on nonwhite people;

3) Claim that only through conservative solutions can the problem be solved.

You know, I am totally fine with these sorts of blogs. After all, somebody has to watch the watchers. But what I object to is the anonymous part. If you're going to bushwhack people, then come out from behind the bush. Columnists such as Wente attach their name and face to their opinions. Attack bloggers should as well.

Unless they work in the same office.

Ya think?

UPPITY DATE: The blogger has outed himself in the comments below. Here's what he says:

Dear Ms. Zerbisias:

My name is Tyrone Nicholas and I am the author of Wente Watch.

Thank you for mentioning my blog. I'll try to upload a photo to it as soon as I get the chance.

We heart Mike

CTV's Mike Duffy is alive and well in Ottawa, where he is recuperating after open heart surgery. (Yes, he has a ticker!)

Duffy, host of Mike Duffy Live on CTV Newsnet, underwent the procedure at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute last week.

Lillian Duffy, the newsman's mother, told the Charlottetown Guardian that he is expected to make a full recovery.

"His operation was successful and he's home," she said from her Charlottetown home. "We're all grateful he's making a good recovery."

Duffy, 60, suffered a minor heart attack 14 years ago.

I know he's doing okay because he emailed me a few minutes ago to ask me about something I blogged while he was out of commission. I don't think it made him happy. But hey, better a mad Mike than a dead Duffy.

Get well soon Mike!

Left hook

Nearly three years ago, the Toronto Sun's Eric Margolis, one of the finest and most prescient writers on foreign affairs anywhere, walked away from his regular gig on TVO's Diplomatic Immunity because, as he told me at the time, producer "(Dan) Dunsky et. al. tried to censor my views on Iraq and the Mideast, and kept packing the guest list with far-right neocons from Washington. I have never in my (then) 21 year media career accepted anyone trying to tell me what to say. Events have, of course, proven the TVO party line dead wrong."

Indeed. Iraq is a quagmire. The Bush regime a disaster. They lied. Tens of thousands died. Etc. Etc. Margolis sums it up well in his latest effort about ''the war president'' not being able to war. (H/t to Jiminy C.)

Defeat I: Five years after Bush ordered Afghanistan invaded and proclaimed `total victory’ there, US and allied forces are struggling to defend their bases and supply lines against rising attacks from a growing number of Afghan resistance groups. The war costs $1.5 billion monthly. US-ruled Afghan now produces over 80% of the world’s heroin. The US just quietly deployed thousands more troops to Afghanistan to hunt al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in a desperate attempt to save Republicans from heavy losses in November mid-term elections.

Defeat II: Remember `Mission accomplished!’ in Iraq? President Bush’s war in Iraq is clearly lost, but few dare admit it. The US has spent $300 billion on Afghanistan and Iraq, with nothing to show there but chaos, civil war, body bags, and growing Iranian influence in Iraq and western Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney `liberation’ of Iraq has now cost more than the Vietnam War. So much for the `cakewalk.’ Iraq is likely the biggest American foreign policy disaster in living memory – even worse, in many ways, than Vietnam.

Defeat III: Off in the strategic Horn of Africa, another dangerous fiasco is unfolding. The White House had CIA and Pentagon spend tens of millions bribing Somali warlords to fight Islamist reformers trying to bring law and order to their strife-ravaged nation. The Islamists whipped CIA-backed warlords and ran them out of Somalia. Following this defeat, the US has encouraged and financed ally Ethiopia – shades of Lebanon - to invade Somalia, thus raising the threat of a wider war between Somalia, Ethiopia, and its old foe, Eritrea. Meanwhile, growing numbers of US Special Forces and CIA teams are getting drawn into obscure tribal melees in the Horn of Africa and the Saharan regions.

Defeat IV: Lebanon is, of course, the fourth major American military disaster. Bush and Cheney encouraged Israel to launch the hugely destructive but militarily fruitless war in Lebanon as the first part of their long nurtured plan to militarily crush Hezbullah, Syria and Iran. The Bush Administration brazenly thwarted world efforts to halt the conflict while giving Israel the green light to tear apart Lebanon. Now, just over a month later, Bush announces he will send $230 million to `help rebuild’ Lebanon – the same Lebanon blasted apart by US smart bombs rushed by air to Israel.

