Tim Blair

Ah, once again, the myth of the "disillusioned small-L Liberal" raises its head.

If Primary vote is anything to go by then

A) These people were never a large base of Coalition support
B) If "losing" these guys helps the Coalition to 4 successive victories then...well, I can't see them worrying to much about "reaching out" for a while.

Oh, and might I add that Margo claims to be one of these disillusioned small-L liberals.

'Nuff said.

Margot is disillusioned with small libs.

So where is Mt Healp? is it a National Park? National treasure? Can I climb it? Is it endangered?

rog-
I think the small part Margo has is between her ears.

I wondered what in the world Fox could have done to be categorized as "the Canada-baiting house organ of the U.S. right". I figured Fox must have devoted a segment of each hour to dissing Canada, to rate such a category.

I wondered if any of our elected representatives, from the U.S. right, were entertaining Fox viewers by stomping on Canadian politician doll figures. (Like a Canadian politician recently did to a doll of Pres. Bush.)

Seems their panties are in a knot because,"The abrasive Mr. O'Reilly, in particular, has developed an intense, albeit negative, interest in things Canadian in the past two years."

This is what O'Reilly has done:
"He used his much-watched The O'Reilly Factor program as a launching pad for feuds with The Globe and Mail's John Doyle and Heather Mallick, and attacked, variously, Canadian teens (for being "ignorant"), the CRTC (for "banning" Fox), former prime minister Jean Chrétien (for being "a bum"), The Globe and Mail ("a far-left newspaper"), Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell (for being soft on heroin users) and Canadian health care ("socialist")."

Well, at least we didn't have US elected officials stomping on dolls that represented Canadian elected officials. Can't see why they're upset because O'Reilly called their newspaper far-left. Doesn't seem worthy of including in the list of O'Reilly's offenses against Canada.

I watch Fox all the time and I'm not sure I've ever seen them mention Canada at all. Have they got Sean Hannity mixed up with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog?

i knew that tim's SMH subscription was going to come to no good...

I can only pray that something awakens Canada from its eurostupor. Otherwise it should disintegrate into assimilable parts. Even Quebec won't hold out for long (I live there along with the estimable Mark Steyn).

Fuck Carolyn Parrish
Fuck Hedy Fry
Fuck Jean Chretien
Fuck Bernard Landry
Fuck Paul Martin
Fuck'em all

I rarely if ever watch Fox. But I have a game I like to play with my small l liberal friends.

It is calld the "Fox News Game"

The rules are easy.

1. Find a liberal

2. Sneak up behind them.

3. Yell FOX NEWS on top of your lungs.

4. Stand band and watch them jump, hyperventilate, and scream.

Hours of fun. But be careful. The Fox News Game has been known to cause aging hippies to have heart attacks.

"Canada-baiting?" Hell, I'd watch more often if the anchors were bantering Canuck jokes back and forth between segments. Not that that is likely to happen so long as they don't run out of French and German jokes. How bad is that, to be a third string punchline?

Canada has this real annoying habit of thinking they are more important than they really are. It is like they live up there in their igloos or whatever, hunched around the fire convinced that Americans are deliberately slighting them constantly. "A hand puppet on an American late night show was insulting the citizens of Quebec! The bastards!" "Look at Brit Hume! He just sits there in his nice suit and behind his nice desk and looks right into the camera and doesn't acknowledge us. Pointedly ignoring us Canadians! A deliberate snub, the jackals!"

I live in a state that technically borders Canada and I think more about Mexico or Fiji than I do Canada.

"But be careful. The Fox News Game has been known to cause aging hippies to have heart attacks."

Yeah. Dead smelly hippy can really stink up the house if the ambulance is slow to arrive.

"I live in a state that technically borders Canada and I think more about Mexico or Fiji than I do Canada."

I have the feeling so do most Canadians.

As I recall, Fox required 5-6 years to get a Canadian broadcasting license. Al Jazeera, the beheading channel, took less than a week to acquire their Canadian license.

Anthony,

I am soooo gonna steal that! Oh what fun!

Good one. :^D

How unbelievable that Canadians would act upset about Fox News coming to their country. They've had one of their own snubbing and sneering and smirking at America on ABC WorldNews for a tiresome number of years. At least we're saved the bother of tuning into al-Jazeera for its line of anti-Americanism, after a superciliously smug Jennings tells us how dreadful our nation is, night after night.

What really gets me is the simple equivalance of Al Jazeera and Fox News in the line "another controversial foreign news channel".

