Sunday, September 30, 2012

TVFP on Margaret Wente


 


 

From what we can tell Ms. Wente is pretty much what she says she is in her defence of Carol Wainio’s well documented blog Media Culpa revealing plagiarism and dodgy journalistic practices: ‘gee I’m sorry, but no way I’m falling on my sword because Carol Wainio is, you know, out to get me. Besides I’m right in the sense of the big picture. So go away.’

Well who knows and we don’t really care, the intelligent steadfast work of Carol Wainio notwithstanding. Carol Wainio and thoughtful, dispassionate, well intentioned people like her are pretty much irrelevant. That is, as they say, a cryin’ shame.

As we see it isn’t whether or not Margaret Wente disgraced the fifth estate, but whether or not you like her. That’s what we’ve gleaned from the Twitter stuff and other media comments. Margaret Wente suddenly and ironically to the commie pinko left is the new garbage.

(That is a reference to the 2009 Inside and Outside worker strike that pissed off the electorate and like the freaky meteor that gave us the cannibals in Night of the Living Dead, eventually brought Rob Ford to the mayor’s office.)

The public persona, whether you are a politician, a journalist, a bureaucrat, a tycoon, or whatever has been reduced to a popularity contest. So the idea is, you can survive anything if you are popular. For the most part the above have figured it out. You just have to have the right numbers, say 35 or 36 percent if you are Stephen Harper. Whether or not Margaret Wente's career goes up in smoke has nothing to do with integrity or intelligence. She has the numbers she stays. She doesn't she's gone.

As well our ur take on it at TVFP: for the most part JOURNALISM wakes up every morning and has a shower. It evacuates its bowels. It puts on a layer of deodorant and another layer of scent. It brushes its capped teeth, combs its coloured hair and puts on a clean pair of underwear.

Margaret Wente and, for that matter those two Titans of Journalism, Lorrie Goldstein and Sue Anne Levy, as well as so many others, the run of the mill  (there are some notable exceptions of course) smell so nice. They are people you’d be grateful to stand next to on an over crowded streetcar on a day when the humidex is off the chart.



 

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Queen Victoria on the Parti Quebecois




As you are well aware TVFP enlisted us to write a semi-regular column from Heaven on personal hygiene and beauty issues. We were delighted by the opportunity. We heartily encourage you to drink a demi-tasse of your own urine every morning. This will produce the most wondrous effects. It will improve the suppleness of your skin, shrink corns and produce a lovely oblong stool with perfect regularity.

Now about the French in general. How can you take a race of people seriously who worship a fungus, put a cream sauce on everything and consider Jerry Lewis a comic genius.

There are however, serious issues afoot in Canada, the village of small huts. You see we were there at the beginning. There was a lot of behind the scenes discussion about what to do with the French. 

An advisor to Sir John, who shall remain nameless, suggested you  ship them all to Louisiana, but apparently that had been tried and it didn’t work. Another suggestion was simply to cut out their tongues, thus sparing you their dreadful mangling of the English language.
 
In the end nothing was done and now here you are, the country is awash in poutine and you’ve got another go round with the Parti Quebecois. It’s your own fault.

Our suggestion would be to fence them in and charge them a toll every time they go to the mall or Florida. It would solve the national debt problem.

On a lighter note you might thank your lucky stars that you don’t live next to the Irish. They are a bestial race at best. Paleontologists continue to look for the missing link. We think they merely have to set foot in Dublin. Next to the Irish the French appear positively angelic.
 
 
Attila the Hun, in his much discussed review of Jim Read's The Big Smoke Blues wrote: ficken Ich mag diesen Kerl.
 
 
 

Sunday, September 2, 2012

The Death of Mary Dowser Update

 

Recently TVFP reported that the ever aromatic Mary Dowser had died. Reports surfaced that she was abducted in an engineless cardboard sedan during a Luis Bunel movie shoot in Kiev during the Euro 2012 Futbol tournament. Later the cardboard car was reported to have surfaced in California. We have new information:
 
Our sources in Kiev, Ukraine, a real sinkhole of a country, report that the engineless cardboard sedan was yellow. The name of the Luis Bunel film was Lost and Found in an Effortless Beam of Post-Modern Light. Senor Bunel wrote the script in conjunction with the notorious masterbater Salvador Dali. That’s all we know on the Ukraine front except that it is a real sinkhole of a place, worse than Florida.

On the Clara Kappelhoff front Ms. Kappelhoff reported to police that a yellow cardboard sedan was spotted in a field of horses and appeared to be competing with the equines for grazing space. Ms. Kappelhoff was apparently alcohol and drug free at the time of the sighting, just after dawn on a recent Sunday or maybe it was Monday morning. She wasn't sure.

That brings us up to date. Unfortunately we have not discovered the whereabouts of Ms. Dowser's remains, which leads us to believe she was tossed into an arborist's tree branch shredder machine and disposed of in an land fill site in England. Somewhere around Reading.

Martin Frobisher has written to us from Baffin Island: dear TVFP, I know something about looking for things. If I was looking for Mary Dowser I’d look in Reading. Sooner or later everything shows up in Reading. Television for instance, that showed up in Reading, as did the Internet. My guess is that if she’s riding around in a yellow cardboard sedan, she’s headed for Reading.

Other readers of TVFP have written in to us on the fate of effervescently fragrant Mary Dowser:

Queen Victoria writes: How does one know that the woman is dead? There is no evidence. If she is dead she’d smell rather foul, one thinks. Perhaps you need to hire a dog.

William Lyon Mackenzie writes: You stupid German cow. There is no known occurrence of anyone in our galaxy surviving a kidnapping in a cardboard sedan. There is even less evidence to support survival after a yellow cardboard sedan kidnapping, that is to say less than zero. In German that is uber zilch. Of course she’d dead and by foul means and that is what stinks, mum.

Susanna Moodie writes: where is Reading?

Eric the Red writes: Sveeden.

Louis XIV, the Sun King writes: L'anglais putain sont une douleur dans le cul ne fait aucun doute à ce sujet.

Brian Boru writes: Is iad na Béarla rás dÚsachtach, níos measa ná Gearmánaigh fucking.

Betty Crocker writes: Does anyone know the national dish of Sveeden?

St. Augustine of Hippo writes: Ingrid Bergman, but I've never met her. There was an age difference.
 

 *

Recently Ronald Reagan was asked to comment on ‘Heart Simple’, the heart rending, uplifting story by Jim Read. Mr. Read's story was influenced by the Gustave Flaubert piece, Un Cœur Simple.  Simple in Mr. Read’s usage also a refers to homeopathic medicine, in this case the ancient and undying remedy of love. President Reagan observed: well friends the story was written by a guy from the point of view of a gal. But what a gal!