Exit Stage Left

For once, there seems to be absolutely no consensus amongst comment-ocracy. Which in and of itself is noteworthy. Did Jim Prentice leave because he was stifled? Or was it to better position himself for a run at the leadership of the CPC? Amongst reports of cabinet squabbling, was he leaving a listing, possibly sinking, ship?

It couldn't have been easy for Jimmy, holding an orphan portfolio in a government as disinclined to even acknowledge 'the environment' as Thatcher was 'society'. And doing so while representing an affluent Calgary riding populated with those whose considerable wealth derives from the messy extraction of fossil goop out of the earth surely made for some awkward cocktail party conversation.

Much has been also made of his 'Last Red Tory Standing' status, as well. And the implication that this bearer of the old PC standard leaves a gaping hole in the Harper bench. First, this assumes he was a good minister. He wasn't. He was awful. An embarrassment, actually. Not that it was entirely his fault: Any minister in this government seemingly exists solely to mouth the words of the leader. Second, it assumes there is any bench strength in the Harper cabinet whatsoever. There's not. And even if there were it wouldn't matter. This is Harper, after all.

Not enough has been asked, however, of how this transition occurred. Has a sitting minister ever abruptly left the front bench to take the upper echelons in our existing financial services oligopoly? Plenty of ex-pols enter afterwards: McKenna, say. But the jump from cabinet straight into corporate stratosphere is troubling. Regardless of the assurances offered by Prentice or his spokespeople about the ethics commish and all, there is an olfactory unpleasantness emanating from the general direction of this 'sudden departure'.

Update: Time Wounds All Heels

Months later, as this orphaned post is revisited, the healing balm of time has settled on the sprinkle of illucid prose offered earlier. The Cons have a majority. The ship was obviously not in depth charge mode.

It's still troubling that the parade of ex-pols make their way to the burnished boardrooms of Big Everything. Mike Harris steals oxygen at a law firm. Tony Clement and John Baird will likely pad the filthy lucre of their pensions with hob-nobs and crustless sandwiches on the 44th floor somewhere. And PM Harper himself will...well...who knows,.,but the sooner the better, amiright?

Still Prentice has proved to be capable of using his esteemed position(s) to vaguely tilt against the windmills of our current Responsible Resource Development® regime with a seemingly committed plea to 'play fair' when it comes to wholesale bitumen extraction and it's hurried siphoning to Asian markets. So, attaboy, Jimbo.

Kill The Messenger.

So, by now everybodyImeaneverybody is familiar with Kai Nagata's fork in the eye of Television News Programming and the sausage factory from which it's ground. And, probably, the seemingly surprised-by-the-response follow-up, too. It's obviously achieved a lot more notice than the average "Take this job and...", Dear Bosshole letter. And the attendant volleys back have been numerous and varied. Sometimes kind of snide. Comments on the actual blog post have been, mostly, full of admiration and high-fiving boo-yaas of self-identification.

In the latter camp, one could arguably include...the press. Nagata's self-described "Howard Beale Moment" has been mentioned, if not wholly and approvingly quoted, by redoubts as disparate as David Akin, Susan Delacourt, The Tyee, Rob Silver in the Globe and so on and on. And on...the radio!

So, people find some resonance in Nagata's toodle-oo.

And they should. Television News is just another ratings whore. It has neither the will nor the precious time between commercials to present stories in any kind of a critical context. Everything's heading to Tonawanda it's all fire all the time. Plus, oh, oh, wasn't that the Prince? And the Princess? OMFG! Hey, it surely brings in eyeballs. And eyeballs bring in advertisers.

The full-on banality of the royal dumps emanating from the parasitic remnants of feudalism recently touring our fair lands was a Ratings Winnah! for the CBC who took a lead in the pom-pomming.

On the one hand, it's hard not to superficially sympathize with where Jessica Hume is coming from. On the other, it's unsurprising that the first time many encountered Mr. Nagata's piece was when it was published in whole on rabble.ca. The problem with Hume is she conflates the tirade against television news with journalism in general. Fail. The problem with rabble is that it was published without any kind of criticism or context whatsoever. Which is kind of what Mr. Nagata seemed to wish for in his own stumped Big TeeVee Career.