Anyway, after Margolis' departure, I got complaints from dozens of fans of the show who abandoned it because they missed Margolis and disliked the political turn it took.

No kidding. Did TVO really need to give Richard Perle a forum when he was already on all the Amnets? They even put out a news release announcing this ''get." The show lost a chunk of its constituency and ratings, I hear, dropped  with Margolis' departure.

Well guess what?

Looks like Dunsky, and host Steve Paikin, want Margolis back this fall when they launch their new program The Agenda. It's the program that will replace the suddenly-cancelled Studio 2.

Looks like ratings trump politics.

UPPITY DATE: One of the biggest idiots on the right is David Horowitz, a ''former Marxist" who conducts witch hunts on campus of liberal-leaning academics. The reason he's relevant is because, in Googling Margolis, I tripped over this screed by Horowitz on Horowitz's website against him, where author Eugene Girin calls the Sun -- hee-hee -- ''the leftist tabloid" and Margolis "an apologist for terror." What an ... er ... goof. (H/t to DEnnis Earl for catch my mistake here.)

OVERDUE DATE: Speaking of foreign affairs writers, Robert Parry takes hammer and tong to the New York Times' over-rated and over-exposed Thomas Friedman, the man who never gets it right and attacks those who do.

New York Times foreign policy analyst Thomas L. Friedman finally has come to the conclusion that George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq – which Friedman enthusiastically supported with the clever slogan “give war a chance” – wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Noting that “it is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are babysitting a civil war,” Friedman wrote, “that means ‘staying the course’ is pointless, and it’s time to start thinking about Plan B – how we might disengage with the least damage possible.” [NYT, Aug. 4, 2006]

Yet, despite this implicit admission that the war has unnecessarily killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 2,600 U.S. soldiers, Friedman continues to slight Americans who resisted the rush to war in the first place.

Twelve days after his shift in position, Friedman demeaned Americans who opposed the Iraq War as “antiwar activists who haven’t thought a whit about the larger struggle we’re in,” presumably a reference to the threat from Islamic extremism. [NYT, Aug. 16, 2006]

In other words, according to Friedman, Americans who were right about the ill-fated invasion of Iraq are still airheads when it comes to the bigger picture, while the pundits and politicians who were dead wrong on Iraq deserve pats on the back for their wise analyses of the larger problem.

Great piece on the go-Bush-go punditry elite. Read it.

I read, I hear

Toronto party prince Shinan Govani, the National Post's gossip columnist, gets the boldface treatment in this month's Toronto Life. The delightfully bitchy Gerald Hannon was the perfect pick to write this profile. (I added the links.)

Finally, hired in 2000 by then National Post editor Ken Whyte to deliver a scene column. Fired in 2001, when the Post shed most of its interesting writers. Hired back after, as he puts it, “Whyte came to his senses.” Began with three columns a week; now delivers five. The real kick-start to the column as a must-read came from a very public feud with writer Russell Smith in July 2001. Shinan wrote up a fetish-themed party for the launch of the S&M magazine Whiplash (scroll down), describing Smith as “dressed in wallpapered-on leather pants—offering ample evidence he’s making good use of his gym membership,” and adding that “the writer led ‘friend’ Krista around by a long, dangling leash.” Smith, who thought of himself as part of Govani’s friendship circle and therefore immune to unauthorized revelations, took exception and e-mailed his displeasure. The subsequent exchange ended up in the pages of Frank magazine. “I was a nobody columnist and he a member of the establishment,” Govani says today. “That feud established me in a way—people talked about it for years.” The affair seems to rankle still—on both sides. Govani, who can be cleverly mean but never vicious, describes Smith as “an ogre, with a brittle ego at work,” and says that Smith elbowed him in the back when the two met accidentally in the washroom of a downtown club. Smith does not remember any such incident, won’t talk about Shinan (“that’s what he wants most in the world—to be talked about”), and refers me to a scene in the movie Casablanca in which Peter Lorre says to Bogart, “You despise me, don’t you,” and Bogie comes back with, “If I gave you any thought I probably would.”

