Dalton Camp Award 2018

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is the curiously named nonprofit lobby group (perverse official orthography: FRIENDS of Canadian Broadcasting) that exists solely to argue for greater funding for, and greater reach of, the CBC. Anything else it purports to do is nothing but a cover story.

“FriendsCB” offers the annual Dalton Camp Award for stilted essays reinforcing the national governing broadcast lobbyist’s narrative. While Friends’ Web site still lists spokesman-for-life Ian Morrison as its spokesman, in fact “Daniel Bernhard is FRIENDS'Executive Director and Spokesperson” (sic). Ages ago I wrote him a letter about the Dalton Camp Award’s bizarre requirements.

Rule 8 has the temerity to state:

All ideas in an entry shall be the original written expression of the entrant… and shall not… contain any libellous, defamatory, obscene or otherwise unlawful or objectionable content.

An entry in an essay contest shall not contain “objectionable content”? (How precisely does an “idea” contain “content”?)

It is reprehensible that a lobby group for Canadian broadcasting – which, to quote §2 of the Charter, defends “freedom of the press and other media of communication” – should state that an entry in a writing contest might get DQed because some volunteer judge got offended. (Or purported to.)

I reasonably believe an essay advocating for privatization of the CBC would be deemed “objectionable” and disqualified. Doesn’t this rule turn an ostensibly free essay contest into a Soviet-style exercise of recapitulating the national governing broadcasting lobby group’s consensus on perpetual, indeed perpetually increasing, government funding for the national governing public broadcaster? Isn’t the purpose of this rule to enforce consensus and blatantly warn off entrants who might dare to dissent?

Without unblinding any competition judging, on what ethical basis can you support the inclusion of such a rule? Will its application be struck from this year’s entries, and will it be deleted entirely for future years?

Of course I didn’t get a response. (I asked again.)

2018’s winners involved work by Brad Stollery, a male-feminist civil servant, regarding Internet access for “Indigenous Peoples.” (Remember, white cishet males: Calling them Indians, Inuit, or Métis, or even aboriginals or First Nations peoples, is as racist as calling Desmond Cole a nigger.) The student award went to a creative-writing student and female, Georgina Beaty.

Take a wild guess which entry didn’t win.

Your consensus violates my terms of service:
On the myth of media as prerequisite for democracy

