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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 Orono Weekly Times - 5 Politically Speaking by Bill Stockwell This is the time of the year that most Canadians settle in to watch the NHL playoffs. Now, if you are a true blue hockey fan you make the commitment. The commitment is that every night, around seven or eight p.m., you turn on the television set and you watch hockey. Now, should you find the outcome of these games not totally agreeing with your picks in the office or family hockey pool, you can do what I do and start grading the commercials that are shown at every break. Some of them are tacky, some are humorous, and some are downright brilliant. My award for the best of the best this year is the TD Bank`s presentation that shows two old guys (about my age) sitting outside a TD Bank reminiscing on how good things were years ago. I can relate to that. Everything was better then. No pizza deliveries, no on-line banking, no mortgages arranged over the phone. "The only thing that was delivered to your home was milk," says one, "and that was good because you didn`t have to go out and get it." Brilliant. I think you do reach a certain age when you find that keeping up with the latest electronic gadgets, shifting morals, cultural decline, and politically correct thoughts has become just too much. That`s the time you find yourself saying things like, " When I was a kid..." Well, I`ll admit that I liked it a lot better when you bought the daily newspaper to keep up with news, not to be told how you should be thinking on any given subject. There was an editorial page where the people who owned the paper gave you their learned opinion on any given subject. The rest of the paper was news. Just news. Like Joe Friday said on Dragnet, "Just the facts, ma`m." ( I know that some of you don`t know who Joe Friday was, so I would suggest you ask anybody over sixty-five). `Back in those days, it was easy to keep score as to where everyone was coming from. In Southern Ontario if you were a Liberal you bought the Toronto Star. If you were a Conservative you bought the Toronto Telegram. Today, it doesn`t really matter what daily paper you buy, it`s all coming from the same wire service, so you really don`t get a second opinion on anything. What makes it worse is that our television networks are just the same. Same stories, same political slants. A recent incident involving Ontario Cabinet Minister Michael Bryant drove this home. Bryant, while delivering a speech at the Canadian Club in Toronto on the downturn in the Ontario economy, entered into a minefield when he spoke of governments having to sort out the winners from the losers when it comes to private sector corporations to be propped up with taxpayers' money. Bryant went on to say, "It is indisputable that the state has to play the primary role in the economic recovery." That`s what I find amusing about the liberal mind. Anything that supports their thinking is "indisputable." Like Global warming being indisputable. Whoops, I mean Climate Change. I forgot they changed the name. ( I wonder why they did that?) Needless to say, Bryant's speech went over like a lead balloon. But, worry not, the Toronto Star weighed in a few days later giving cover to Minister Bryant in an editorial that supported the thought that Big Brother knows best. The Star said that Bryant meant "that, whereas Ronald Reagan thought government was the problem, today`s political leaders see it as the solution." Thank goodness that not all the political leaders think it`s okay to keep certain private corporations in business with your and my tax dollars. At any rate, it seems that the mainstream media have become players rather than reporters. It`s not bad enough that our newspaper, radio, and television political pundits are all singing from the same hymnbook, over the past few years the print giants have moved into the smaller STOCKWELL see page 7 Rachael Harris pulling the pulling the ounce of pulling power from her lawn mower at Sunday's Lawn Tractor Pull at the Orono Flea Market at the Orono Fairgrounds.