20/09/06, John Doyle, One less embarrassment at Fort Dork
Post
It turns out that being chairman of the board of CBC/Radio-Canada is rather like being the Pope. Both succumb almost simultaneously to foot-in-mouth disease. Both display a curious insensitivity and effortlessly alienate people who, really, have enough to deal with at the moment.
The difference is that the chairman of the board of CBC/Radio-Canada, Guy Fournier, resigned yesterday. As he should have, but days ago.
It's also curious that the stupidity is underestimated by both instigators. Here's news: Boneheaded remarks often beget long-term consequences. This was especially true of the latest act of mind-boggling foolishness by the boss of bosses at CBC. Allow me to explain.
Last Thursday evening I was out having dinner. My cellphone rang. The person calling is familiar with the crackpot ways of CBC. (No, the person does not work at Fort Dork, so the bosses there can resist any plans to trawl through phone and BlackBerry records to figure out who called me.) It was a poor connection and I wasn't sure if I was accurately gleaning the gist of it. What I got was "Chairman of the board of CBC." "Sex with animals." "Lebanon." "People are upset."
On Friday I looked into it and passed on the tip at The Globe and Mail. As this section reported yesterday, Guy Fournier, chairman of the board of CBC/Radio-Canada, made a very crude joke in a column he writes for the French-language magazine 7 jours. He wrote, "In Lebanon, the law makes it possible for men to have sexual intercourse with animals as long as they are females. To do the same thing with male animals could lead to the death penalty."
Naturally, the Lebanese-Canadian community was dumbfounded. After all, they've been through a rough period recently and now this nonsense from the big nob at CBC.
So I heard about it on Thursday. And on Friday, there was a big announcement from Fort Dork. It seems unrelated, but it isn't. CBC has acquired from FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, the right to broadcast the 2010 and 2014 World Cup tournaments, as well as the 2011 Women's World Cup and a bunch of Under-20 world competitions.
This is a smart move for several reason. But one important element is soccer's appeal to vast areas of multicultural Canada, often to large groups of people who would not normally watch a lot of CBC Television. It's both shrewd and positive for our public broadcaster to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and acknowledge that there are people in this country who are passionately interested in soccer.
The two bits of news about CBC were related because it's more than a tad ironic that at a time when CBC is telling the country that it's going to bring us all a soccer bonanza, the top guy was nailed for making extraordinarily insensitive wisecracks about people from other countries.
One of the slogans used by FIFA at World Cup events is "One world. One game." The meaning is simple -- international soccer unifies and brings the world closer together. It might be a marketing slogan, but it has an authenticity. The whole world stops for the World Cup. On occasion, wars have ceased. Everybody tries to get along because, well, the World Cup matters more than hating and sneering at each other.
Guy Fournier was the chairman of the board of our public broadcaster, which gets about $1-billion from taxpayers to fund both English and French services. He won't chair another meeting but he might want to kick a ball around with Canadians from Lebanon. They too pay the CBC's bills.
One world. One game. Now, at least, one less embarrassment at the CBC.
jdoyle@globeandmail.com
The difference is that the chairman of the board of CBC/Radio-Canada, Guy Fournier, resigned yesterday. As he should have, but days ago.
It's also curious that the stupidity is underestimated by both instigators. Here's news: Boneheaded remarks often beget long-term consequences. This was especially true of the latest act of mind-boggling foolishness by the boss of bosses at CBC. Allow me to explain.
Last Thursday evening I was out having dinner. My cellphone rang. The person calling is familiar with the crackpot ways of CBC. (No, the person does not work at Fort Dork, so the bosses there can resist any plans to trawl through phone and BlackBerry records to figure out who called me.) It was a poor connection and I wasn't sure if I was accurately gleaning the gist of it. What I got was "Chairman of the board of CBC." "Sex with animals." "Lebanon." "People are upset."
On Friday I looked into it and passed on the tip at The Globe and Mail. As this section reported yesterday, Guy Fournier, chairman of the board of CBC/Radio-Canada, made a very crude joke in a column he writes for the French-language magazine 7 jours. He wrote, "In Lebanon, the law makes it possible for men to have sexual intercourse with animals as long as they are females. To do the same thing with male animals could lead to the death penalty."
Naturally, the Lebanese-Canadian community was dumbfounded. After all, they've been through a rough period recently and now this nonsense from the big nob at CBC.
So I heard about it on Thursday. And on Friday, there was a big announcement from Fort Dork. It seems unrelated, but it isn't. CBC has acquired from FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, the right to broadcast the 2010 and 2014 World Cup tournaments, as well as the 2011 Women's World Cup and a bunch of Under-20 world competitions.
This is a smart move for several reason. But one important element is soccer's appeal to vast areas of multicultural Canada, often to large groups of people who would not normally watch a lot of CBC Television. It's both shrewd and positive for our public broadcaster to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and acknowledge that there are people in this country who are passionately interested in soccer.
The two bits of news about CBC were related because it's more than a tad ironic that at a time when CBC is telling the country that it's going to bring us all a soccer bonanza, the top guy was nailed for making extraordinarily insensitive wisecracks about people from other countries.
One of the slogans used by FIFA at World Cup events is "One world. One game." The meaning is simple -- international soccer unifies and brings the world closer together. It might be a marketing slogan, but it has an authenticity. The whole world stops for the World Cup. On occasion, wars have ceased. Everybody tries to get along because, well, the World Cup matters more than hating and sneering at each other.
Guy Fournier was the chairman of the board of our public broadcaster, which gets about $1-billion from taxpayers to fund both English and French services. He won't chair another meeting but he might want to kick a ball around with Canadians from Lebanon. They too pay the CBC's bills.
One world. One game. Now, at least, one less embarrassment at the CBC.
jdoyle@globeandmail.com
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