Connect with us
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=12]

Bruce Dowbiggin

Broken Body, Broken Dream: The Faint Promise Of Child Transitions

Published

10 minute read

“Just simply by saying we will never accept natal males in women’s spaces, well, it is their son that we’re talking about. And they’ve told their son that he can get himself sterilized and destroy his own basic sexual function, and women will accept him as a woman. And if we don’t (accept him) there’s no way back for them and that child. They’ve sold their child a bill of goods that they can’t deliver on…” — author Helen Joyce

One of the frustrations for those following the Hunter Biden story or the Justin Trudeau agitprop is why, after their reckless claims have been proven incorrect they— and their media pals— do not retract the stories, apologize and promise to do better.

Even as the first-hand evidence accumulates that Hunter Biden and his father ran an international influence racket for millions of dollars— contradicting their persistent earlier denials— Biden loyalists like MSNBC Joe Scarborough  and the New York Times/ Washington Post refuse to acknowledge their error and cover the story as they did the Donald Trump impeachments.

The epitome of this hubris occurred when neither the Times nor the Post returned their Pulitzer Prizes after their stories of Russian interference in 2016 turned out to Hillary Clinton election dirty tricks— aided by the FBI, DOJ and CIA. Nor did the Pulitzer zealots ask for their prizes back.

In Canada, Trudeau’s repeated falsehoods (murdered babies in residential school cemeteries) and ad hominems (truckers are racists and anti-science) remain uncorrected by a stream of media and communications types who still portray him in heroic Sunny Ways, plunging into hostile crowds with his rictus smile. And an audience that is fine with giving away free speech and information.

They even manufactured a claim that someone in Belleville hurled an anti-semitic insult at Trudeau, who is not Jewish. [This absurd claim recalls Woody Allen spoofing his own neuroticism in “Annie Hall”: “I was having lunch with some guys from NBC and I said, ‘Did you eat  yet?’ and [they] said, ‘No, Jew?’ Not, ‘Did you,’ but ‘Jew eat? Jew?’  Not ‘Did you,’ but ‘Jew eat?’” To which Tony Roberts replies, “Max, you see conspiracies in everything.”]

Part of this mania is the slavish devotion to an “expert culture” of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, says influencer Theo Jordan. They exploited two waves of Milllenial kids “raised by helicopters and friend-parents who are now obsessed with safetyism and willing to subordinate themselves to the elections of others. Not just willing, but excited to…”

Many on the Left have pushed their hand too far to retreat now. Here are the actors from Disney’s new Woke Snow White describing their new “reality”. “It’s not 1937. She’s not gonna be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.” But they’re running into a wall.

Helen Joyce (Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality ) sees these apostles of the trans movement being stymied by feminists who want no part of trans men appearing in their orbit. Thus, denying their promise to their sons that they’d be accepted. Leaving the parents with no room to backtrack. “So those people are going to be like the Japanese soldiers who were on Pacific islands and didn’t know the war was over. They’ve got to fight forever…This is another reason why this is the worst, worst, worst social contagion that we’ll ever have experienced.” 

Not every intimidation tactic is so blatant, says Joyce. Sometimes it is the power of silence in organizations and businesses, such as when a single employee becomes the parent of a trans child. Their struggle, no matter how misguided, casts a pall on everyone else who wishes to speak out. “The entire organization gets paralyzed by that one person. And it may not even be widely known at that organization that they have a trans child. But it will come out, people will have sort of said quietly, and now you can’t talk truth in front of that person, and you know you can’t, because what you’re saying is: “You as a parent have done a truly human-rights abuse level of awful thing to your own child that can not be fixed.”

It is the same for Climate extremists who are currently having the vapours because July gets very hot in North America. (Note: The percent of the U.S. to reach 95F (35C) through July 23 continues at a record low 43 percent, down from 90 percent in 1931.) They are blanketing media with claims that the current drought conditions in Arizona or California or Saskatchewan are the result of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere.

Just Stop Oil, with its wealthy trust funders and complacent scientists, has convinced media like CBC and politicians like John Kerry to join their crusade. The end goal is to win acclaim and influence for their Luddite Cause, citizenship badges for their jackets. (And an expense account for Kerry.) Critics who show that temperatures have been as high and sustained in the past— when there was no extra CO2 in the atmosphere— are dismissed as paid lobbyists for Big Oil.

Again, there seems to be no humbling these prophets of doom when confronted with contrary data. They insist that today’s heatwaves are ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change. Here’s Kerry dismissing science in favour of approval by “96 presidents and prime ministers”. Backed by gullible Wine Moms and Boy Scout progressives, they proceed on destroying the fabric of society with alienation and intimidation.

One of the drawbacks for climate extremists is the lack of first-hand experience. Unless they confuse weather with climate they have nothing approaching the experience of trans parents. The bulk of their dogma is instead pushed not by anecdotal evidence but the tsunami of media Armageddon stories, the wild-eyed Al Gore doom documentaries.

