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Thursday 22 October 2009
Darryl on Rex Murphy (St. John's Telegram)
I appreciate the tip from Rotarian Ian. It looks like the St. John Telegram quoted me on a Rex Murphy article.
Blogger Darryl Wolk chimed in: "Rex Murphy does a great job with this commentary on the Alberta oilsands and the recent photo spread in National Geographic."
-Darryl
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The Telegram (St. John's)
Life & Leisure, Saturday, October 3, 2009, p. D1
The World... according to Rex
'National' commentator unleashes brand new collection of his opinions
Ashley Fitzpatrick
Maybe it was something he said on CBC's "The National" about the feud between Stephen Harper and Danny Williams.
Or perhaps it was something he wrote in the Globe and Mail on Afghanistan or Tim Hortons, on Obama or Madonna.
Whatever the topic of commentary, there are moments when Rex Murphy just gets it right - spot on.
Some of those moments are collected in his latest book "Canada and Other Matters of Opinion," copies of which will be on sale during a free Evening with Rex Murphy on Monday at Memorial University's D.F. Cook Recital Hall, School of Music, 7:30 p.m.
Murphy said moments in his work are subjective and he finds them only a handful of times in a year of work.
"Every now and then, everything connects," he said.
Those moments are jewels. Yet it is a rare commentary that gets nothing but applause.
In the Feb. 26, 2009 Point of View segment on "The National," headlined "High-Minded Hypocrisy," Murphy responded to the release of a National Geographic article on the negative environmental impact of Alberta oil projects.
The article included multiple high-quality photos, including aerial photos of the tar sands.
"What comes out of that 'necessary ugliness' is what's missing - the dignity of the person or family who found a job; the rescue of one region of the country by the prosperity of another; the smooth running of cities, manufacturing, the building of so many other necessary things. You can't take a picture of misery that didn't happen - or of hard times forestalled or mitigated," Murphy said in the television piece.
His piece got plenty of response, including this uncredited entry on the blog Let Freedom Rain (http://letfreedomrain.blogspot.com):
"Science is an inconvenience to wingnuts like Murphy. Like so many other authoritarian parents, teachers or preachers, he wants Canada to bow down in thanks to our father Alberta for all the shit it is doing to our environment."
On the CBC's website, a viewer named David Wilson posted a comment that said, "like many an over-educated and under-inspired old soak before him, our Rex indulges in highly entertaining but sentimental and ultimately vacuous rhetoric."
There were others as well.
"A brilliant commentary from Rex Murphy," Duncan Laidlaw wrote on the site. "Getting oil out of the ground in any way shape or form is dirty nasty business. Ask anyone who has ever worked on a rig."
Blogger Darryl Wolk chimed in: "Rex Murphy does a great job with this commentary on the Alberta oilsands and the recent photo spread in National Geographic."
Such is the life of the high-profile columnist - full of highs and the lows.
Murphy's new collection of commentaries follows his 2005 release, "Points of View."
The new book has commentaries separated into subtopics with titles such as "Obama Rising," "The Evil That Men Do," "The Canadian Identity" and "Newfoundland."
"Canada and Other Matters of Opinion" has an introduction by Murphy, as well as scattered grey-boxed additional thoughts to various column writings. (Read the book to find out what Murphy considers as "absolute proof that 'Never Again' was never a resolution - just a convenient slogan.")
While he is known to tell it like it is, albeit with a more creative use of language than most, Murphy said in a phone interview with The Telegram recently that he doesn't want anyone to take the commentary too seriously.
"I hope it's mildly amusing, and maybe it catches people's interest," he said.
The collection is a thought-provoking read, but also offers an opportunity to recall moments in time.
"We're in such a speeded-up age," Murphy explained. "Who remembers now when Hillary was so far in advance and Obama was a longshot?"
"We hop and skip across the most recent things, (but reflection) can serve some purpose and we can see some strands develop."
The title, "Canada and Other Matters of Opinion," reflects his own feeling about the country - that the Canadian ideal, the "common themes" and "strings" that tie the country together, are becoming harder to identify.
"I find that's woefully underarticulated," he said.
For example, Murphy said when then-prime minister Jean Chretien made the decision not to send Canadian troops to Iraq, the PM passed up an opportunity to talk about the country's history or its shared ideals.
"He missed what, I thought, was a rather magnificent occasion," Murphy said, "not for just announcing the decision, but for integrating it into the idea of the overall contract or compact that we have evolved. We drift forward and we don't tie the pieces together."
But Murphy makes those connections and attempts to provide context, asking people to consider what the loss of the East Coast outports or the rural family farm in Western Canada will mean to the country as a whole.
They are his opinions. But maybe they will spark a larger debate, a growth of the collective consciousness of a country.
Or maybe they'll just get him called a "wingnut" one more time.
afitzpatrick@thetelegram.com
© 2009 The Telegram (St. John's). All rights reserved.
