PONDERABLES
As he’s continuously making patterns on the table with his hand, pointing his pen like a weapon at guests, and rolling his eyes to the ceiling (seemingly for inspiration), is there a newsman with more annoying habits than Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s Meet The Press?
First Lisa LaFlamme gets fired and now Evan Solomon has quit; what’s going on at CTV?
Because their guests wouldn’t otherwise be there, why do radio and TV hosts feel compelled to waste air time telling them how great it is to have them on their shows?
A baseball team can advance in postseason play with only three reliable starting pitchers, which is the case with the Jays (Manoah, Gausman, and Stripling). But can they advance with only three consistently reliable relievers (Romano, Cimber, and Mayza)?
THINGS I FIRMLY BELIEVE
It’ll be many generations before another baby born in Atlantic Canada is named Fiona. (See below.)
HOCKEY CANADA
Money being fungible, Hockey Canada CFO Brian Cairo would have great difficulty supporting his statement that neither sponsorship funds nor player registration fees were used to settle sexual assault claims. And interim board chair, Andrea Skinner, insisting this week at a parliamentary committee hearing that the organization’s crisis can be resolved without a massive housecleaning was stunningly tone-deaf and obtuse. As she doesn’t appear to have any particular credentials to warrant her role (she’s a municipal and land use lawyer), the housecleaning should start with Ms. Skinner herself.
AN INCREDIBLY STUPID JOURNALISTIC QUESTION
When it became obvious hurricane Fiona was going to hit the Maritimes hard, a TV journalist (whom I will mercifully not name) asked Nova Scotia premier Tim Houston why he hadn’t issued an evacuation order. Mr. Houston managed to keep a straight face while calmly pointing out there was nowhere to go.
HURRICANE FIONA
Hurricane Fiona actually altered the shape of PEI and rendered the landscape of the oceanside community of Lakeside almost unrecognizable. But there’s still no place else on earth I’d rather be during the summer.
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT
Buck Martinez doing play-by-play with Pat Tabler doing his version of colour commentary amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Although Martinez is a fine colour commentator, he is a poor play-byplay broadcaster. He rarely recaps the scoring, misses player substitutions, and too often morphs into his colour-mode. Tabler rarely adds anything of substance to a broadcast. His ungrammatical overuse of the word “that,” and his only measurement reference seeming to be “a little bit” (I counted sixty-seven times he used it in one game, and a friend of mine said he once heard Tabler use it five times in one sentence), are beyond annoying. Why the Jays continue to use him is a ponderous Ponderable.
WHAT DOES THE PHRASE “I MEAN” MEAN?
The phrase “I mean” has become as ubiquitous as “you know.” Starting sentences with “I mean” makes no sense. If the intention is to clarify an earlier comment, then “ meant” would be the correct word. If that’s not the intention there’s no need to use the phrase at all.
REX MURPHY
Rex Murphy is one of my favourite columnists for two reasons: his magnificent writing and his antipathy toward Justin Trudeau. He met both criteria this week when he mused that Justin Trudeau must be a masterful yoga guru because he’s so good at patting himself on the back.