• I remember when “the media” thought its apparatus was so crucial to “democracy” that Paul Godfrey didn’t need to ask for a bailout.
• I remember when democracy meant votes by the people or the voice of the people.
• I remember, or actually I don’t remember, when “the media” wasn’t a real Toronto elite dictating taste to the rest of Canada.
• I remember when “the rest of Canada” got acronymized to “RoC” – sort of like “flyover states” (or “Bumfuckistan”).
• I remember the Trailer Park Boys (also voters). I remember how their show, beloved by so many wrong kinds of people, infuriated “the media.”
• I remember so much consensus about consensus that it didn’t matter who articulated it, be it Gzowski or his successors or really anyone at the CBC, even a vizmin J‑school grad on week-to-week contract. Because we’re all on the same team here.
• I remember Mordechai Richler doing a better job griping about French than all of Quebec did about English: “French, the language of Molière (also of Allô Police).”
• I remember living in Quebec when its distinct society encompassed both the Church and le Gant de velours, where the strippers had hard-ons.
• I remember a time when “the media” tolerated the phrase “distinct society.” Now even the border is racist.
• I remember a distinct society where Canadian broadcasting’s friends could accept an ecosystem wherein Radio-Canada and Allô Police coexisted.
• I remember Toronto media isn’t an ecosystem.
• I remember when the only forum to speak truth to media power was Frank.
• I remember the Rhinoceros Party. At least “democracy” has opposition parties. Or had.
• I remember a time – if you want essay-compliant vocab, an antediluvian time – when a curmudgeon like Richler was celebrated. I guess that was because Richler was comfortably distant, driving in from a canton to get ritually shitfaced on Crescent St.
• I remember Neil Bissoondath flipping from darling of the white liberal media to unperson the day he moved to Quebec City.
• I remember when one could be just adorably corrosive enough.
• I remember the slow inkling, then the bolt-of-lightning realization, that Canadian media means Toronto media, and the latter expels curmudgeons. (Or those curmudgeons never left Quebec, or they moved there.)
• I remember, or actually I don’t remember, an epoch when the spouses and children of media stalwarts weren’t automatically grandfathered into media gigs. I don’t remember an epoch when appearing in one media outlet didn’t also at the very least make you a CBC panelist. All I remember are dynasties.
• I remember when a hammer and sickle was a hate symbol. Now the converged media pretend a Fred Perry is.
• I remember when a polo shirt wasn’t a harbinger of the Final Solution.
• I remember when Grizzly Mama would never be taken seriously as the name of an Indian chief. Because it ain’t and she ain’t.
• I remember a lot of white media hand-wringing over “natives.” Then that switched to “nativism.”
• I remember Indians, Inuit, Métis. I remember First Nations. I remember being told to scrub those memories and write Indigenous with a cap I. I remember colonizing SFA.
• I remember not being called racist for having had a black boyfriend, though now I’d be racist for not capitalizing the B. (Then there was the Mexican.) If I told the press I’d gotten stopped by the cops 50 times, I’d have a book contract by now.
• I remember misquoting Babs Kruger (“When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I take out my checkbook”) as “When I hear the word ‘genocide,’ I preface it with ‘white.’ ” I remember some quotes are best read in the original Klingon.
• I remember when free speech was such a democratic value it was enshrined in the Constitution.
• I remember when the democratic media made “free speech” a synonym for “Nazi.”
• I remember when niqab suddenly meant freedom.
• I remember when Ezra – after a while all you need is a first name, like Beyoncé – could just keep losing libel lawsuits in the comfort and privacy of the RoC rather than triggering revulsion that this democracy allows him to exist.
• I remember when Toronto media weren’t palpably exasperated that they hadn’t been able to kill off that troublesome Jew yet. (“We’ve tried everything! Why isn’t it working? ”)
• I remember when Natural Governing Party couldn’t be pormanteaued to Natural Governing Broadcaster (or National Governing Media Critic). I remember convergence.
• I remember how only certain “writing styles” could be permitted to win the Dalton Camp Award, just as only certain journalists could be permitted to work in Toronto. Or simply exist without the host body going full Fantastic Voyage and eating them alive.
• I remember that reference. Since it’s an American one, you do too.
• I remember the media actually not expelling contrarians as if they were enemy combatants.
• I remember when Canadian democracy expelled enemy combatants. We called them internment camps and residential schools. What Canadian broadcasting’s friends are doing isn’t history repeating.
• I remember when Twitter wasn’t popular, hence wasn’t used as a means to mob and destroy enemies of the state. By “state” I mean “democracy,” which overlaps the Toronto media 1:1.
• I remember when the media would just ask the Fraser Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for duelling quotes. (“There: We covered all the bases.”) Now it keeps in business soi-disant experts into right-wing clubs in Canada, despite the twin facts that such clubs barely exist and haven’t been able to keep their shit together for decades.
• I remember standing in front of Ernst Zündel’s house on Carlton St. “The media” think Zündel’s ilk, like Stephen Harper, is still lurking.
• I remember the fury when Stephen Harper kept getting democratically elected.
• I remember reading about real democracies, with proportional representation and mandatory voting.
• I remember earning an engineering diploma. It taught me how to run numbers and determine that only 2% of the Muslim males in Canada need to endorse jihad for their numbers to dwarf right-wing clubs’. It’s undemocratic for a 2% to terrorize the 98%. I don’t remember hearing that from Canadian broadcasting’s friends.
• I remember talking to right-wing clubs. They don’t remember the media ever having bothered.
• I remember public speaking since 1989, an era when tranny soundmen didn’t repeatedly cut my mike.
• I remember a busy freelance-writing career. I was a columnist in three papers. I remember being first to get the Globe’s freelance contract. I remember a ruinous 16-year class-action lawsuit over copyright.
• I remember writing 400-odd ruthlessly-fact-checked articles, with bulletproof type and copy. I never remember its being my job to steer democracy.
• I remember Manufacturing Consent. You’re living it now. In fact that’s what you’re doing.
• I remember Michael Malice’s simple test to determine if one is right-wing: “Are some people better than other people?” By that standard, Toronto media are right-wing. (Who’s better? Nooobody! ) Quite the shock once they find out.
• I remember when legislatures’ press galleries didn’t vet and eject would-be members.
• I remember when the media didn’t think any or all of its adversaries could literally be worse than Hitler.
• I remember when it was superfluous to state that one can be a philo-Semite or pro-Muslim, but not both. Take a wild guess.
• I remember wondering whom jihadis might behead first, the sodomite, the Jew, or the everyday kaffir. I remember missing my chance to run that by Daniel Pearl or James Foley or Steven Sotloff. (Or Nathan Cirillo.)
• I remember the opening of this essay, when I said democracy meant votes by the people or the voice of the people. If roughly half the country doesn’t want men in dresses in ladies’ washrooms, or wants precisely zero Muslim immigration, I remember, or actually I don’t remember, when “the media” didn’t feel it was their duty to “democracy” to instruct the RoC on how wrong they are.
• I remember being able to write snappier entries in this Brainard homage. Sometimes reality isn’t pretty, so neither is the prose styling. You remember when I wrote “hard-on” above; at least I’m not writing that again.
• I remember sparing your feelings. You’re nominally pro‑“LGBT+,” but gay still weirds you out.
• I remember when faggy gay (and tomboyish lesbo) kids weren’t transed out of existence, a genteel ethnic cleansing Richler would have identified as such.
• I remember when “the media” weren’t crypto-fascist nags. I remember antifa demos, hence I know that if I so much as uttered “crypto-fascist nags” while out in public, I’d be called a queer and I’d get my goddamn face socked, and I’d stay plastered.
• I remember that reference.
• I remember how the media wouldn’t ever publish the word “antifa,” or investigate them.
• I remember when it wasn’t OK to punch a Nazi. But I also remember eating meat, and I remember being the only member of “the media” to turn his life around on principle.
• I remember trying to make the media better. It’s terminal.
• I remember principle. That’ll die off too.

You remember: A white male feminist whining about natives won the award this year.