But the effect can be the same in groups where a fellow employee or colleague is the parent of a child who, after a little Greta Thunberg brainwashing, is now glueing themselves to art works or climbing hydro towers. Sympathetic to the parental connection to these deluded agents of agitprop, the people around them will self-muzzle anytime the issue comes up, afraid of a ballistic rant from the parent of the Just Stop Oil foot soldier.

Censorship is a problem. But as we now see in dealing with a small number of committed radicals, self-censorship may be far, far worse.

Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent.  https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the fifth-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His prize-listed 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

Follow Author

Bruce Dowbiggin

Hero Or Villain: How Chrystia Freeland Wears Both Masks

Published on

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

This Ernest Hemingway gem from The Sun Also Rises has gotten a workout in this time of progressive economic policy. But it’s worth repeating in the case of Justin Trudeau’s Canada where the F word is fiscal. The “gradually” part of Liberal fiscal policy has now passed. Leaving the “suddenly” of $60 B deficits with no plan for recovery

You’d think that missing your deficit estimate by $40B might have cost the finance minister Chrystia Freeland her job. But no! In Trudeaupia it was the failure of Freeland to embrace even more wack-a-doodle spending plans by the prime minister and his brain trust of former groomsmen and climate acolytes. Yes, the cratering of finances is the ideal time to award a GST holiday and $250 cheques to much of the nation. It has been noticed.

You know how Canadians are always bitter that America pays no attention to Canada? (Doug Ford appeared Tuesday on @CNN which identified him as Premier of “Ontaria”.) Well, the Collapse By The Canal in Ottawa has brought much attention to the nation. Specifically, president-elect Donald Trump, the Shecky Green of presidents, has noticed the chaos. ““The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau,” Trump wrote, using his barb that Trudeau is not a PM but a lowly governor.

Adding for good measure, that Freeland’s “behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada… She will not be missed!!!” Three exclamation points if you get that far.

Certainly no-one with a memory longer than two weeks will miss the deputy PM who gleefully wiped out the personal finances and freedoms of the Freedom Convoy truckers. Or the cabinet minister who promoted a standing O in the Commons for a former Nazi soldier. Or the senior government official who demanded legal restrictions against voters shouting at her in public.

Or the feminist who stood aside while her boss Trudeau expelled an indigenous female finance minister for allowing the RCMP to investigate PMJT’s nefarious activities on behalf of his donors. Or who… never mind. Just look up Blackface.

No, the current version of Freeland is the plucky woman who was fired on a Zoom call by a man. A woman of integrity who then sent off a stinging letter of resignation in which she revealed she was being pushed aside for a Trudeau buddy Mark Carney. A fiscal warrior who resisted going $60B in the red (she was cool at $40B, however). And, BTW, could she please deliver the government’s financial statement before she’s fired?

See how it works? She’s now a victim. “She didn’t just quit. She said ‘f**k you’ to Trudeau on the way out.” This is another case of somethingvblogger Melissa Chen calls Schrödinger’s Feminist, defined as a woman who is simultaneously a victim and empowered. Until something happens and she collapses into one of either states, whichever is politically expedient for her circumstance.

Chen expands on the notion. “A major component of the angst that characterizes much of the modern dynamics between men and women today comes down to the fact that women have demanded equal rights but also wish for preferred treatment.” A week’s viewing of The View will serve to illustrate this concept.

One of The View’s textbook cases of Schrödinger’s Feminist was Kamala Harris. The treatment of the defeated Democratic Party presidential candidate was guard-railed between her brave quest to become America’s first menstruating president and, on the other side, her victim status as a woman, the unfair way she was treated. It was enough to make Joy Behar’s head spin.

Forget that everyone in the mainstream media from pollsters to networks to Hollywood stars was all-in on Kamala as a “joyful “warrior. Even though they knew she was losing they cooked the polls the whole way for her. She was a victim, the kind Hillary Clinton meant when she said all women should be believed if they’re trying to destroy Justice Kavanaugh. Or, like serial fabulist E. Jean Carroll, waiting 30 years to bankrupt Trump and disqualify him from the presidential race, with a Law & Order script. How could a woman ever invent a story about getting trapped in a change room at Bergdorf Goodman with Trump?

Oh, Kamala  played the brave front as she blundered to her record defeat. (Still called “a perfect campaign” by her apologists.) But underpinning it all was her status as a woman, a woman for whom her followers on The View demanded a double standard. In the end, only the Schrödinger feminists in the Dems coalition stayed loyal to Harris, (Kamala Harris Did A Good Job!) explaining away her failure to tell the world that Joe Biden was koo-koo for Coco Puffs as her innate decency.

And so Freeland, too, is being gifted with Schrödinger’s Feminism. Having Justin Trudeau, the Trust Fund twit, as your antagonist sure helps. So does the Woke media corps now in Ottawa painting sympathetic portraits of your sacrifice. Your dubious resumé since donning Liberal colours is forgotten. You will receive the get out of jail free card .

Hell, even the leader of the opposition will give you a tongue bath. “Instead of taking responsibility, the prime minister told her that she should take all the blame,” Pierre Poilievre said. “The good old boys in the back room would protect themselves and make the then-finance minister take all the blame.” Trudeau, who rejects bankers in favour of poets, will take the fall.

