With a hat tip to Bourque, this story from the National Post:
CBC chairman Guy Fournier has become the target of anger and derision in his home province after falsely claiming that Lebanon permits bestiality and for granting a lengthy interview on the joys of bowel movements.
On Sunday night, Mr. Fournier, appeared on one of Quebec's most-watched television shows, Tout le monde en parle, ostensibly to apologize for a magazine column he wrote making the unfounded bestiality claims.
In his Sept. 9 weekly column for the magazine 7 Jours, Mr. Fournier included the following nugget: "In Lebanon, the law allows men to have sexual relations with animals as long as they are female! Doing the same thing with male beasts can result in the death penalty."
What an idiot.
The problem was that the information, gleaned from the Internet, was false. Montreal's Lebanese community was incensed, and a local university instructor of Lebanese descent began steps to file a lawsuit.
Addressing the audience of Radio-Canada's Tout le monde en parle, which regularly numbers more than two million, Mr. Fournier admitted he had not verified the information before publication.
OK, so he made a mistake. A really awful mistake. But just one, right? It's not like he is an expert on bestiality. He probably has heard of the crude slang for an Arab, "goat*****r", and reading this drivel thought it was the factual basis for the slur.
Anybody could be fooled. Well, not anybody. Any fool could have been fooled.
But then consider the things he does spend a great deal of time thinking about:
Mr. Fournier recounted a train trip in the early 1960s during which a friend named Michel said going number two was as pleasurable as having sex.
"From that moment, I started paying closer attention -- and I have to tell you, I quickly realized that Michel was entirely right," Mr. Fournier said.
"And the most extraordinary thing is that, in the end, as you grow older, you continue to go poop once a day if you are in good health, while it is not easy to make love every day. So finally, the pleasure is longer-lasting and more frequent than the other."
He also advised against distractions while on the toilet. "There are even people who push the heresy to the point of doing Sudoku or crosswords rather than concentrating on the pleasure that they would have doing the thing," Mr. Fournier told his radio interviewer. "It is just as heretical as if you read the National Post while making love. It is not to be recommended."
I have it on good authority from the highest reaches of the National Post that they do indeed recommend the paper be read at any time and in any place, including while having sex.
OK, I just made that up (update: I now have the National Post's official sex position). But then I haven't been devoting so much time to thinking about sex and poop as Fournier has.
Who put this nut in charge of the CBC? The Liberals, as one of their last acts before being turfed out:
Minister of Canadian Heritage and Minister responsible for Status of Women Liza Frulla today announced the appointment of Guy Fournier, of Abbotsford, Quebec, as Chair of the Board of Directors of CBC/Radio-Canada. The appointment was endorsed by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
"Guy Fournier brings to CBC/Radio-Canada a vast experience as a senior manager and an in-depth knowledge of the broadcasting industry," said Minister Frulla. "CBC/Radio-Canada needs someone at the helm of its board of directors whose vision will ensure a strong and vibrant Canadian broadcasting system."
The new minister is going to fix this problem, right? Wrong:
Veronique Bruneau, press secretary to federal Heritage Minister Beverley Oda, said the Minister was satisfied that Mr. Fournier had retracted his comments about Lebanon and had apologized. "As a journalist, he should have verified his sources and been accurate," she said.
What? The Conservative government is not going toss this Liberal appointee out the door?
Of course not. He's perfect right where he is:
Saying that the Conservatives have a cool relationship with the national network would be putting it lightly. The belief that the CBC is actively biased against their party has only been affirmed by the press gallery's war with Prime Minister Stephen Harper -- a battle largely led by the CBC's delegation on Parliament Hill -- and bloggers recently caught CBC manipulating news footage to portray Harper in a negative light. (In Quebec, meanwhile, Radio-Canada irritates all federalists, both Tory and Liberal, who have for years seen it as a hotbed of pro-separatist sentiment).
Despite the bad blood, the Conservative government has so far been cryptic -- even muted -- about its plans for the broadcaster. But look closely, say government insiders, and you'll find ominous signs that big changes are coming soon. According to one Cabinet insider, "It won't look much like it does today."
As an acolyte of the free market, the Prime Minister has made clear that he sees the CBC as an unfair player in the media marketplace, using taxpayer dollars to hinder the entrepreneurs in the private sector. "I've suggested that government subsidies in support of CBC's services should be to those things that ... do not have commercial alternatives," Harper said in 2004. "And I think when you look at things like main-English-language television, and probably to a lesser degree Radio Two [CBC's music programming], you could [put] those on a commercial basis."
Meanwhile, there are signs that the Conservatives are of a mind to cut the broadcaster's access to public funding, as well. In June, the Tories refused to support a motion presented in the House of Commons by Liberal heritage critic Mauril Belanger calling on continual financial support of the CBC at current levels.
All this has media observers speculating as to what the Tories have in mind.
If the Tories are serious about cutting the CBC down dramatically, both in budget and in mandate, they will have a fight on their hands. Having Fournier at the head of the CBC, on the defensive because of his bizarre comments, takes the wind out of the sails of the the CBC's defenders. That he was appointed by the pro-CBC Liberals is just one more argument for the Conservatives to use to say that the CBC is just not working.
