QotD: The CBC

In their own quiet way, CBC people have become a remarkable cult, the proprietors of a vast reservoir of smugness they are incapable of recognizing as such. For generations, they have been constructing a body of impregnable, self-regenerating opinion. As employees they are pre-selected and their views are pre-recorded, like most of their programs. A single rule governs all personnel selection: Like hires like. That principle, followed for seven decades, produces seamless intellectual agreement in all corners of the staff. Occasionally a few oddballs somehow slip through the screening process. They are allowed to hold unofficial views, providing they have the good sense not to express them. Otherwise, the CBC encourages everyone to speak up.

CBC producers glory in what Wordsworth called "smooth and solemnized complacencies." They believe in universal one-tier medicare, feminism, the Kyoto accord, employment equity and the United Nations. They consider Israel an embarrassing upstart state and remain unimpressed by its accomplishments. They hate the Bush administration but they are routinely anti-American even when someone more agreeable occupies the White House. They don't much like business. In their view the free market causes more trouble than it's worth, and globalization is another word for evil. They believe unions are usually on the right side (even if they think their own unions are led by idiots). They have learned that there is one side to every question.

Robert Fulford, "The lessons I learned at CBC", National Post, 2006-09-23