Anyway, it's a lonely life apparently being a society columnist. Hey, Shinan! Wanna come over for a BBQ? I'll serve up some dish neither of us can use.

Move over Oprah

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

CNN's Daryn Kagan is quitting CNN after 12 years. Here's her statement:

I am so grateful for the experience and people I've worked with for 12 years. 12-years!? Who has a job anywhere for 12-years anymore, let alone in TV news!

It is time for me to move onto the next phase of my career. I am very excited about starting my own online venture at darynkagan.com. It will be an inspirational, online community dedicated to the radical idea that the world is a good place. Sounds different, I know. It is. Watch the site for more details in the coming weeks.

darynkagan.com launches November 13th.

Meanwhile, I will be in my regular anchor slot 10a.m.-noon EST until Friday, Sept. 1st. I'm looking forward to using August to touch base with as many of you incredible people as possible, and of course, proudly anchoring for the network that has given me so many amazing opportunities.

From the look of her web welcome page, Kagan is getting into ... uh ... something inspirational.

Speaking of CNN hairdos, I just heard Kyra Phillips call the heat ''stiff-ling."

UPPITY DATE: Hola! (and a tip of the hat to Voxpopgirl.)

With Cuban leader Fidel Castro ailing after 47 years in power, CNN said Thursday it had hired his estranged daughter, Alina Fernandez, as a network contributor.

Fernandez, who was 3 when Castro took power and had sporadic contact with him, left Cuba disguised as a Spanish tourist in 1993. She moved to Miami, where she is a radio host and the author of Castro's Daughter: An Exile's Memoir of Cuba.

Her father has temporarily handed over power to his brother Raul and remained out of the public eye after undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding.

Fernandez will provide commentary and expertise about Cuba as the story about her father's health, and a potential succession of power, continues.

Get out your handkerchiefs

Awwwww.

Loss of face

CBC's loss is CTV's gain. Actually, the taxpayers' loss is Bell Globemedia's gain. Veteran CBC journalist Paul Workman is jumping ship, CTV News president Robert Hurst announced today.

Workman will join foreign correspondent Matt McClure in covering South Asia. The two will rotate between New Delhi and Kandahar and lead CTV News' expanded coverage in the region with a special emphasis on the ongoing efforts of the Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

"Paul is recognized as one of the world's best foreign correspondents. For years Canadians have admired his coverage of major international events across Europe, the Middle East and Asia," said Hurst. "CTV is already home to the best international news coverage in Canada and our roster of all-star foreign correspondents has just gotten even better."

"I am thrilled to be joining Canada's #1 news team," said Workman. "CTV News has distinguished itself for its commitment to journalistic excellence not only within our borders but on the international front as well. I look forward to joining Matt McClure in South Asia and being part of the network's ongoing coverage in Afghanistan."

With more than 30 years of experience in Canadian journalism, Workman has covered a multitude of national and international news events. Reporting from locations throughout Canada, Europe and Asia, Workman has covered notable news events including the political turmoil in Quebec, the revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe and the tragic death of Princess Diana. Most recently, Workman has reported extensively on the Middle East, specifically on the war in Iraq and the conflict in Afghanistan.

Workman has spent the past quarter century with CBC, a died-in-the-wool Corpser. But I can't say I am surprised, considering everything that transpired last fall between him and the network. A couple of months ago, it seemed that he got a brief reprieve.

But obviously it wasn't enough to keep him at CBC. Nobody can blame Workman for leaving. But as I type this, I'm on the phone with a CBC Newsie who is expressing profound regret -- but not surprise -- over the defection.

Incidentally, I am told that Workman, as well as most of the CBC journalists and producers who worked at the Jerusalem bureau, have appealed to management over the way cameraman Azur Mizrachi was cruelly dumped last month by managing editor George Hoff who flew over just to have the bureau locks changed. No notice, no bonus, no severance. (He was offered standard severance.) This is a guy who risked his life for two decades covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with three daughters. He claims he has no idea why he was dumped. He's contesting the dismissal but CBC has hired a high-priced Tel Aviv law firm to fight back.

