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Bruce Dowbiggin

A-A-Ron: Sacked For Defying The Needle Gang

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9 minute read

“I realize I’m in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now. So, before my final nail gets put in my cancel-culture casket, I think I would like to set the record straight on so many of the blatant lies that are out there about myself.” —Aaron Rodgers

There are two popular media takes about Aaron Rodgers not taking Joe Biden’s favourite vaccines for Covid-19. The first— and easiest to find agreement— is that Rodgers was less than candid about his unique approach to combatting Covid-19 under the NFL protocols made up last year— and still unreasonably clinging to the game.

Rodgers says the Packers knew his vaccination status. “I have followed every single protocol to a T… My daily routine is the routine of an unvaccinated person.” But to those who’ve seen NBA stars like Kyrie Irving and Andrew Wiggins publicly declare their opposition to getting jabbed, Rodgers kept his unique position on the down-low.

It seems that, after watching the NBA dudes getting slammed by FauciLand, he preferred to soft-pedal his opinions. Plus there were all his sponsors. Not good optics.

He clearly has opinions to voice. “They’re purely trying to out and shame people,” he told former teammates Pat McAfee and A.J. Hawk. “Like needing to wear a mask at a podium when every person in the room is vaccinated and wearing a mask – makes no sense to me.

“If you got vaccinated to protect yourself from a virus I don’t have as an unvaccinated individual then why are you worried about anything I could give you?” Nice try. In a game governed by rules, the liberal media mob feels Rodgers tried to add a fifth down or a ten-point TD. Rodgers should have done like Irving et al. and let these sincere objections rip rather than get exposed later.

The second take on Rodgers (engaged to actress Shailene Woodley, who prides herself on making her own medicines) is that he consulted popular podcast host Joe Rogan about alternative therapies when he learned he had an allergy to something in the mRNA vaccines. (Rodgers conversion to alternative lifestyles by his significant other is reminiscent of Colin Kaepernick— another Bay Area resident—going full BLM after being indoctrinated into Woke World by the new woman in his life.)

The Rogan consult is the take getting him most of the grief and caused his healthcare sponsor to drop him as a spokesman. As Matt Walsh tweeted, “The sports media are far, far angrier at Aaron Rodgers for not getting vaccinated than Deshaun Watson for sexually assaulting dozens of women, or Henry Ruggs for driving 156 mph while drunk and killing someone.”

For the Media Party, who demand obeisance to Woke narratives about masks, lockdowns, single-, double-, triple-xaxxing and crushing scientific inquiry, consulting a standup comedian and former MMA figure is off-script. They will countenance late-night (formerly) comedy show hosts talking Covid. But dissent? Science, to them, is carved in stone. Rogan is a poison.

Rogan, however, is curious about the science around a virus that has stumped the clever folks in white coats. He asks questions. His podcasts go into depth (often two-hours plus) with people who have credentials or are simply quoting public research. He doesn’t pretend to be an expert. He simply—no better way to say it— speaks his truth and reads the material.

This unconventionality represents a mortal threat to people who brought you Covid: The Musical! It would be no exaggeration that the millions in Rogan’s audience for his podcasts— and a string of alternative guests— has thrown shade on the litany of false narratives generated by the WHO, CDC, Health Canada  and their slappies in the press. Who react with anger when their mistakes are pointed out.

But Rogan is no Q-Anon phantom. Along with Russell Brand, Ricky Gervais and, increasingly, Bill Maher these alt-voices are relentless in debunking PCR tests, mask mandates, etc. A public exhausted by official propaganda about magic vaccines— and the media’s willing acceptance of corrupt science— is turning to non-Hollywood personalities for guidance.

While Joe Biden’s message pushed out by these sources is summed as “Comply!”, the alt-hosts are more like Maher.  “I know some people seem to not want to give up on the wonderful pandemic, but you know what? It’s over… You shouldn’t have to wear masks…vaxx, mask, pick one! You can’t make me mask if I’ve had the vaxx… the red states are a joy and the blue states are a pain in the ass.”

The results of the censorship have seen progressive cable-news media’s ratings collapse by up to 68 percent (CNN) in primetime. And the thrashing in last week’s off-year elections. But what does that say about Wolf Blitzer’s feelings? Or Rachel Maddow’s deeply felt conspiracy blockbusters on MSNBC?

Funny you should ask about Rachel and credibility. Last week the DOJ charged a Russian with lying about his role in the RussiaGate investigation of Donald Trump. That would be the same RussiaGate investigation Maddow sold— and still sells— nightly as fact to her viewers for four years.

The criminal charge against Igor Danchenko makes clear that the entire Russia/ Trump investigation (which paralyzed his presidency) was generated by the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign as a dirty tricks op. Primary sources were invented, laundered to a former spy, disseminated by compliant media such as Maddow and used by the FBI to launch the failed Mueller Investigation into Trump’s activities.

