Woody Guthrie: Self Parody

Chairman Mao Dept: Enright is a reporter of a certain age 68, not far off most of his audience, I suspect , possesses a quirky sense of humour, holds dependably CBC-leftish views on most things, which he keeps covered in a thick veneer of reportorial fairness, and has excellent taste in jazz -- which means, of course, that he favours the same musicians I do, according to Vancouver Sun. The segment in question was about elitism. The subject was when exactly elitism became a dirty word. The Toronto Star's David Olive first gallantly confessed to being an elite in that he has a couple of degrees and researches what he writes unlike fellow panelist Claire Hoy, presumably and then said, quite sensibly, that it probably started shortly after the expulsion from Eden. His co-panelist on the elite side, Shadia Drury, a professor of social justice, of all things, from the University of Regina, felt it was of more recent origin, the fault of neo-conservatives and, ecumenically on her part, neo-liberals. "Neo" clearly is the problem and i'm a frequent listener to CBC Radio's three-hour Sunday morning show, Sunday Edition, with Michael Enright. As a sometime guest, I'm biased, but it's among the three most intelligent hours available in broadcasting, even now, when the miracle that is the Internet brings almost all the world's radio onstream. The show is most enjoyable when it verges on self-parody, as it did two Sunday's ago. A discussion with an eminent feminist historian wandered into the evils of McCarthyism, the left's hardy standby moral equivalent to Stalin's Gulag. A piece on a letter-writing club ended with a song by Saint Woody Guthrie sung by Brother Pete Seeger. Then, in the followup segment, Enright made joshing reference to the great left-wing conspiracy that supposedly dominates the media. Well, duh! Do the fish know they swim in water, as Chairman Mao used to say? As reported in the news.
@t sunday morning show, michael enright