Columnists
From boil to simmer
I looked at the front page of my daily newspaper last Friday and every single article on it made by blood boil.
The first article stated that Premier Li of China, while visiting Ottawa, had defended China’s use of the death penalty while at the same time urging Canada to adopt an extradition treaty with his country. Doesn’t he know that there is no death penalty in Canada, and that Canada always seeks assurances that it will not be applied to anyone who is extradited from our country? The arrogance of the Chinese position got me going—as did the rather flaccid presence of our Prime Minister, who stood there taking this stuff in rather than telling his counterpart to take a hike.
The second article dealt with political aides to the Prime Minister, Gerald Butts and Katie Telford. They had submitted claims for, and received reimbursement of, moving expenses totalling over $200,000. When a stink was raised, they decided that some $65,000 of the total was “unreasonable” and returned it. Now hold on: if the expense is now “unreasonable,” what has changed since the claims were submitted? Who are they to be the judges of what proportion of their expenses is “unreasonable,” given their admitted failure the first time around?
The third article dealt with Federal Health Minister Jane Phillpott, who had been sent a lab report some months ago showing that some of the product sold in Vancouver pot dispensaries contained pesticides and fungicides not approved for human use. No action was taken on the report, largely, it seems, because the federal government takes the view that pot dispensaries are illegal, end of story. But surely public health required an intervention, niceties be damned, and that when action was required the feds were hiding behind the potted plants.
And the fourth article was about the fact that the Toronto Real Estate Board and the Ontario Real Estate Association were pitching Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa not to adopt a non-resident tax on Toronto real estate in the same way that the government of British Columbia had done with respect to Vancouver. The authors warned about “unintended consequences” of provincial action. However, with rising irritation, I couldn’t help but fret that the bigger risks lay with the unintended consequences of inaction.
So if I can’t get beyond front page without my blood boiling, what am I supposed to do? It won’t help to change from the newspaper to the televison, because the same headlines will appear, albeit with a slight modification to include more natural disaster footage, more “Brangelina” updates and the mandatory daily Donald Trump outrage or police shooting video. And if I did switch, I’d likely start complaining about the superficial sensationalism of the visual news media.
So if switching the medium is not the answer, should I try to avoid putting myself in a position where my blood boils? After all, my view of human nature has already been formed and my brain will simply process the news as confirming that view one way or another; I’m unlikely to re-evaluate my positions. If I am a cynic, I’m going to see the moving expense brouhaha, for instance, as another expression of that human tendency to take a little more than you should because you can; or if I am a dewy-eyed optimist, I am going to see in the story that wonderful capacity to admit error and eat some crow. You come to the same point when you start seeing news as history repeating itself, with only the names of the players and the venues changed.
I have several friends who have sworn off spending time with the news cycle because it is all just trivia. They figure that time is short, and better to spend it concentrating on the big picture items such as whether life has a meaning. Of course, once you catch one of these friends in a weak moment reading his horoscope, you have to chide him and say “Gee, Bill, I didn’t know that Stephen Hawking was writing a newspaper column.” To go public with a high-minded reason for avoiding exposure to the news pretty well forces you to live up to your own public billing, thereby making you miserable when you can’t.
I’m not sure I have the strength of character to stick to any high-minded pronouncement about restricting my information intake to serious subjects: I’d be outed for reading the sports scores in no time flat. I’m habituated— nay, addicted—to my newspaper. If I go out of town for a few days, I’m miserable company until I’ve caught up on my back issues. I take some pleasure in reading the front page headline from last Monday’s paper that says “Scientists Say World To End in 2017”; and then reading the following day’s tiny page two correction that states “The article that referred to the world ending in 4017 contained a typographical error We regret the inconvenience to anyone who sold stock or jumped out of a window.” I’d sooner engage in the drama than be blissfully ignorant of it.
And so if I don’t have the strength of character to stop reading newspapers, is there a way to limit my blood temperature to simmer? I can think of only one. I’ll start reading The Times more closely. The Times never covers anything, be it wind turbines, council size or sewage budgets, that would possibly turn it up to boil. Right?
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