Rex Murphy: Ending a column for causing offence is gutless, St. John’s Telegram
Rex Murphy #RexMurphy
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Newfoundland, or maybe I should say Newfoundlanders, have always been a little more relaxed in their ways and speech than the more genteel mainlanders. I did a long stint at the CBC’s “Here and Now” in St. John’s, which besides interviews and small documentaries, also loosed me to do commentary. And in those days of an Eden long ago, you could be as saucy as you liked on air providing, and this is the key, you were prepared to go out the next day to meet your many in-your-face-and-uninhibited critics.
I’m not a fan of nostalgic reveries, or the biographical impulse, but let me breach my own rules. For the time I was at “Here and Now” I was free to say what I wanted, and how to say it. There were consequences. Following a broadcast commentary there was always the next day.
I have shivered and trembled under the finest, most expert and splenetic “calling downs” that nature or ticked-off Newfoundlanders (they are one and the same in this) can produce. I have been under the volcano.
Variously, I was showered with contempt, scorn and insult eloquently expressed in the Dominion supermarket in Churchill Square, by check-in clerks at local motels, on the wharves of the most distant outports. One “reaming” (that is the technical term) stands out to this day. It was delivered by lonely fisherman way up on the Northern Peninsula, over something I had said on TV the previous evening. It was brutal and brilliant, the man could talk as Paganini could fiddle. Great invective is an art to admire.
That gentleman may have had a Grade 3 education, but he possessed a surplus of PhDs in the pure poetry of telling “stupid ugly little b*****ds” off. Me being the “stupid ugly little b*****d” in question. How I admired his fluency. And even now, how I recall his superb word choices. I wilted in the face of his rage. I gloried in the élan of his attack.
There was another standout moment. One night I made fun of the Montreal Canadiens on “Here and Now” (Newfoundlanders’ adored team) and the next morning — seriously — dropping in to a convenience story in Tor’s Cover (a magnet beauty of a town on the Southern Shore) had to flee when a couple of “critics” showed up.
Two guys in the Beer Truck, wheeling in the 24 cases of Blue Star and Jockey Club (the epicure’s brew), saw me at the counter, and from the strip of frost that raced from them to me, I knew they: (a) were not fans of mine; and (b) stood in some sort of romantic relationship with the Habs. I had never seen a death ray before. Yet there it was, sorry, there they were, all four of them, blazing out of the eyes of the Beer Truck guys. (They had two each — eyes, I mean, and death rays emanated from each one).
I had worn a Montreal hockey sweater loaned from a friend, to spice up the commentary. A mockery too far it seemed for the beer guys. And remember this: the guys who deliver beer in Newfoundland are tougher than the guys who drink it. (They have to be; think about it.)
The reptile brain, working overtime as usual, asserted control; I leaped from the shop and hit the gas pedal on my mighty Plymouth Sundance and sent prayers to every one of its pathetic four cylinders. I offer the casual observation that it is amazing how explosively a cheap car with vegetarian-level horse power and bald tires, when, driver pursued by hulks from the brewery, can hit the dirt and peel away. Your commentator fled.
Here’s the point, for those of you who have been kind enough to wait for it: say a hard thing in Newfoundland, expect a hard response. And, here’s the other point: glory in both.
A columnist, Brian Jones at the Evening Telegram, wrote a column last week contrasting the security of civil servants, during this pandemic, with those who do not have guaranteed salaries and employment. It was a mild column. It made a valid point. Roughly there are two classes in this pandemic. Those going through it on full salary, and those in shops and business or freelance going through it with far more anxiety.
It obviously wasn’t a favourite of those in the first class. And the Telegram then announced that that column would be his last.
The editor tried to pass off this cowardice as “listening to their readers.” It was the “readers” who educated them, the editors lifted their minds to the “mistake” of allowing the column to be printed.
So the Telegram’s leaders, its editors and presumably the editor-in-chief, genuflected to the vulpine Twitter pack, expressed contrition over their “error” and ever so bravely placed Brian Jones, their columnist, on the ice pan of people who will never write columns for the Telegram ever again, in what the paper insists was his decision. But a decision made under what terms or threats? Jones wore two hats at the Telegram, a columnist and editor. He retains the latter role.
Has the Canadian Association of Journalists spoken of this yet? Will it?
It is a sorrow to report that other Telegram columnists have not come out in Jones’ support, and even more sorrowful that at least one sides with the Telegram editors on the purge.
Well done, Telegram. You have bowed to the trite howlings of Twitter, done several knee-bends to the union masters of NAPE, humiliated yourself and whatever might be called journalism in Newfoundland by allowing Brian Jones, your columnist, to be humiliated. And pathetically tried to wrap the decision to end his column as a verdict of your “readers.”
The Telegram used to have a columnist named Ray Guy, the finest writer, satirist and commentator Newfoundland has seen. Which is the same thing as saying, the Telegram used to be a newspaper with stomach and taste.
Used to be.
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