Fox can on occassion sound a little jingo-istic, but to compare it with the rabid stream of hyperbolic and hate filled propoganda that streams from Al Jazeera, amply documented by the likes of MEMRI, is absurd.I suppose it is to be expected from a mainstream media that is only able to acheive neutrality by suspending it's critical faculties.

It is of a piece with the latest ICRC report that I heard reported on Channel 9's Sunday program this morning.It apparently harshly critcises all parties to the Iraq conflict.
When the Red Cross is incapable of making the distinction between deliberate, indiscriminate slaughter of non combatants carried out in the cause of re-imposing a Tyranny that has already taken more than a million lives by one method or another and the relatively rare accidental collateral damage caused when Coalition forces engage with those, who in contravention of every law and custom of war wear no uniform, hide behind and amongst civilians and in protected sites then it is as useless as a media that can't make the distinction between Al Jazeera and Fox, between Marines and terrorists.

Their claims to neutral objectivity become risible - the very failure to make these distinctions make them objective allies of the terrorists. Truth is, if the Coalition deployed it's fire power using the same policies as the Terrorists mcuh of the middle east would today be giant sheets of ticking glass.

A small-l Liberal?

Have they tried Cialis? If your liberalism persists for more than four hours, consult a physician...

often called "the unofficial official voice of the Bush administration,"

Fox will be around for much longer than the next four years.

Perhaps its critics can tell us who Fox will be unofficially and at the same time, officially be 'voicing' for, in say 2009.

I for one, would love to know.

President Rice maybe?

The abrasive Mr. O'Reilly, in particular, has developed an intense, albeit negative, interest in things Canadian in the past two years.

Cana...who?

Oh yeah, that state up North.

Dave Green is a disillusioned small Liberal ...

You know, Margo, when you constantly tell the world stuff like this, you shouldn't be that surprised when dates are hard to come by.

I think I speak for everyone who is me when I say that us Albertans would gladly become the 51st state. Not that we're not thrilled about supporting the rest of the country year after year.

At least Fox knows which country it belongs to, unlike the rest who always want to belong to some other scumbag country.

What Canada needs isn't just Fox News, but a local version of it. Nevermind the leftist orthodoxy up there; Fox News managed to find an audience in the U.S. after all, despite all the nay-sayers who said nobody would be interested in non-liberal points of view. How about it, Rupert?

PW,

This was in the works a few years back ~ a Fox New Canada channel ~ but they decided against it. Who knows, maybe if they get some support with FNC in Canada they might launch such a thing. I'll be subscribing, Rupert!

You can really tell which one terrifies them. The people behind Al-Jazeera might murder them, but Fox... might make them irrelevant.

Canada baiting, indeed...
I can't think of a single occasion where they mention canada in any context other than figuring into the exact same news reports as any other "house organ."

James Adams is revealing his paranoia. Besides, how on earth would he know? Fox has not been available in Canada, unless you have a Dish-network or DirecTV dish and subscription, which, incedentally, is illegal in Canada.

Free speech, eh?

Mentioning Al Jizz and Fox in similar terms. Do these daft people care if anyone ever takes them seriously? Have they ever watched either Fox or Al Jazerra?

Soviet Canuckistan begins to crack. It is inevitable. Wait to you canucks see what happens to your economy as currency fluctuations raise the price of your exports to the US. Moron indeed.

No doubt Fox News will be unfurling thirty-foot red FoxNews banners with black logos in the nearest stadium and holding Fox News rallies, complete with impassioned speeches by Bush and straight-arm salutes among the torchlit crowd. Behold Bushitler, Canadians, and despair!

Al-Jizz can't possibly compete with just a few Brit-accented announcers and that little gold squiggle in the corner of the screen. They might pick up a point or two by showing their snuff films, but once you've seen one, you've seen them all.

If it wasn't for FOX cable I wouldn't even watch the news at all. I really don't believe they are as extreme right as lefties say though. They just seem to report from the middle and slightly to the right of middle in some cases.

It'd be fine with me if they kept within a few degrees of middle and eliminated the extreme views entirely. Maybe change "fair and balanced" to just "fair" and let CBS, ABC, CNN and NBC come out of the closet and be known to provide only left wing news like they do anyway.

"Small l liberal" is a term Canadians use to hide the fact that they are "Capital-L-flashing-neon-with-strobe-effect leftists".

And speaking of Canada baiting. When you canuckleheads travel in the U.S.A. please refrain from urinating in public. Not everybody shares your "Canadian Values"

I don't always agree with Fox's "Fair and Balanced". Like tej notes, it should just be "fair".

