It's been over 3 weeks since Heather Mallick's withering opinion piece about despicable moron Sarah Palin ran on the CBC's website and the crybaby wingnuts have been bawling about it ever since, with the National Post's Kay family leading the charge. Oh boo hoo hoo! Sob! SHRIEEEEEK!Now the CBC has caved -- caved! -- to right-wingnut pressure, removed the column from its website and published a whimpering "mea culpa":
"More than 300 people have taken the trouble this month to complain to the CBC ombudsman about a column we ran on CBCNews.ca about Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Sept. 5. The column, by award-winning freelance writer Heather Mallick, was also pilloried by the National Post in Canada and by Fox News in the U.S. … Vince Carlin, the CBC Ombudsman, has now issued his assessment of the Mallick column. He doesn't fault her for riling readers by either the caustic nature of her tone or the polarizing nature of her opinion. But he objects that many of her most savage assertions lack a basis in fact. And he is certainly correct. Mallick's column is a classic piece of political invective. It is viciously personal, grossly hyperbolic and intensely partisan. And because it is all those things, this column should not have appeared on the CBCNews.ca site … We failed you in this case. And as a result we have put new editing procedures in place to insure that in the future, work that is not appropriate for our platforms, will not appear.""Viciously personal, grossly hyperbolic and intensely partisan". Uh... I can has "Viewpoint"? What part of the word "viewpoint" is so hard to understand!??
Frankly, 300 complaints doesn't sound like a lot to me, given that the column was discussed on Fox News, the O'Reilly show and other right-wing outlets whose audiences are notorious for having nothing better to do but freep polls and complain about "left-wing bias". Oh well... at the center of the storm is the fact that the CBC is taxpayer-funded, and therefore has no business publishing opinion pieces that don't have a consensus of agreement with 100% of taxpayers. (Ignoring for a moment the fact that the vast majority of Canadians likely agree with the gist of Mallick's comments about Caribou Barbie.)
Public consensus for opinion pieces because of taxpayer funding? Get real. I look at it this way: I have no kids in school, yet I pay taxes for schools. I have no use for churches, yet I subsidize them through tax breaks, even as some of their more rabid members try to bully their way into public policy-making. If the CBC is to have a "Viewpoint" column at all, sooner or later there will be viewpoints that don't have consensus. TOUGH! SHIT!
The taxpayer funding issue is kind of a red herring anyway, since almost everyone gets some (yes, that's the Western Standard that sucked up $132,063 of MY MONEY in its death throes last year -- why wasn't I consulted?). As usual, it boils down to the right's psychotic intolerance for opinions they don't agree with: free speech for me, but not for Heather Mallick. It really is that simple.
And anyway, what about the taxpayers who agree with Mallick? What are we, chopped liver? Thanks a pantload, CBC!
UPDATE: Mallick's column was so evil, odious and disgusting that these guys are doing somersaults trying to find it again: "It's here", "Try here", "Find it here". Huh!? Guys, mission accomplished -- you got Mallick censored. Now you want to read the column again? Jesus fucking DUH! (h/t CC)
UPDATE II: Even better.
UPDATE III: psa speaks, you listen.
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