‘Jack’ shows CBC’s mettle, despite right-wing gripers

Jack Layton and I were very close. He always recognized me, even when running into me on the street when no one could know we’d be in the same place that time. So I believed he really knew me and valued our friendship. And he would let me in on whatever was going on.

Jack knew my background, my history, seemed to keep up-to-date with what I was doing even though I rarely ever mentioned him in The Bulletin or its earlier incarnation as the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood Community Bulletin.

Olivia Chow was the same way. They were a great couple I felt and we were all quite close.

I was like hundreds of other seemingly intimate friends the couple had with their names and histories on the tips of their tongues—his more than hers.

That’s a vital part of being a sublime politician. That ability to relate so closely to your constituents on a face-and-name basis is what only a rare few can do. It’s a gift. (Congressman Paul Rogers in my home state of Florida was one so gifted and he served 11 terms.)

It’s why the late and dearly missed Downtown community benefactor, volunteer (and columnist in this paper) Mike Comstock never ran for a political office where he would have done amazing good work. But he was often terrible with names.

I watched the CBC production of Jack last month and was swept away by the superbly skillful reproduction of things so familiar to those (thousands!) of us who knew the couple. Right-wingers and fascists naturally scorn the notion of a “government” television producer, but none do it better. Most do it worse. Somehow Mother Corp, as CBC is often called, skirts the obvious control of government and seems unaffected by it except for finances. The Corp’s only major outstanding stupidity in my recollection is letting go of the Hockey Night In Canada theme which is still the ringtone on my iPhone.

By the way, CBC gets a piddling amount of tax money compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal subsidies, tax breaks and gifts handed out to the monopoly corporations that compete against Mother Corp and don’t do programs nearly as well if they do any at all.

The Globe and Mail editorial on the Tuesday following the airing of Jack was critical. It claimed CBC should have waited a few decades before pronouncing on his “canonization” and called the drama an “unpaid political advertisement” for the NDP. And maybe for Olivia.

Jack, known locally by some detractors as “Black Jack N-Dipper” in his college professor days, leaned farther to the left than I can bend. In those days, when I was editing copy for the business section of the Toronto Sun, the little paper that grew certainly tilted right, though it wasn’t hanging over the wall and screeching from every orifice as it does today.

My next career move was as a broadcast commentator at Financial Post, now part of National Post, when it was owned by Maclean-Hunter.

It was there that an outstanding management allowed me to spend the next decade disputing many of their editorial positions on 40 stations across the country.

The newspaper’s editorial stance favoured the Goods and Services Tax, proffered by the Rightly Despised Brian Mulroney. I termed it—in my broadcasts—“the Tory Tax Curse” or, like Europe’s model Value Added Tax, “the European Water Torture” because it soaks the poor and middle class. All sales taxes hit the poorest the hardest as a proportion of their incomes.

Management let me routinely describe the Financial District as “The Casino on Bay Street.” That was free speech. And they paid me for it. Bless them.

All the while, Jack was leaning in his usual direction, and probably no farther left than he ever had been. He seemed clear-headed and consistent.

I wavered until 2008 when it became obvious that giving oligopoly corporations the benefit of the doubt is another way of impoverishing yourself and everyone else. It was clear that Bay Street and Wall Street don’t specialize in investments. They are gambling operations. Most of the “financial sector” produces nothing of value. Just paper. It’s a drone industry. And a drain.

There is no earthly reason why there should be a futures market, for instance. That’s a pure gamble on commodities and financial indices. There’s no investment involved any more than there is in that casino the swine want to curse us with Downtown.

An investment is either a loan to—or the purchase of shares in—a business that needs money to grow or to sustain itself during challenging times. Buying into a business to cash in its assets, fire its workers and otherwise “enhance shareholders’ value” is predation. No investment there.

A bank—a real commercial bank—takes deposits and earns its keep by lending money for more than it pays depositors. That’s true economic value. Any other activity isn’t banking. It’s gambling. Our banks do both, but any outfits that call themselves “investment banks” are strictly gambling houses. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made that happen by letting casinos masquerade as banks.

“Black Jack” Layton certainly held out for the more-than-99%. That’s us. It’s anyone other than billionaires or their millionaire lackeys. It even includes deluded “conservative” yokels who imagine that rabid cheering for oligarchs exempts them from being one of us.

They think they’re conservative.