And that is likely what scares the leftoid newspapers in Canada. Just a relatively unbiased news source. It'll be a breath of fresh air to the non-leftoids residing about the 49th Parallel.

Preview is my friend...

...residing about above the 49th Parallel.

OReily has taken Canada to task for not having an army commensurate with its size - thus avoiding most responsibility to oppose tyranny and even defend itself; harboring criminals from the U.S., as in the case of 2 deserters; not actually having a first amendment type right - thus being able to descriminate in a political way against Fox and its own citizens; and for the obvious hypocrisy of some Canadians in criticizing the U.S., and bald stupidity, as Canada is also very economically dependent upon the U.S..

Hopefully the infants do not outnumber the adults in Canada [my apologies to actual infants - those aged 1yr. and less].

Do the Americans reading that article realise that in Australia the term "liberal" has the opposite meaning? The liberal party of australia is in fact the conservative party.

Yes, they all realise that John Tanker.

John, yes, that's been explained several times, although some people may have missed it.

Not a difficult translation to make. "Australian Liberal" = "American Republican".

This is much easier than dealing with the way the British drive on the wrong side of the road.

"They just seem to report from the middle and slightly to the right of middle in some cases."

This is what I've observed also. I do find them much fairer than many others because they present BOTH sides of an issue much better than other stations.

What I like is that Fox has the NERVE to find someone with brains and a good command of the language to represent the non-Left side of an issue when there are debates. Other stations usually grab the high school dropout off the street when they want someone to represent the non-Left view. (Or else they have the frothing at the mouth Right-Wing Extremist that makes you NOT want to be on the same side of an issue as he/she is.)

However, because Fox doesn't try and forward the Left's agenda it is considered unbalanced. Any person or organization that dares question the wisdom of the Left is considered Right. Seriously. Anyone have an example of a person or organization the Left considers neutral or in the middle, and actually IS? I can't think of one that most people would be aware of.

"Do the Americans reading that article realise that in Australia the term "liberal" has the opposite meaning? The liberal party of australia is in fact the conservative party."

I realize it.

I try to stay away from using the term Liberal. Partly because I feel it's been hijacked and true Liberals (traditional Liberals) are not represented by what is termed Liberal today (in the US). The closest term I can think of that captures what Traditional Liberal used to mean (in the US) is Libertarian. Not exact, but close.

I also realize Liberal means one thing to Australians and another to Americans.

I'm not consistent, though. If I'm in a rush I may use Liberal when it would be better to use Left.

I also realize there's a problem using the term Left. Left in the US doesn't necessarily mean the same thing in other countries. But it may be less confusing than Liberal so I try to use it.

I try to avoid other terms such as neocon. I try to stick to Left and Right or Liberal and Conservative, although I know the terms may not be given the same meaning in all countries and the terms are not precise even when you get the idea of where in the political spectrum they fall in the US.

When I'm reading an article about politics outside the US, I make the necessary adjustments in my interpretation. Sometimes I may have to read the entire article to see the context in which the political term is used before I get its meaning. I 'translate' Aus. Liberal, in my mind, when I read an article about Aus. politics.

Political terms can be confusing across countries. I am glad that someone would take the time to mention this. There was a time when I was unsure of the differences and had to read articles carefully to get the in context meaning.

We're talking about the country that recently wanted to fine and maybe prosecute TRIUMPH THE INSULT DOG, for Christ's sake! They wanted to gag a goddamm cigar-smoking rubber hand puppet!

One of Triumph's offensive lines, in responding to a French Candadian, was that "Oh! That means you're stupid AND boring!" As far as I know, this was the worst of Triumph's funny remarks, and has the additional merit of being true.

You truly cannot make this stuff up. Must be all that "soft power" bullshit that leads to soft heads and a degree of whimpery unknown anywhere else in North America.

Leftist Canucks are worried about the proverbial Fox guarding the chicken coop. What ever will become of them, the pitiable squawking Canadian chickens must wonder?

The power of words: I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that political debate in Australia has suffered from the lack of a single, handy, universally recognized term equivalent in meaning to the American 'liberal'. Every time a right-of-centre Aussie wants to characterize that particular soft-lefty mindset, and all that it entails, he/she has to reinvent the rhetorical wheel with a string of more or less unsatisfactory phrases. Could we run a competition?

Fox News comes to Puerto-Rico-with-pine-trees, so the government and the local press grandees have a collective shit fit. Surely Canadians aren't afraid of a few diverse ideas, are they? Why, I thought we're all supposed to celebrate diversity.

