Tuesday, November 29, 2005

No Confidence

These are some things that pissed me off in the coverage of this whole thing:

CBC/Peter Mansbridge- Well, I don't suppose anyone could claim it was a surprise, so why was the CBC so unprepared? I watched their coverage last night and this morning and it sucked both times.

Last night, someone should have told Peter Mansbridge to shut the %&#*%$ up so that we could hear what was going on in the back ground. Perhaps he didn't realize that we didn't all tune in to hear what he had to say, but rather to watch the proceedings. And then, this morning, they totally flubbed the announcing of the limos arriving at Rideau Hall.

The Canadian Reform Alliance Party/Stephen Harper- He has had over a year since the last election to learn French. Why didn't he? In his speeches last night and this morning he didn't say more than a phrase in French. He'd be talking, then he'd say a phrase in French, there would be that second of transition when the translator audio cuts in, and he'd already be back to English. I don't see why it's so hard to speak French when you are working from notes that someone else has written and you've been coached on the pronunciation. Is he that stupid that his handlers can't even train him to phonetically pronounce a whole sentence or two in another language.
His speaking skills are really quite bad. He says something and then looks around in that skittish way, as if he's expecting people to throw stuff at him, which would be understandable if I was in the audience, but he was speaking to his own MPs.

Awkward Arm Raises- John Stewart had a bit about this the other night and he's so right. The awkward arm raise is so painful to watch. If I was the leader of any of those parties, I'd ban them.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

njjeeebk. that's a good one.

the new cbc reality: no staff. I was listening to the report on the radio last night (no tv, and it let me go shopping while hearing don newman blather on in my ear). they were so cheap that the didn't hire a translator. paul martin's horrid speech to his caucus, every time he slipped into french, had newman jump in and explain that the government has just fallen, etc, until it went back into english. pitiful.

Jennifer said...

Watching the TV version with the translators was a bit painful too, a lot of the time they'd say the same thing in English and in French. So the translators are stumbling over what they are saying and you just want to yell the whole thing out because you just heard it in English.
I didn't realize that the CBC had to cut so much staff. Perhaps they could have fired Newman and/or Mansbridge and gotten some cheaper, younger, no-name hosts and then they'd have been able to pay their tech and translation staff.
On the other hand if I was the CBC staff, I'd make it my mission to have "technical difficulties" every time the person responsible for the money shortage tried to give a speech.