SHUT
THE HELL UP, REX MURPHY (2008)
On Mar. 29, lights were dimmed in cities all around the
world, as part of Earth Hour, a voluntary global blackout
to raise awareness about the environment and energy
consumption. Province-wide, power consumption dropped by
two percent, according to BC Hydro. Locally, North
Vancouver was BC’s top power saver, at 7 percent. We saved
a total of 125 megawatts. That’s not an insignificant
amount, but the event was arguably more about creating
awareness than corralling electrons.
Predictably,
Canadian commentator Rex Murphy looked onto the mass
switching-off and saw sickness: “the contagion of
ostentatious and cost-free do-goodism.” Sounds catching. In
the pages of The
Globe and Mail, he
described Earth Hour as “nothing more than a pretentious,
hollow, vain and exhibitionistic bout of hyperpublicized
moral preening.” Come on, Thesaurus Rex, tell us what you
really think.
For years, Canada’s all-purpose pundit has been given a
bully pulpit on CBC Radio, CBC Television and
The
Globe and Mail. As host
of Cross Country Checkup, he regularly guides the
discussion and defines the boundaries of acceptable debate
for callers. If you have the whole nation as a captive
audience, in both broadcast and print, you might be
expected to occasionally reflect the majority’s soft
socialism and respect for peacekeeping. But over and over,
Murphy insists we’re a clutch of Bush-bashing crybabies,
who fail to recognize our moral burden as junior partners
in the war on terror. We’re fiddle with eco-frills like the
Kyoto Protocol while Islamofascists and various tinted
types plot our annihilation. We just don’t get it.
Of
course, Murphy’s point of view isn’t much more reactionary
than other high-profile Canadian commentators. It’s just
that he’s the most visible apologist for Empire. Consider
his endorsement of Canadian participation in Star Wars, in
a 2003 Globe
and Mail editorial:
“The rogue state and the stateless terrorist, with their
limited arsenals, are the enemy now. Against such an enemy,
the notion of intercepting and destroying an incoming
missile with an outgoing one has all the charm of
simplicity.” Of course, missiles are useless against box
cutters and suitcase bombs, or any other of Rex’s favourite
frights. He concludes that “the era of the threat of
mutually assured destruction, the madness that kept the
world sane, is past.” Sure it is - if you live and write on
Bizarro World.
Isn’t it
time for Newfoundland’s wordiest export to put a sock in
it?
Whether
he’s assailing Nelson Mandela for his remarks about US
imperialism, or taking a kick at former UN head Kofi Annan,
Murphy’s little coracle of commentary consistently lists to
the far right. In 2004, he closed one of his CBC Newsworld
“Point of View” pieces with this stunner: “A lot of people
who think George Bush is the stupid party ought to visit a
mirror.” That’s probably a record number of single syllable
words in a Murphy sentence. It also shows up his schoolyard
depth of thought, once stripped of its fifty-dollar words.
So
what’s up with the guy’s flag-waving for a foreign power,
and why has he been given such a wide forum? Perhaps
there’s a clue in a noun you’ll never hear from Murphy:
“comprador.” The Concise Oxford defines a comprador as the
“chief native servant in a European house of business.”
“Comprador class” was a nineteenth century colonial term
used to describe a local elite that served the interests of
a foreign business class. The comprador class acted as
intermediaries, presenting the aims of the foreign
interests to the local population in a positive light.
On the
plus side, Rex’s eccentric writing and speaking style has
made him a perennial target for Canadian satirists. CBC’s
This Hour has 22 Minutes has done a few send-ups of the
man, but they’ve been mostly toothless, with the exception
of Colin Mochrie’s savage impression as “Max Pointy.” In
one routine, Pointy confronted his inspiration with a
microphone, unleashing a torrent of Newfie-inflected
nonsense. A silent Murphy looked none too comfortable in
witnessing his funhouse reflection.
And although I’m not a big fan of Canadian comic Tom Green,
I appreciate his take on Canada’s premier squawker. In
fact, Green named his parrot after Murphy. He's
struggling," Green ranted in his blog, "struggling to prove
his worth in a world that has pretty much looked him over,
got bored, and moved on.” (He meant Rex Murphy the pundit,
not Rex Murphy the parrot.)
Newfoundland is notable for its output of talented comics.
Could it be that Murphy is less a prose writer than a
performance artist, pulling Andy Kauffman-style mind games
on his audience? Is he tipping us off when he writes about
a “pretentious, hollow, vain and exhibitionistic bout of
hyperpublicized moral preening”?
Geoff Olson