Hoff, by the way, took a sidetrip to do the firing while on his way to a join the jury at TV festival in Monaco.

Your tax dollars at work.

Name drain

CBC Newsworld's George Stroumboulopoulos is packing up all his vowels and taking them to ABC this summer as the host of The One: Making a Music Star, the reality show that will be simulcast on CBC which will bump The National one day a week blah-di-blah-blah.

"It's great for us, because we get to have a Canuck down there representing on (U.S. network) ABC," (CBC spokesperson Danielle) Fielder boasted.

"He'll be down in L.A. for the rest of the summer doing the show and then the show wraps at the end of the summer, he comes back and then starts (CBC talk show) The Hour."

The eight-week U.S. series, produced by Endemol USA, will be simulcast on CBC-TV starting July 18, she said.

In the show, 11 musicians live together while competing for a chance at a recording contract. Cameras follow the young hopefuls as they brag, bicker and backstab, all the while being coached and trained by recording industry professionals.

<SNIP>

In a blatant ratings challenge to rival CTV, CBC-TV has put the singing contest on the same nights as the hugely popular Canadian Idol, hosted by the squeaky clean-cut Ben Mulroney.

The 33-year-old Stroumboulopoulos, known for his straight talk and black wardrobe, will remain on CBC's late-night lineup once the U.S. show ends. The Hour is moving from CBC Newsworld to the main network and will follow The National from Sunday to Thursday starting Oct. 2.

Good thing George's coming back: I have finally figured out how to spell his name without looking it up. That's saying something for somebody with a name and background like mine.

Also, Stroumboulopoulos is definitely going to outcool Ben Mulroney -- and let's not even get started on Ryan Seacrest. More important, his presence on this show helps deflect all that criticism being dumped on CBC regarding the simulcast of the ABC show.

UPPITY DATE: Speaking of The Hour, there is a bunch of job openings there.

Hair today, gone yesterday

Sometime in May, a reader named Andrew Elliott tipped me to the presence of ex-CNN hottie -- only because the lady packs heat -- Lynne Russell reading the news on CBC Newsworld. I put in some inquiries and, because CBC's publicity department doesn't work like it used to, was told she was ''part-time casual'' and not much more.

Then this week, another reader named Neil Allen also asked about her. Another call to CBC -- and I am still awaiting for a reply.

Why was this CNN icon -- I mean check out this mournful farewell from a trio of droolers at the Washington Post back in 2001 -- on CBC?

Today, the answer was in the Globe and Mail, in a very flattering and lengthy profile that Canadian newsreaders can only dream of. (Inside the CBC has more.) Did she get the play only because she is, you know, American?

Now don't get me wrong here. I am thrilled that a woman of her age and experience -- she's just short of 60 and spent 18 years on CNN Headline News -- can still get an on-camera gig.

But I have to wonder: Weren't there any Canadian wannabes in the wings? Isn't the Friday night graveyard shift the perfect place to train developing talent? It's not as if there is a shortage of qualified -- and good-looking -- journos out there. What's the deal CBC?

That said, welcome to Canada, Lynne. I want to be like you when I grow up.

Flip of the hair to Carla.

UPPITY DATE: Some commenters accuse me of ''politicizing'' this as American versus Canadian. Not at all. I would say the same thing if Russell came from Jerusalem or Jamaica. The point is, her job requires her to, at the drop of a hat, do interviews and stickhandles live news coverage. Since it's the graveyard shift, the producer(s) working with her are not likely to be very experienced either. What's more, neither of them will have much sense of Canadian history, political or otherwise.

In any case, the Canada-v-U.S. comes from Russell, not me. She thinks we're cute! The peaceable Queendom!

Consider what Russell told the Globe:

"I've worked from one end of the [United States] to another . . . and I think y'all have something good going here," said Russell, who, at times, speaks with a slight southern drawl, though she was born in New Jersey.

"There are neighbourhoods here. I live on a street where there are little lawns, and people talk to each other, people take care of each other, and if you get sick, there are people knocking on your door with chicken soup."

That said, Heaton Dyer comes from New Zealand. So I get yer point.