I have an acquaintance, a late twenties graduate student, who says she will not date anyone who doesn’t watch Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report. “We’d have nothing to talk about,” she says.
To their eternal credit, The New York Times, the Knight-Ridder group of newspapers, Bill Maher, and The Daily Show were the only ones, to the best of my knowledge, who had a combination of intelligence and imagination, courage, and the journalistic integrity, to oppose the Bush war on Iraq.
I can recall a retired American colonel on the Larry King show who, prior to the war, repeatedly called Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, The Liars Club, while Larry King cringed and CNN knelt before the bullies and became instruments of the liars.
In the face of a mainstream media that lost its way, The Daily Show continued to expose the dishonesty of the White House and their bosom buddies, the military industrial/industrial complex, with an ironic humour that won the minds and hearts of the 20s generation, Viewers grew by hundreds of thousands. The Colbert Report was a highly successful spin-off so that Comedy Central was able to cover both sides of the street.
Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, one of the world’s top columnists, provides us below the results of an interview with Jon and Stephen. Read it here, or print it and read it later, but don’t miss it.
True North No Gas Fridays
It’s that day of the week again. To advance consumer interests you don’t have to walk a picket line, you don’t have to push and shove and yell at demonstrations, you don’t have to sign a petition (all of which are noble activities in a democracy) all you have to do is not buy gas on Friday. It may not seem like much now but as it takes many drops of water to make an ocean, the growth of True North Gas Fridays will eventually have a tsunami impact on Big Oil and governments small and large, which salivate at higher prices at the gas pumps. In this issue we offer a piece that offers a critical justification for high and higher gas prices. But don’t be taken in. As during World War 11, the government can fix the price of gas today like it did with all trade then by establishing the War Time Prices and Trade Board. On this side of the Atlantic everyone made money under this system — capital and those who worked for capital, and governments despite the costs of the war. By hitting back at the gas pumps with True North’s No Gas Fridays drivers Canadian drivers can help give governments the will to freeze the price of gas at a far lower level than we pay today.
Don’t be shy. Today don’t buy.
Have a good weekend.
Looking forward.
Carl Dow
True North
Editor and Publisher
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