Come Home

Five more dead and one question: Can the Afghan mission be saved?

So asks John Ibbitson in a column on the front page of this morning's Globe.

More specifically he asks, " Is the Kandahar commitment turning into a failure, or can it still be rescued?"

My answer is Yes and No.

Yes, it is a failure and No it cannot be rescued.

And please do not confuse honoring the dead with questioning the assignment.

One hundred and forty Canadians have died now on this mission and the latest deaths of four soldiers and a journalist are dreadful.

No doubt there have been a few small triumphs on the ground in Afghanistan. No doubt, the Canadian forces have become clearer and stronger.

But this engagement has been doomed from the beginning.

If, in fact, we are to leave next year, it can't be soon enough.

Graceless

Finding her beneath contempt or worthy of any attention whatsoever, I have never before commented on Nancy Grace.

Perhaps you have been spared the knowledge of this harridan.

Nancy Grace is a news anchor or plays a news anchor or is imitating a news anchor on Headline News, which shows up on channel 37 in the local cable market.

I believe she is a lawyer or was a lawyer before she became the TV arbiter of all things justice.

Night after night, Grace covers the same identical story with revolving players.

A child has been murdered/abducted/ raped.

The child is inevitably a sweet blond-haired girl, named Poppsy or Floppsy or Moppsie.

There are always grieving friends/relatives/parents.

There are always accused/suspect friends/relatives/parents.

There are always police and private investigators and correspondents or people posing as correspondents.

It's a kind of National Enquirer horror show for the chronically disengaged.

No doubt, Grace has a huge audience.

I always see Nancy Grace for about 20 seconds as I cruise through the channels.

Last night I lingered for almost 90 seconds.

That was all I could bear.

Here was her story for the night, complete with reports from the field.

Tiger Woods had one of his bimbos in his California house the night his beloved father died. He left the house to go over to the place where his father was dying. He came back and had sex with his paramour and then received the phone call that his father had died.

And like that.

This is really beyond the pale.

Leave us set aside for just a moment what you or I or the farmer next door may think of Tiger Woods.

How invasive can a cheesy broadcaster be exactly?

No wonder the poor slob is hiding out.

Why is this Grace person on the air?

Why is this kind of unsubstantiated attack allowed by the owners of this "service" to be sent out for public consumption?

This is the worst and most destructive kind of rumour-mongering.

And it poses as journalism.

Please do not write me and tell me about Tiger.

Tiger is not the point, and you and I don't know a damn thing about Tiger.

The point is how some places in journalism have become outhouses.

This woman makes Montel and Jerry Springer look like Cardinals in Rome.