Despite the evidence generated by the DOJ Maddow refused to admit she pushed a loser, citing more dark conspiracies on the right. Leading independent journalist Matt Taibbi— who called the story “a “sizable boil on the face of American journalism”— to excoriate the MSNBC darling. ”Whatever the category below ‘disgraced journalist’ is, she entered it with gusto with last night’s performance,” Taibbi wrote. “Every reporter who touched that allegation should be ashamed, and Rachel is at the front of that huge crowd.”

So if you’re looking for why Aaron Rodgers might have looked elsewhere for information on Covid-19 check out the carcass of disgraced establishment healthcare and the willing wind therapists who peddled it. And who now want to bury Rodgers for going off script.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand has been nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan is called InExact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on 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.

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2025 Federal Election

How Canada’s Mainstream Media Lost the Public Trust

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Breaking: CBC News admits that host Rosemary Barton was wrong on April 16 when she said “remains of indigenous children” have been discovered.

Call it the Panic Election. From The Handmaid’s Tale to Quebec alienation to plastic straws, the dynamic is citizens being stampeded in a brief six weeks by Big Brother. (There’s no Big Sister. That would mess with the narrative.) Prompting Covid Part Deux from the Laurentian media scolds.

Nowhere is this panic more keen than among aging Boomers who’ve pronounced themselves willing to ignore a decade of Justin Trudeau’s clumsy, unethical and sometimes criminal behaviour in the wake of Big Bad Trump. Even the threat of losing the country’s AAA credit rating can’t sway them from full-throated panic about being the 51st state.

The 51st state gambit is the window dressing. The real Trump panic is over him exposing the inadequacies of a Canadian society penetrated by China, dominated by globalist fanatics and more indebted every day. Specifically, Trump labelled Canadians defence dead-beats and entitled snobs who’d be crazy not to join the U.S. The insulting Trump framing has been a lifeline to those most recently in office— Liberals— to point at the Big Bad Wolf outside the door rather than the Frozen Venezuela inside its walls.

Integral to this panic is the role of Canada’s legacy media, a self-serving caste saved from bankruptcy (for now) by generous wads of public money. The 416/613 bubble ponies operate as if it were still 1985, not 2025. They’ve managed to preserve their status while society changed around them. For instance, CBC’s flagship At Issue panel features three people from Toronto and a fourth from Montreal.

It has worked perfectly in Boomer Canada. Until this past week, when the media guardians finally lost the plot. The combination of TV panel hubris and the incompetence of the Elections Commission exposed an industry more interesting in protecting its own turf than protecting the truth.

The meltdown was the notion that conservative social media— with its intrusive reporters and tabloid tactics— had no place in their sandbox. This hissy fit came after Wednesday’s French debate. Members of Rebel News, True North and other outfits dominated the party leaders’ scrums with obtrusive questions about Mark Carney’s opinions on same-sex sports and what constitutes a woman— questions the French moderator had neglected to ask.

For legacy reporters and hosts who take it as given that they be allowed the front pew this was an affront to their status.  As purveyors of the one true political religion the talking heads on CBC, CTV and Global began speaking of “so-called journalists” and “far-right” intruders elbowing into their territory. Their resentment was all-consuming.

This resentment spilled into Debate Night Two when a shouting match ensued in the press room. A CBC source claimed (incorrectly) that Rebel Media leader Ezra Levant had been barred from the press room. A writer from the Hill Times screamed at members of their raucous rivals. The carefully chose panelists suggested that these outfits were funded by dark right-wing sources.

Before the debate had ended Elections Commission organizers— reportedly goaded by the Liberals— called off the post-debate scrum citing “safety” issues that seemingly included a Rebel reporter conducting a hostile walking interview with a furious Liberal official. This unleashed another torrent of Media Party vitriol about its position as the keepers of Canadian journalism.

In a show of irony, these complaints about right-wing misinformation came from people whose livelihood is dependent on Liberal slush funds or whose organizations have accepted government funds to stave off bankruptcy or whose union is an active shill for non-Conservative parties. The conflicts are never mentioned in the unctuous festival of privilege.

What makes this rearguard action against new media risible was the 2024 U.S. election where Donald Trump acknowledged the new day and rode the support of non-traditional media back to the presidency. His shunning of the legacy networks and hallowed print brands heralded a new reality in American elections. Poilievre has struggled to find this community in Canada, but for those with eyes it remains the future of disseminating political thought.

A perfect example of alternative media scooping the tenured mob on Parliament Hill has been the sterling work on China by Sam Cooper, a former Global employee who has independently demonstrated the ties between Chinese criminal gangs and the Canadian political structure going back to the 1980s. Working with others outside the grid he’s shown the scandal of a Liberal candidate urging Chinese Canadian voters to reap a bounty for turning his Conservative opponent to the Chinese Communist Party. A disgrace that Carney has forgiven.

Predictably Cooper’s work and the independent story by two retired RCMP investigators who implicated nine Liberal cabinet members in compliance with the Chinese communists has gotten the ‘tish-tish” from the Laurentian elites. Like the Democrats who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story to save his father in the dying days of the 2020 U.S. election the poodle media hope to delay the truths about China long enough to get the compliant Carney over the finish line.

