Trump should sue Ford for royalties
Distraught by reporting, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has set up his own online “news” service, offering dedicated up-to-date “reporting” on he, himself, and him. I watched it, doubting, but have become a convert.
It is delicious. If only all news could be like Ontario News Now. Donald Trump should be asking for royalties.
On the Doug Channel, an implausibly cheerful person named Lyndsey Vanstone, one of the Ford people originally assigned to clap to drown out reporters at news events, introduces her first report on Ford’s “inauguration” as premier. Ontario premiers are sworn in, American presidents are inaugurated.
Then come 22 quick stills and clips of Ford basically meeting guys in uniform — firefighters, police officers, businesspeople, politicians — and talking about the fantastic transformation of everything he has touched since taking office. Ford then lists what he styles as his achievements, saying after each one, “We did it.”
Now I know a certain toddler who says this on every single step as he shakily climbs the stairs. “I did it!” he says delightedly. And I clap and say, “Good job!” I say this 13 times because slathering infants with praise for everything from a good nap to semisuccessfully using a diaper is my job.
Weirdly, that appears to be Vanstone’s job, too.
In 2011, Vanstone achieved local fame in Barrie for being one of the 80,000 people applying to be American actor Charlie Sheen’s intern. She and a guy from Belleville made it to the final 50.
At that point in his career, Sheen was in the news for weeks of savagery, including naked drunkenness, threatening to behead his wife, waving a machete, and claiming he had tiger blood or “Adonis DNA.”
Vanstone didn’t believe it. “I think he is a genius … I think that this is just going to be a huge comeback and he’ll have duped everybody. I don’t think people can go that crazy in just one day.” Four months later, she got a job producing John Tory’s radio show on Newstalk 1010.
I have grown fond of Vanstone, my polar opposite. She’s spunky. I hate spunk. She’s credulous and takes people very much at their own valuation — the worst quality for a real journalist, but the best for Fake News.
I have seen the future of journalism and it is Vanstone. Talking chirpily about the bright side of things like sepsis —“I never needed that leg anyway” — and dealing with drought — “As long as it’s my own urine, don’t mind if I do” — is the future of opinion journalism. And the Doug Channel, all Doug all the time, could be monetized.
In an era when Trump calls journalists “the enemy of the people” and a certain premier’s slogan is “Ford. For the People,” what if “the people” had their own individual channels, watched only by them, themselves, and they, reporting only news they wanted to hear?
The Person Channel would offer a series of selected daily triumphs, personal, local and global. Britain’s hard-left Momentum movement, the Militant Tendency of 2018, already does this with the Jeremy Channel — all Corbyn all the time.
On my channel, I would have a politician of the day. Mayor Jennifer Keesmaat. Prime Minister Hadrien Trudeau, no, Chrystia Freeland. President Noam Chomsky, no, Melissa McCarthy, no, Elizabeth Warren. Doug-style, they would meet 22 people in a variety of outfits, all flattering, and then list their triumphs as selected by an independent panel of me.
Speed limit 20 km/h everywhere. Did it. Toronto bike lanes walled-off like Hadrian’s. Did it. Gardiner Expressway an all-seasons park but unlike other Toronto parks, has hills, bridges, waterfalls, and ample Japanese toilet pavilions with extra stalls for women. Did it.
Hun Sen, tyrant of Cambodia, vanishes. Did it. Polar ice caps re-form. Did it. David Sedaris wishes that trees grew at 10 times their normal rate, from sapling to shade in one year. Did it. Trees found to be edible, taste like Kobe beef. Did it.
The entire Ford family moves to Bowling Ball, Sask., and ruins that place too. Done. Turkey and Greece end historic feud. Done. Abortions available to all women, abortion leave banked to retirement if unused. Done. Gavrilo Princip goes into anaphylactic shock from an errant filbert and misses the Archduke Ferdinand being driven past while he searches for his EpiPen. Done.
All humans become the same colour, International Klein Blue. Done. Hitler is admitted to Vienna art school, becomes a high school art teacher in Linz, and dies young in a boating accident. Done. Scientists discover plastic bags are actually made of corn on the cob, and can be eaten with butter. Done.
Bullets can be unshot and deleted like tweets. Done.
This Ontario voter loves her personal fake news channel. Trump and Ford say fake news is dangerous, but I, dazed and replete with the news I want to hear, couldn’t be happier.