How does the David Miller era end? Not with a bang. Not even a whimper. It’s over. But what will the future look like? Wall-to-wall Royson James and Sue Ann Levy honking on about the Ford “vision”? To avoid that nightmare, here’s the only alternative in town these days: Christopher Hume interviewing Shelley Carroll. They’re both articulate. He asks intelligent questions about specific issues and she actually answers them. Now that’s a revolutionary idea. Shelley does have a nicely coordinated outfit! And she comes up with a pretty good final line in the interview: “We thought Ford was going to be careful with our taxes and stop the gravy train. We didn’t expect him to throw our money in the street!” [paraphrased] A great image: A gravy-stained Mayor Poutine throwing the taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars away. Christopher Hume is the de facto Toronto affairs newsman now. Forget about Royson and the civic affairs commentary period of High Gravy-Train Expressionism. That ship has sailed. It’s Hume and only Hume now.
UPDATE and DISCLOSURE: The boss cancelled the Globe and Mail yesterday (6 December 2010). He was rankled by the redesign/deep-sixing of Rick Salutin. More on this anon. He didn’t tell Editor Stackhouse about anything he liked at the Globe, mainly because he was frightened that the new crew would deep-six them too. John Doyle has a pretty good column in one of the last Globes we’ll have delivered (“Don Cherry: It’s loony-right night in Canada, brought to you by the CBC”) He goes after more than just the freak in the pink suit in the column, but his description of Cherry is brilliant:
Cherry’s always been bombastic about vaguely political issues, but disguised his reactionary rants as folksy, on subjects such as French guys and Canada’s failure to join in the invasion of Iraq. Then, more significantly, came those ceaseless, maudlin memorials to young women and men who have died fighting in Afghanistan. As if their deaths deserved nothing more noble than a TV freak in a pink suit spouting cracker-barrel philosophy about the worth of the mission in Iraq.
I will miss Mr. Doyle. Don’t tell anyone I told you.
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