The Black Rod

Is Sam Katz auditioning for a new career as a comedian? He's no Robin Williams, but you've got to start somewhere.   When the news broke that the province of Manitoba had asked the RCMP to review the trio of city audits that uncovered massive favoritism in handing out construction contracts "and to conduct any investigations it considers appropriate," Katz tapped his funny bone to knock off some one-liners in the form of a "statement." His best: "The province has made their decision and chosen to exercise their right to refer to the RCMP, and all of council would support their decision , and I hope this brings closure." Bwahaha. Now that's funny. It may be too subtle for many people, but it's in the true tradition of understated British humour. You see, Katz is saying just the opposite.  He and his council cabal voted AGAINST sending the audits to the provincial justice department , a move made by c

The public lynching of mayoral candidate Gord Steeves last Wednesday was not only ugly, it was a frightening display of how an uncontrolled news mob will gladly abandon ethics and propriety for self-promotion. Having invented a scandal, Winnipeg's best known purported professional journalists descended on a Steeves news conference determined to stir more controversy -- even if they had to manufacture it. The most egregious faux-journalist was CJOB's news director , Richard Cloutier . CJOB, with its listenership in freefall, has decided that the way to recoup its ratings is with stunts. So they determined they would go live to the Steeves news conference where, just maybe if they were lucky, trouble would break out. The problem with going live is that you can't control the event. So when Steeves began eating up time outlining a policy proposal to improve the lives of Winnipegers, it was more than Cloutier could stand.  Cloutier disrup

The Winnipeg Free Press appears to be gearing up for the next federal election by hiring the most strident hater of the Conservative Party they could find to join their editorial department. We're not talking about FP Editor Paul Samyn, who was the biggest shill for the Liberal Party in Ottawa when he was the newspaper's Parliamentary reporter.  See http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2006/10/fp-admits-bad-reporting-still-says.html for details. This past weekend Samyn announced that "we have a new editor responsible for the perspectives you will be reading both in print and on-line. Shannon Sampert, an expert in Canadian politics and the media, joins our newsroom from the University of Winnipeg...Shannon becomes the first woman to oversee our editorial pages. I think Dafoe would be proud ." Shannon Sampert was no stranger to The Black Rod (more about that in a minute). We more-or-less ignored her in her teaching job at the U of W, but when we learned s

Gord Steeves has suddenly been propelled into being the frontrunner in Winnipeg's mayoral race. And it's not for something he said or did. He can thank his wife for the push. What? What are you talking about? The MSM says his campaign is finished because of a four-year-old Facebook post by his wife complaining about being harrassed by "drunk native guys." Hardly.  Because EVERYBODY KNOWS IT'S TRUE! And that means that finally somebody is talking about something that people care about. Like WHY DOWNTOWN WINNIPEG IS SUCH A SHITHOLE. Steeves' support is solidified by the trumped-up attack on him, and voters who haven't paid much, if any, attention to the campaign for mayor now know his name.  And they also know he's the only candidate they've heard saying what they want to hear -- clean up downtown. He's not jabbering about some abstract "vision" of some future city in some non-existent dreamland.  He's talkin