From what we can tell Ms. Wente is pretty much what she says
she is in her defence of Carol Wainio’s well documented blog Media Culpa
revealing plagiarism and dodgy journalistic practices: ‘gee I’m sorry, but no
way I’m falling on my sword because Carol Wainio is, you know, out to get me.
Besides I’m right in the sense of the big picture. So go away.’
Well who knows and we don’t really care, the intelligent
steadfast work of Carol Wainio notwithstanding. Carol Wainio and thoughtful,
dispassionate, well intentioned people like her are pretty much irrelevant. That is, as
they say, a cryin’ shame.
As we see it isn’t whether or not Margaret Wente disgraced
the fifth estate, but whether or not you like her. That’s what we’ve gleaned
from the Twitter stuff and other media comments. Margaret Wente suddenly and
ironically to the commie pinko left is the new garbage.
(That is a reference to the 2009 Inside and Outside worker
strike that pissed off the electorate and like the freaky meteor that gave us
the cannibals in Night of the Living Dead, eventually brought Rob Ford to the
mayor’s office.)
The public persona, whether you are a politician, a
journalist, a bureaucrat, a tycoon, or whatever has been reduced to a popularity
contest. So the idea is, you can survive anything if you are popular. For the
most part the above have figured it out. You just have to have the right numbers, say 35 or 36 percent if you are Stephen Harper. Whether or not Margaret Wente's career goes up in smoke has nothing to do with integrity or intelligence. She has the numbers she stays. She doesn't she's gone.
As well our ur take on it at TVFP: for the most part JOURNALISM
wakes up every morning and has a shower. It evacuates its bowels. It puts on a
layer of deodorant and another layer of scent. It brushes its capped teeth,
combs its coloured hair and puts on a clean pair of underwear.
Margaret Wente and, for that matter those two Titans of
Journalism, Lorrie Goldstein and Sue Anne Levy, as well as so many others, the
run of the mill (there are some notable
exceptions of course) smell so nice. They are people you’d be grateful to stand
next to on an over crowded streetcar on a day when the humidex is off the chart.
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