In reality, Canadian lefties are terrified of losing their monopoly on the dissemination of information. In the US, talk radio, Fox News, and the Internet blew away the lefty press, and America is better off for it. Now, it's the Canadian press's turn to sit for a lesson in real diversity. This should be fun to watch.

We may have lost the Great White North, but it's imperative we keep FOX out of ideologically pure NoKo, Iran and Cuba. Proliferation of pro-American and democratic ideals may be the biggest danger the world will face in the 21st century.

"...Canada-baiting..."
How do you do that? With Molson and some back bacon from these guys .

"Do the Americans reading that article realise that in Australia the term "liberal" has the opposite meaning? The liberal party of australia is in fact the conservative party."

I have a hard time remembering since I am mostly reading American blogs. I try and say right and left but am sure I've screwed it up on this site before. In America liberal is a dirty word so I'll do my best to keep it in mind here.

The truth is I didn't know anything about Australian politics until the night before your election. I had just started reading blogs and hit the link from powerlineblog.com. You all were talking about how you couldn't call it because it was so close and the more I read about it the more my stomach was turning in anticipation Howard (our ally administration down under) would win. I woke up Saturday morning and came here to read the great news. Was in such a good mood I took the family out for the day...new Air and Space museum, lunch, shopping.

The next week I talked to local friends about the Australian election and noone knew anything about it. To this day I don't know anyone here who knows anything about politics down under....very strange considering you are our most reliable ally.

Fifty miles from Antigonish and the nearest bowling alley with a television set. And when I get there no Fox News. Screws these bastards.

The Laird:

They don't have cable in Antigonish. Try running down to Moncton.

universally recognized term equivalent in meaning to the American 'liberal'
"moondope"

"small liberal"

Yes, but how small?

Why must they leave the important details?

"small liberal"

Yes, but how small?

Why do they leave out the important details?

Ten Reasons the USA should Enslave Canada

1) Why not?

2) They started it. The Canucks have already occupied Florida. What makes you think they’re planning to stop there?

3) But what about the Canada being a traditional ally? In World War 2 when the USA was fighting for survival against the Japs where exactly were the Canucks? They were in Europe helping the Limeys ... err, thanks buddies.

4) Economic bounty: the wealth of an entire, practically defenceless nation awaits us (see point 9) and after the plunder – Canada’s entire economic output for centuries to come. ChaChing!

5) Benefits to humanity. A quasi-human population (ie the Canucks) available for unfettered medical experimentation would be a boon to research.

6) Slaves have so many uses and no voting rights.

7) Canada should always have been part of the U.S.A. We offered them membership in 1812 and they turned us down. It’s time to remind them that the US knows how to hold a grudge.

8) Canadian wine and the prevention thereof.

9) Canada bases her defence policy on one simple fact: no one can attack Canada without going through the US first. This is generally true but there is, of course, one exception ... Team USA. This deluded policy caused them to dangerously weaken their armed forces because they believe we would never take advantage of their defencelessness. Such trusting innocents, the Canucks.

10) Invading Quebec would be almost as good as invading France.

The time to strike is now. They're demoralised from the hockey lockout.

The only good thing about Canada is that the strippers in Niagara Falls give you handies with your lapdance. For C$20. Beauty, eh?

Every time a right-of-centre Aussie wants to characterize that particular soft-lefty mindset, and all that it entails, he/she has to reinvent the rhetorical wheel with a string of more or less unsatisfactory phrases.

Come on, just for sheer imagery, the term "Chardonnay Socialist" has to be a winner.

Pauly said:

They were in Europe helping the Limeys ... err, thanks buddies.

The Canadians fielded a million troops into Europe. That freed US and British forces for the Pacific. The Canadians had Juno Beach all to themselves in Normandy.

I for one really appreciate that contribution by Canada, even if they are turning into a nation of spineless twits.

I realize that your post was in jest, but I found most of it tasteless....and I am not fond of the current affairs in Canada.

The RealJeffS,

There are 2 things satirised in my post. The point of satire is to offend.

Touche'!

'Scuse the French...

Merci

Typical "We do it, so it must be true about them" crapola - since the CBC is a de facto organ of the Canadian government, Fox News must also be a state hand puppet.

Even if that were true, we'd still have CNN and MSNBC and the nets. Oh, no! We can CHOOSE! Freedom, horrible freedom!

I seriously doubt that Canadian cable sucscribers are afraid of Fox News. After all, they can just change the channel.

It's CBC and The Toronto Star that are scared shitless. It's going to be fun watching them squirm as Fox cuts into their base.