Tagged: Jim Meek
‘Fraidy cat province: Strait-Richmond edition
The Strait-Richmond Regional School Board cancelled classes in all schools today. Apparently there’s a wicked storm underway.
Thank God the children are safe. Not to mention the teachers and board administrators, union members all, right up to the superintendent.
To be fair, there is snow visible in half of these highway cam images from the school board’s catchment area, just none on the actual roads beings monitored. In case you missed Jim Meek’s column on this subject in Saturday’s Herald, you can find it here. Said Meek:
My idea of hell is [CBC weather dude Peter] Coade broadcasting the weather forecast in an endless loop on TV, which is pretty well what CBC Nova Scotia passes off as news these days. (Just add in crime, and you’ve got the formula.)
It’s not that I have anything against Coade, a good man stuck in an assembly line job. It’s just that we have now endured months of warnings about weather bombs that never exploded; slippery roads that didn’t materialize; and storm forecasts that yielded to sunny days.
What will it take to restore some common sense to these decisions?
Roll another one: Meek misses the point
The reliably sage Jim Meek comes a cropper this morning with a column plucking nits off Canada’s medical marijuana policy.
The occasional Herald columnist, Nova Scotia’s best, professes shock that the number of Canadians with federal permission to smoke dope for medicinal purposes has swelled to 10,000. Well, that’s 0.03 percent of Canada’s population, or about the number who support Elvis for Prime Minister—not exactly a blown floodgate. Nor is the other number Meek decries, the 1,400 Canadians who received permission to grow the drug after Ottawa proved incompetent to deliver reliable quality. Along the way, Meek finds one grower who produced more than he was supposed to, and a Nova Scotia welfare recipient seeking financial assistance to grow the pot she needs. Horrors!
Missing from this searching analysis of contradictions, real and faux, in the minutia of medical marijuana policy is any recognition of the central, top level inanity: prohibition of a product autonomous grownups should be able to decide whether to use and why.
All columnists produce duds—check my back catalog. The trouble with this one is it offers succor to the Harper authoritarians as they plot fresh hardship and misery in the failed war on drugs.
Meek slags Ormiston’s grief porn
Herald columnist Jim Meek takes a shot at CBC reporter Susan Ormiston:
In one story, the viewer was treated to moving pictures of CBC-TV reporter Susan Ormiston, who held the hand of a small Haitian child as they walked through a devastated, crowded neighbourhood.
Ms. Ormiston later collected the tired child into her own tender arms, and on they marched. The made-for-TV pictures provided proof of Ms. Ormiston’s compassion, and I did wonder for a moment if the reporter or the youngster’s family was the intended focus of the story.
I didn’t see the piece in question, and I winced to see Ormiston (a friend) treated so harshly by Meek (another friend), but I’m pretty sure I would have shared Meek’s dyspepsia. During Friday night’s telethon, I did see, and was faintly nauseated 
by, CNN’s Anderson Cooper repeatedly tousling the heads of Haitian youngsters rescued after days entrapped in earthquake wreckage.
The reason for my discomfort is the same as Meek’s. I detect no curiosity or informational value in these cameos, rather an effort to confirm the reporters, and vicariously the audience, as Truly Caring People. We’ve come a long way from Edward R. Murrow reporting the Blitz from the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
Meek again:
This was all part of a drama in which the CBC tried to connect the kid’s mom by phone with a relative — the father, I think — back in Canada.
It was a quest story, a tale of a journey taken in search of a prize, and it even had an ending that was both poignant and happy. The family was connected, but only by phone.
Ms. Ormiston’s report, a becalming pastiche of journalism and missionary work, revealed all the elements of good visual story-telling — real people, a narrative you could follow, great pictures.
But even as I couldn’t stop watching it, I knew I was being manipulated. Still, I might have been moved by this little saga if it had been less contrived, patronizing, and scripted.
Instead, I was struck by what our response to the Haitian crisis says about our national broadcaster, and our national character.
The press gets Mayor Morgan’s offense wrong – updated
CBRM Mayor John Morgan has convinced Jim Meek of the Chronicle-Herald, Wendy Bergfeldt of CBC-Cape Breton, and Gillian Cormier of AllNovaScotia.com that the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society is trying to punish him for criticizing a judicial decision.
Nonsense. Anyone can criticize a judicial decision. Lawyers do it all the time. Even the most cursory review of Morgan’s comments makes it clear that his offense was not criticizing a decision but impugning the impartiality of Nova Scotia judges in general, and Supreme Justice John Murphy in particular.
Morgan’s comments came in an interview with CBC-Cape Breton’s Information Morning host Steve Sutherland on April 24, 2008, the morning after Murphy threw out a CBRM lawsuit against the province. The key quotes come about two minutes in:
Moneyquote:
We knew this was going to be a long process from the outset, and one of the challenges we face as we work through the Nova Scotia system is [that] virtually all of the justices—not to their discredit—but a reality is that all of them are part of the political structures that are endemic in the province of Nova Scotia. And as we move to justices outside the Nova Scotia system, you do get away from that internal provincial government system where judges are appointed by political parties. And this justice in particular had ties to the Conservative party—not to his discredit—but it’s a reality we were dealing with.
I would have preferred to have one of the Cape Breton justices dealing with the case rather than a Halifax one. But it was a challenge that we were facing from the outset. That having been said, you had to go through the first level of determination in order to get to the later determinations.
Sutherland asked if Morgan was suggesting political bias in the judge’s decision. “No, no,” said Morgan, “I don’t mean to suggest that.” But of course, that’s exactly what he suggested:
I mean everybody involved in the judicial process in Nova Scotia gets there because, ah, or principally they have ties to political parties in political structures, and so they are not tree shakers, I guess is the best way to describe it. They are there because they are for the most part a part of the establishment. So it is difficult to get a Nova Scotia judge, I think, to arrive at a different conclusion than the one we’ve arrived at.
This is not criticism of a decision, it’s accusation of judicial bias—a clear affront to a lawyer’s professional obligation. It’s also outrageous. Murphy is widely regarded as an excellent judge, and there exists not a speck of evidence to suggest he trims his judicial sails to political winds. It’s also cowardly on Morgan’s part because, as a judge, Murphy cannot fight back.
One can reasonably argue that the Barristers’ Society ought to make an exception for lawyers who also happen to be politicians, allowing them to impugn the integrity of the courts in pursuit of their political agenda. Notwithstanding the shameful content of Morgan’s comments, I’m inclined to think they should. Freedom of political speech is such an overriding value in a free society, it ought to trump the equally valid but less critical principle of a lawyer’s obligation to treat courts with respect.
But let’s not get into high dudgeon over the pretense that Morgan was merely using colorful language to take issue with a decision.
[Update] The Contrarian Research Bureau confirms that John D. Murphy, whom Morgan accuses of Conservative Party ties and consequent reluctance to decide cases contrary to the wishes of the MacDonald government, was named to the Supreme Court on March 2, 2001 by Jean Chretien, a Prime Minister who has never been accused of Conservative Party ties.
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The merits of His Worship’s equalization lawsuit (which was also rejected by unanimous decision of the Appeal Court) are also worthy of comment, but that’s for another day.