For contrast to how it was— and could be— one only had to witness the moderator performance of journalist Steve Paikin of TVO. Largely unknown outside Ontario, Paikin overcame the skepticism of Westerners by playing it straight down the middle. Such was his honest-broker performance that Poilievre was heard telling him after the debate that he had no idea how Paikin might vote. (Ed. note: Paikin is a former colleague and longtime friend.) In other words, it’s still possible.

It’s a cliché that this election is a hinge point for Canada. Will it face itself in the mirror or indulge in more denialism about its true self? No wonder unaffiliated journalists joke that their stories today will be the lead on mainstream media in three months. Carney has promised to continue bribing the mainstream media, but their day is done. It’s simply a matter of fixing a date for the next panic.

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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Is HNIC Ready For The Winnipeg Jets To Be Canada’s Heroes?

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It’s fair to say everyone in hockey wanted the Winnipeg Jets back in the NHL. They became everyone’s darlings in 2011 when the Atlanta Thrashers, the league’s second stab at a franchise in Georgia, were sold to Canadian interests including businessman David Thomson. (Ed.: Gary Bettman’s try number three in Atlanta is upcoming.).

Yes, the market is tiny. Yes, the arena is too small. Yes, Thomson’s wealth is holding back a sea of inevitability. But sentimentalists remembering the Bobby Hull WHA Jets and the Dale Hawerchuk NHL Jets threw aside their skepticism to welcome back the Jets. The throwback uniforms with their hints at Canada’s air force past were an understated nod to their modest pretensions. It was a perfect story.

The  question now, however, is will the same folks get dewey-eyed about the Jets if they become the first Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup since (checks his cards) Montreal and Patrick Roy did it in 1993. It would be helpful in this election year if something were to bind a nation torn apart by politics. The Gordie Howe Elbows Up analogy is more than shopworn, and Terry Fox can only be resurrected so often. So a Cup win might be a welcome salve.

But the approved script has long dictated that the Canadian team to break the schneid should be one of the glamour twins of the NHL’s Canadian content, the Edmonton Oilers or the (gulp) Toronto Maple Leafs. The Oilers and their superstar Connor McDavid barely lost out last spring to Florida while the Leafs, laden with superstars like Auston Matthews and William Nylander, are overdue for a long playoff run.

Hockey Night In Canada positively pants for the chance to gush over these two squads each week. When was the last time Toronto played an afternoon game so HNIC could showcase the Jets? Like, never. Same for the Oilers, who with their glittering stars like McDavid Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent Hopkins are the primary tenants of the doubleheader slot, followed by Calgary. Winnipeg? We’ll get to them.

But there’s going to be no ignoring them in the spring of 2025. The Jets in the northern outpost in Manitoba were the top team in the entire league in 2024-25. They’ll comfortably win the Presidents Cup as the No. 1 squad and have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. They have the league’s best goalie in Connor Hellebuyck (an American) and a stable of top scorers led by Kyle Connor and Mark Schiefele. Because Winnipeg is on a lot of No Trade lists, they have built themselves through the draft and thrifty budgeting.

But will the same people who swooned over the Jets in 2011 now find them as adorable if they ruin the Stanley Cup plot lines of the Oilers, Leafs and Ottawa Senators? Will the fans of Canadian teams in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal not making the postseason take the Jets to their hearts or will they be as phoney as the Mike Myers commercials for the Liberals?

In addition, the Jets will be swamped by national media should they proceed through the playoffs. It’s one thing to carry the expectations of Winnipeg and Manitoba. It’s another to foot the bill for a hockey crazy county. We remember Vancouver’s GM Mike Gillis during the Canucks 2011 Cup run bemoaning the late arrivers of the press trying to critique his team as they made their way through the playoffs.

It will be no picnic for the Jets, however strong they’ve been in the regular season. No one was gunning for them as they might for the Oilers or Leafs. They will now get their opponents’ best game night after night. Hellebuyck has been a top three goalie in the NHL for a while, winning the Vezina Trophy, but his playoff performance hasn’t matched that of his regular-season version.

Already the injury bug that sidelines so many Cup dreams is biting at the Jets. Nikolaj Ehlers collided with a linesman in Saturday’s OT win in Chicago. Defenceman Dylan Samberg is also questionable after stopping a McDavid slap shot with his leg. A rash of injuries has ended the run of many a worthy Cup aspirant in the past. Can Winnipeg’s depth sustain the churn of seven weeks of all-out hockey?

As always for the small-market Jets time is of the essence. Keeping this core together is difficult with large markets lusting after your players. With the NHL salary cap going up it remains a chore to keep their top players. Schiefele and Hellebuyck are tied up longterm, but 40-goal man Connor is a UFA after next season while Ehlers is not signed after this season. Young Cole Perfetti will be an RFA in 2026. Etc.

So how much do Canadians love the Jets if they sneak in and steal the hero role by winning a Canadian Cup? Lets see Ron MacLean pun his way through that one.

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. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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