MotherCorpVille
OK, OK.
We're willing to admit that it's not all CBC Vancouver morning man Rick Cluff's fault this time around.
But we do believe that Cluffie's continued puffery in all matters serious is symptomatic of the continued disintegration of the Nation's Broadcaster.
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What really got a bug in our ear this morning was the now ubiquitous 'TalkBack' crutch.
Essentially, this is a device where people are invited to phone in and 'give their views' after an interview or talking-head piece on an important subject.
All fine and good in concept, but only if the producers, fact checkers, and hosts are willing to do their jobs assiduously.
But it is essentially crap that gets in the way of rational discourse by obfuscating evidence, reason, and fact when it is used as "he said/she said, two-sides-of-the-same-coin" filler that gutless Mothercorp administrators love because it is cheap and it offends no one.
Case in point: this morning a very well-meaning lady called the TalkBack line to bemoan the fact that Terri Schiavo is being starved and forcibly euthanized because of her husband's decision to have her feeding tube removed.
Now, this lady should in no way be chastized for making these statements.
It's just that the CBC should either not run such comments or, if they do, they should make a moderating statement to clarify the facts.
For example, here are two facts that were not made clear by P. Cluffie, either before or after he played the Talkback Clip in question:
#1) Ms Schiavo is not being 'starved' to death because she is no longer capable of perceiving hunger. Her cerebral cortex with it's billions of neurons and trillions of synaptic connections is gone; it has been replaced by cerebral spinal fluid.
#2) The withdrawl of a manufactured medical device that is keeping someone alive is not euthanasia. This is the same thing as choosing to remove a respirator when someone is braindead after a massive stroke. Despite what the Rovians and their Corporate Media Shills would like their Base (and the lady who innocently called the 'TalkBack' line) to think, Ms. Schiavo is not being murdered.
Given these facts, we would like to suggest that the critical point to be discussed here is not whether Ms. Schaivo's husband should be allowed to pull the plug (ie. this is not arguable in the law, either here or in the States, which is why successive judges have refused to grant injunctions), but instead whether more humane ways of dealing with a certain, yet slow death, should be seriously considered.
As the fact-challenged 'Senator from Shrubland', Tom DeLay, said last weekend:
"If you did this to an animal you would be thrown in jail."
Indeed.
And if Mr. DeLay and his kind would stop grandstanding and instead facilitate the passage of humane death and dying laws there would be no need to inflict this kind of thing on anyone or their families.
Unfortunately, you won't hear P. Cluffie talk about really hard stuff like this as long as he can duck the toughest job of a real jounalist, which is to separate the wheat from the chaff. Instead, he falls back on his unmoderated 'Talk Back' breaks, his hourly duels with Kevin Sylvester, and now, worst of all, his constant stream of inane chatter with the newly installed Traffic Girl.
Which is a real shame, because as CBC Radio apes the corporate Morning Zoo shows in an effort to become more 'relevant' for a younger demographic it is becoming less and less relevant as a disseminator of insightful news, analysis and comment.
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Update: In case you were wondering, cerebral spinal fluid, or C.S.F., is a clear, plasma-like fluid. It contains no cells - stem, nervous, or otherwise. Essentially, it is saline with a bit of protein in it; kind of like the stuff you wash your contact lenses in. That is what Ms. Schaivo's brain has become over the last 15 years, and no amount of wishful thinking, or parsing of the prognosis by the anti-Hippocrates incarnate, Bill Frist, or now the Jebbinator is going to change that.
DoubleSecretProbationUpdate: Looks like 'renowned' and Nobel Prize 'nominated' Fristian prognosis parser, neurologist William Hammesfahr may not be all he has been hyped to be .
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