Unconscionable

What I read in the paper yesterday: two terrible disasters are looming.

Least bone-chilling first: aw, and I had a post on the CBC all ready to go, and now look what they’ve gone and done, they’ve made it yesterday’s news.

These fuckers have all got to go.

So the shit comes down, and they starting cutting the so-called “fat” — and it is more transparent than I’d ever imagined it would be. They cut radio. They cut regional news. They cut arts programs. They cut documentaries. They cut the international service.

On the TV side, they cut consumer affairs shows, they cut investigative journalism — these are award-winning flagship programs, these are what everybody acknowledges the CBC does best — they cut amateur sports in the run-up to an Olympics year (!), they cut children’s programming…they cut CBC North. Jesus, those fat cats in the North, always lighting their cigars with hundred-dollar bills, eh? Well I say they’ve had it far too easy for far too long…!

And what did they keep, with all the money they saved from all this…this…this carnage?

Their silly little short-shelf-life glossy American-style cop-dramas and their parochial feel-good wink-wink comedies…what they imagine stimulates water-cooler talk. This year.

But what happens next year?

Not that these shows escaped the axe entirely. They’re being asked to cut back on the number of episodes they produce. Hey, what a great idea! Thanks, I got it from the Bay — to save money let’s sell less shit.

See if we can’t get all the way down to zero losses, zero profits. Maybe, one day…fingers crossed!…zero employment, too.

It is too much. It’s horrifyingly shortsighted and stupid. It’s an affront. And let me tell you, I would be absolutely going to town on it…

…Were it not for the fact that there is a far bigger thunderhead of affront massing on the horizon. And this one’s as serious as a heart attack, and it’s no fucking joke.

Enhanced driver’s licences.

Now, listen carefully, provincial governments. I want you to really pay attention, here.

There is

NO!

WAY!

that this is acceptable, and that you don’t seem to know it’s unacceptable is beyond unacceptable. It actually makes a person rather curious, don’t you think? I mean…who is it, exactly, who can look at this and say “Hey, great idea, what dystopian techno-thriller did you get it from, was it one with Bruce Willis man that is awesome“, huh? I mean seriously who has a thought-process like that?

FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST WHO IS IT, WHO FUCKING THINKS THIS KIND OF THING IS REMOTELY OKAY?

Well…

Ontario was once famous for it, actually: as reported by a much-missed (whoops! cutbacks) CBC-TV current affairs show once upon a year, the Mike Harris government was at one time determined to be a world leader in Supercard “smart” IDs…digital this and digital that, RFIDs and DNA samples and fingerprints, swipable access to medical records and police reports and unpaid taxes and outstanding traffic fines and you-name-it, all on one handy dandy mandatory unfakeable piece of permanent plastic…that was, quite clearly I think, the dream.

A dream that failed…

But ha ha Ontario, now my fucking useless provincial government has decided that they want to be the exemplars of business-driven Orwellianism…in the name of better border security, natch. My, but international crises make it possible to do so much dirty work, don’t they?

Hey, the dream is alive for 2010, people!

So now you know who the “who” is, I guess. And, you know…holy fuck. If we lie down and roll over for this, it’s all over anyway, isn’t it? Might as well put a chip in everybody’s fucking head. Jesus Christ, this is unconscionable. This is fucking evil.

And that’s my government, folks! Americans, you are now free to point the fucking finger, you know what I mean? ‘Cause there sure as hell isn’t any high ground up here anymore.

Shit.

So, yeah, I won’t be getting an EDL. That’s just never going to happen. And I’ll tell you another thing too, which is that if anybody out there was wondering what I look like when I get politically active…well, I’m about to get that way. I haven’t gone door-to-door for anything since the mid-1970s, but I’m damn well getting ready to do it now. Damn well getting ready.

Because these fuckers have all got to go.

And then we’re gonna spring the CBC.

And then we’re going to get the fucking band back together.

Non-Canadians, if you feel inclined to help, there’s something you can do, and it won’t take long. Please, if you can spare the time…mock the shit out of us for this. We so very clearly deserve it. Blacken our eye. Talk us down. Kick us around. This isn’t right, and we can’t have it.

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