Which summons up this nugget from F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Continue Reading

Bruce Dowbiggin

MLB’s Exploding Chequebook: Parity Is Now For Suckers

Published on

MLB has seen parity and proclaimed, “We don’t give a damn!” Okay, they didn’t say that. In fact they insist the opposite is true. They’re all about competition and smaller markets getting a shot at a title. But as the 2024 offseason spending shows, believe none of what you hear and half of what you see in MLB.

Here’s the skinny: Juan Soto‘s contract with the NY Mets — 15 years and guaranteeing $765 million, not a penny of which is deferred. Max Fried signed an eight-year, $218 million deal with the New York Yankees. Later, Nathan Eovaldi secured a three-year, $75 million contract to return to the Texas Rangers. Blake Snell (five years, $182 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Matthew Boyd (two years, $29 million with the Chicago Cubs) added to the splurge.

There’s one more thing that stands out. MLB has no trouble with the financial big boys in New York, Los Angles, Texas, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago shelling out money no small market dare pay. In the MLB cheap seats, Tampa, Pittsburgh  and Miami can’t send out quality players fast enough. But MLB is cool with that, too, as those paupers get a healthy slice of TV money.

So yes, they’re all about talking parity with their luxury tax system. But to keep the TV, digital, betting and marketing lucre flowing they have to have large media markets swinging the heaviest bats come postseason. The question is, do MLB fans care the way they used to about parity? It says here they don’t. More want to seed best-on-best more often. Which is brutal but refreshing.

Their sister leagues, married to draconian salary cap systems, are still pushing parity, even as they expand beyond recognition. In our 2004 book Money Players, legendary Boston Bruins coach/ GM Harry Sinden noted, “The problem with teams in the league, is that there were (then) 20 teams who all think they are going to  win the Stanley Cup and they all are going to share it. But only one team is going to win it. The rest are chasing a rainbow.”

And that was before the expansion Vegas Golden Knights won a Cup within five years while the third-year Seattle Kraken made a run in those same 2023 playoffs. There are currently 32 teams in the league, each chasing Sinden’s rainbow of a Stanley Cup. That means 31 cranky fan bases every year. And 31 management teams trying to avoid getting fired.

Maybe we’ve reached peak franchise level? Uh, no. Not so long as salary-capped leagues can use the dream of parity to sell more franchises. As we wrote in October of 2023, “If you believe the innuendo coming from commissioner Gary Bettman there is a steady appetite for getting a piece of the NHL operation. “The best answer I can give you is that we have continuous expressions of interest from places like Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City, Salt Lake City, but expansion isn’t on the agenda.” In the next breath Bettman was predicting that any new teams will cost “A lot, a lot.”

Deputy commissioner Bill Daly echoed Bettman’s caution about a sudden expansion but added, ”Having said that, particularly with the success of the Vegas and Seattle expansions, there are more people who want to own professional hockey teams.” Translation: If the NHL can get a billion for a new team, the heck with competitive excellence, the clock might start ticking sooner. After all, small-market Ottawa just went for $950.”

It’s not just the expansion-obsessed NHL talking more teams. MLB is looking to add franchises. Abandoned Montreal is once more getting palpitations over rumours that the league wants to return to the city that lost its Expos in 2005. Recent reports indicate that while MLB might prefer Salt Lake City and Nashville it also feels it must right the wrong left when the Expos moved to Washington DC 19 years ago.

The city needs a new ballpark to replace disastrous Olympic Stadium. They’ll also need more than Tom Brady to fund the franchise fee and operating costs. And Quebec corporate support— always transitory in the Expos years— will need to be strong. But two more MLB franchises within five years is a lock.

While the NBA is mum on going past 30 teams it has not shut the door on expansion after seeing the NHL cashing in. Neither has the cash-generating monster known as the NFL where teams currently sell for over six billion US. The NFL is eyeing Europe for its next moves.

The question that has to be asked in this is, WTF, quality of competition? The more teams in a league the lower the chances of even getting to a semifinal series let alone a championship. Fans in cities starved for a championship— the NFL’s Detroit Lions or Cleveland Browns are entering their seventh decade without a title or the Toronto Maple Leafs title-less since 1967— know how corrosive it can be.

Getting to 34, 36, maybe 40 teams makes for a short-term score for owners, but it could leave leagues with an entire strata of loser teams that no one—least of all networks, carriers and advertisers—wants to see. Generations of fans will be like Canuck supporters, going their entire lives without a championship.

In addition, as we’ve argued in our 2018 book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports and How The Free Market Can Save Them, watering down the product with a lot of teams no one wants to watch nationally or globally seems counter productive. The move away from quality toward quantity serves only the gambling industry. But since when has Gary Bettman Truly cared about quality of the product? So long as he gets to say, “We have a trade to announce” at the Draft, he’s a happy guy.

When we published Cap In Hand we proposed a system like soccer with ranked divisions using promotion and relegation to ensure competition, not parity. Most of the interviewers we spoke to were skeptical of the idea. But as MLB steams closer to economic Darwinism our proposal is looking more credible every day. Play at the level you can afford. Or just watch Ted Lasso. Your choice.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Continue Reading

Trending

X