4:33 pm. Due to unspeakable sins in a past life, I’m liveblogging the primetime debut of Sun News, the network that will unite right-wing tabloid coverage with the production values of public-access TV. They’re running a half-hour preview beforehand; it opens on this unintentionally camp promo clip, edited at the last minute to remove ousted co-anchor Mercedes Stephenson. 4:38 pm. Krista Erickson tells morning host Neelam Verma that focusing on international news is a good fit for her, because of that exotic, dusky background. Oof. 5:00pm. First up is Ezra Levant, best known for failing to retain a Canadian Alliance nomination in Calgary, failing to sell a right-wing political magazine to Albertans and failing to steal dinosaur embryos from Richard Attenborough. He was also prosecuted for “hate speech” by a human rights commission, which is wrong, but at least he got a book deal out of it. 5:01 pm. “The thinkalikes, or the Consensus Media, as I like to call them.” 5:03 pm. Chryon: “A network where it is cool to be proud of our country… CANADA.” 5:05 pm. It appears that commercial breaks will feature inspirational quotes about Freedom. Is 5 o’clock too early to start drinking? 5:10 pm. Jesus, Levant is still going on about this CBC Vote Compass thing. Apparently, answering the survey as a grey blob with no opinions or identifiable principles causes it to say that your political beliefs are closest to the Liberals, which is very flattering and biased towards that party. At least filling out an internet poll twice makes for thrilling live TV. 5:17 pm. Fulmination against “government Bolshevism.” Remember when Mark Steyn was dispatched to a forced labour camp in Norilsk? 5:19 pm. Al Gore invented the internet! That joke must be sprouting pubes by now. 5:21 pm. Levant shouts out Maestro Fresh Wes and CKLN (because it was shut down by evil government bureaucrats, obvs). This is probably the most I’ll agree with anything in the next five hours. 5:39 pm. Levant’s first guest is Peter Worthington, here to reminisce about the early years of political incorrectness at the Toronto Sun. Like his support for Jonas Savimbi. 5:42 pm. Worthington claims the media is “afraid to say certain things,” e.g. that Africans have no cultural achievements to speak of. 5:46 pm. It’s not hard to figure out what motivates Quebecor Media appendages to constantly attack the CBC while demanding its privatization, but one wonders why such independent free-thinkers would lift their business strategy directly from Rupert Murdoch and sons. 5:48 pm. Levant giggles that he and Worthington will fight off the government censors when those Stalinist commissars come after them for crimethink. Here’s some grainy video of that moment 6:05 pm. David Akin brings on a Fraser Institute spokesman to talk about how we totally need to privatize Medicare without ever identifying that think tank’s right-wing leanings. The hardest news, the straightest talk. 6:18 pm. Akin admits the Fraser Institute’s ideological bias…on Twitter. 6:33 pm. Akin might be a crypto-conservative with sourcing issues, but at least he’s not flailing in a puddle of his own sweat like Ezra Levant. 6:43 pm. Mesmerized by David Frum’s anime-character-inspired coif. And by the fact that his health care talk sounds semi-reasonable on this show. 6:50 pm. Brian Lilley apparently resolved to one-up Frum during commercials by shaping his hair into Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa. 7:05 pm. Theo Caldwell declares: “I am an unimpoverished, semi-literate, heterosexual white male.” Also smarmy, unctuous. 7:14 pm. Guest Mark Bonokoski suggests, without mentioning any evidence, that Libyan rebels may have received weaponry from the “Arab” Brotherhood. Journalism! 7:17 pm. I guess I can see why Caldwell felt the need to announce his heterosexuality, since he insists on calling Bonokoski “Papa Bear.” 7:25 pm. Ezra Levant returns to tell Caldwell that progressives and feminists should logically support exploiting Alberta’s oil sands without any regulations or carbon taxes to minimize the negative externalities thereof, because Saudi Arabia is a reactionary monarchy. 7:33 pm. Levant is complaining about a CBC election timewaster (Vote Compass!) for the ninth time. 7:41 pm. Shoved leftover pizza in the oven, like real Canadians do. Levant has mercifully retired to run a mop over his face. Sun TV’s in-house pollster appears to be 15 years old. 7:58 pm. Gutted that I missed Michael Coren talking about Christian apologetics while I ate dinner #lies. 8:03 pm. Was going to say that Charles Adler is the closest this network comes to gravitas (it’s the voice), but then I noticed the Emmy prominently displayed on his desk. 8:06 pm. Are unironic “ADLER NATION” references the Sun’s bid for a 30-second Colbert cameo? 8:23 pm. Looks like Adler and his employer will be running a Republican-style “voter fraud” scam, gesticulating at scattered examples of impromptu campus balloting. He cites Jeremy Harrison, a Conservative candidate in the 2006 election whose Liberal opponent Gary Merasty received a huge percentage of the vote on one native reserve, but doesn’t mention that Merasty is aboriginal. A knowledgeable guest (Harrison’s former recount lawyer) curiously fails to point out this oversight. 8:37 pm. “I’m certainly not an expert on Cuba,” says the Q107 host Adler invited to discuss the possible fall of Castro’s regime. But he has vacationed there! 9:01 pm. Unsatisfied by the media criticism on every other Sun show, Brian Lilley is also leading with an expos on those perfidious monsters at the CBC. 9:05 pm. Lilley insists that he’s outraged by Mulroney: The Opera not because of its “smear job” on the boy from Baie Comeau, but because the CBC apparently funded close to a million dollars in production costs. Our ex-PM did commit “errors of judgment” when he accepted those cash-stuffed envelopes from Karlheinz Schreiber, after all. Strangely, however, Lilley didn’t mention the $2.1 million in public money that Mulroney himself received to settle a 1996 libel lawsuit – arguing that the federal government had slandered him by, um, hinting at secret payments from Mr. Schreiber for services rendered. The head of Sun TV happens to be Luc Lavoie, Mulroney’s former spokesman, but who hasn’t contemplated working two jobs in this economy? 9:07 pm. Calgary Sun columnist Rick Bell approaches a full-on Alex Jones meltdown as he whines about snooty 416 elitists then proposesHogtown Blues, an autobiographical-sounding production about two Prairie boys chewed up and spat out by pinky-curling Torontonians. Awful as Mulroney: The Opera looks, it’s probably easier to sit through than Bell’s cultural-resentment psychodrama. 9:53 pm. Somebody on the CBC mocked Lilley’s claim that Michael Ignatieff approvingly quoted vaguely echoed Mao Zedong, and that cannot be allowed to stand. It is fitting that his network’s first broadcast ended on such a petulant, insecure note: anyone who feared a “Fox News North,” encouraging Ottawa’s worst impulses in the same manner as American cable news, should rest easy. Sun TV can’t even work up competent demagoguery.
