Mesley + 1 Year: The Snitches And Snobs Have Won

Perhaps it’s appropriate on the anniversary week of Wendy Mesley being shivved by the knowledge Stasi at CBC that radicals overturned a statue of Egerton Ryerson at the school that bears his name— a school that features one of the most prominent journalism schools in the country. 

If anything announced the coming reality in today’s snob newsrooms it was probably the sudden demise of a liberal CBC star, pitched overboard for her use of of a word in a story meeting while warning about a radical guest’s use of the same word.

To the new generation of safe-space snitches, the forbidden word was an appalling breach of their right to security and unchallenged worldview. Here’s how we saw it last June (in a column that was, by far, our most-read of the year).

“In the end it was a rat who got Wendy Mesley. The CBC TV host of The Weekly was likely bushwhacked by someone(s) on her show staff, the trust of the unit broken by those who likely sat across from her at story meetings, smiling eagerly as they (I use this pronoun in both the traditional and non-binary sense) contemplated how to step over Mesley to win fame for themselves…

“No doubt the fellow employee(s) doesn’t not feel like the rat that they are. They probably see themselves as a hero for outing Mesley’s use of a word used commonly by black comics such as Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock to prompt laughter from mortified liberal whites. That Mesley used the word in a warning about a black guest to her staff of eager young things— it’s almost exclusively female and user 30— was irrelevant. 

“There was a scalp for the taking. And some SJW snitch who stains the name of journalism was not going to pass up a prize like that to brag about within their peer group. Mesley immediately recognized her mistake in the meeting. Not in using the word itself but in trusting the callow members of her staff to understand the context. But her apologies are useless. They’re encouragement for more outings. The snitch culture rules in today’s newsrooms.”

To say people in Canadian journalism were shocked by Mesley’s demise understates the reaction. But looked at from a June 2021 perspective it all seems of a piece. Snitches are now running amok, stories are progressive narratives and censorship of perceived enemies is cool. Snobs Rule.

Everything is identity politics. Try getting a white male bank president on the Corp or TVO these days. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than have an inappropriate political messenger soil the lineup sheet dominated by the downtown Toronto aristocracy. Most alarming is that the Canadian media, culture and government are all located there, imposing their tortured worldview on the nation.

This is a new reality in the Trudeau/ post-Trump world of news gathering. Though the press still claim independence, Trudeau has bribed the elitist Canadian media using slush funds. Open inquisition has been subordinated to reinforcing the authority of his political pals. Only designated “experts” can speak. Science is settled. The Covid-19 crisis is an “opportunity”.

As independent journalist Matt Taibbi wrote last week, “Truth, they believe, is properly guarded by “experts” and “authorities” or…’serious people,’ who alone can be trusted to decide such matters as whether or not the Hunter Biden laptop story can be shown to the public. A huge part of the frustration that the general public feels is this sense of being dictated to by an inaccessible priesthood, whether on censorship matters or on the seemingly daily instructions in the ear-smashing new vernacular of the revealed religion, from “Latinx” to “birthing persons.”

The newsroom cabals, Taibbi continues, secure in their urban hives, have eliminated much of society from the process of truth. “In the tone of these discussions is a constant subtext that it’s not necessary to ask the opinions of ordinary people on certain matters. As Plato put it, philosophy is ‘not for the multitude.’ The plebes don’t get a say on speech, their views don’t need to be represented in news coverage, and as for their political choices, they’re still free to vote — provided their favorite politicians are removed from the Internet, their conspiratorial discussions are banned (ours are okay), and they’re preferably all placed under the benevolent mass surveillance of “experts” and “professionals.”

In the wake of the 2020 election result, Angelo Codevilla observed the takeover in The American Thinker, When those at the top of American communications’ food chain, the folks at the New York Times, said openly that they would put truth aside during the noble fight against Trumpism, when the news industry shamelessly purveyed obviously incredible stories about Trump’s alleged Russia collusion; when they shamelessly purveyed obviously unsourced rumor as truth…

“Americans did not realize how thoroughly their ruling class had already jelled into an oligarchy with the intention above all to crush them.”

Canadians are now seeing this same process as the PM attempts to use Covid-19 fear and climate debate in media to radically re-orient market capitalism and turn over many crucial decisions to multinational actors like former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, Columnist Peter Foster in the National Post, described their urgency. “… somehow the new socialism will not be socialism as usual. This time it’s different. We can because we must. 

“The threat is too great to permit any argument. It’s surprising that as he was picking out choice quotes from Lenin for his book, Carney missed this one: “No more opposition now, comrades! The time has come to put an end to opposition, to put the lid on it. We have had enough opposition!”

No doubt Wendy Mesley, alone and unloved by the industry she once represented, would understand all too well.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx