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Whitest Stars
Toronto Sun ^ | July 3, 2003 | Peter Worthington

Posted on 07/03/2003 8:36:06 PM PDT by Clive

If the Toronto Star thought its front page "expose" of the Toronto Blue Jays as "the whitest team in baseball" would be a one-shot wonder, they'd better think again.

The city is still steaming.

And rightly so.

Toronto's pesky giveaway publication, Toronto Free Press, through its canadafreepress.com Web site, was quickest off the mark by e-mailing head shots of some 97 Toronto Star editorial staff, which supports the publication's contention that the Star is "the whitest in the newspaper industry."

TFP publisher Judi McLeod said she got the photos from the Star's Web site and e-mailed them to other publications, "and we'll run them ourselves in the next edition." TFP publishes every two weeks.

Does that preponderance of white faces make the Star a racist newspaper, as it implies the Blue Jays management is by having the fewest players of Latino or black origin?

The Star has even implied that because the Jays have no players of Asian extraction, it is somehow reprehensible since Toronto prides itself in being a culturally diverse city.

If it were me, I'd not focus on the Star's editorial writers for the accident of their birth of being white, but on the Star's board of directors, officers and management who, but for one, are Caucasian as far as one can tell:

John Evans, Catherine Atkinson Murray, Paul Cantor, J. Murray Cockburn, Martin Connell, Christina Gold, Campbell Harvey, Spencer Lanthier, Robert Pritchard, Lance Primis, Michael Spence, Martin Thall, Ruth Anne Winter, B.Neill Clark, Sarabjit Marwah, Ron Osborne.

As well, publisher John Honderich, Michael Goldbloom, Bob Hepburn, Wayne Clifton, Glenn Simmonds, Victor Kruklis, Edward MacLeod, Jim Fealy and Bradley Henderson, whose names appear on the paper's masthead as managers, are hardly a diverse racial group.

The same observation could be made at all Toronto's newspapers -- but only the Star is pathologically obsessed, or ideologically consumed, with racial profiling.

They've hurled racial accusations at the police, causing mischief in the community, and then boasted of a "public service" Michener award for their witch-hunt.

Editorially, the National Post has lashed out at the Star's ludicrous allegations and innuendo of racism against the Blue Jays -- a smear job (im)pure and simple.

Says the Post: "Embarrassed by the reality that blacks commit a vastly disproportionate share of Toronto's crimes, the newspaper's editors blame not the crooks, but rather the cops who apprehend them."

Precisely.

This mischief, if not outright malice in the Star's "expose" of the "white Blue Jays," is so out of line that it's been a boomerang for the newspaper.

It also strips the camouflage from the Star's prejudicial infatuation with exposing what it thinks are examples of racism.

Next, one supposes, they will accuse the Toronto Maple Leafs of racism because the team is predominantly white.

It's undoubtedly coincidence that the Blue Jays have been in something of a nosedive ever since the Star's implications of racism, despite their clubhouse being the most harmonious in years.

But the likes of Blue Jays "minorities" like Carlos Delgado and Vernon Wells are stinking mad at the Star's rubbish -- as are readers of the Star who've filled the letters page with criticism.

The superficial reason "why" the Star saw fit to print the errant nonsense of "the whitest team in baseball," is that it'll do anything to sell papers.

In this case, the reverse is more likely. The Star deserves to lose readers. Most of our media fight racism, and it's depressing when a rival indulges in it -- as the Star even does when it panders to minorities.

If the Star truly thinks the Blue Jays should reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of Toronto, the continent's most culturally diverse city, one might suppose their own management would reflect this concern, as well as those it hires as writers.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 07/03/2003 8:36:06 PM PDT by Clive
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To: Great Dane; liliana; Alberta's Child; Entropy Squared; Rightwing Canuck; Loyalist; canuckwest; ...
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2 posted on 07/03/2003 8:37:01 PM PDT by Clive
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To: Clive
Race racketeering.
3 posted on 07/03/2003 8:37:54 PM PDT by sheik yerbouty
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To: Clive
I love the smell of hypocrisy aflame.
4 posted on 07/03/2003 9:29:15 PM PDT by gcruse (There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women[.] --Margaret Thatcher)
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To: Clive
Most sports "journalists" are water-carriers for liberalism and are always looking for the race or discrimination angle on every issue. I heard Dan Lebetard of ESPN interviewing some Black civil rights person about Tiger Woods a few years back and actually asked this person when Woods was going to get involved in civil rights issues. As if because Woods is of a certain amount of recent African extraction, it is incumbent on him as a famous "Black" athlete to get involved in "civil rights" issues as deemed important by a yutz like Lebetard. You just want to get a big club and start pounding these leftist clowns until they quit writing their stupid agitating scribblings and get a decent job.
5 posted on 07/04/2003 1:45:39 AM PDT by driftless ( For life-long happiness, learn how to play the accordion.)
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To: rdb3; mhking
ping
6 posted on 07/04/2003 2:14:57 AM PDT by Cacique
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To: Clive
"...one might suppose their own management would reflect this concern, as well as those it hires as writers."

Liberalism = Do As I Say, Not As I Do

PS - I know a reporter in NYC who is out of work and might be a good "fit" for The Toronto Star.

7 posted on 07/04/2003 2:24:24 AM PDT by NewLand
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To: Clive
Canadians outside Toronto are amazed by the fact that the Star outsells both the Post and Globe in Toronto. Nobody in the Rest of Canada reads that red rag.

I think Toronto should separate from Canada...and take Quebec with it!

;^)
8 posted on 07/04/2003 6:27:05 AM PDT by headsonpikes
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To: Clive
Just joking, Clive!

But only just. ;^)
9 posted on 07/04/2003 7:05:38 AM PDT by headsonpikes
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To: driftless
Most sports "journalists" are water-carriers for liberalism and are always looking for the race or discrimination angle on every issue.

That would explain Mitch Albom. I've actually been able to listen to his show since he's been gone for the past couple of weeks.

10 posted on 07/04/2003 7:10:22 AM PDT by FrdmLvr ("No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper.)
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To: driftless
Most sports "journalists" are water-carriers for liberalism and are always looking for the race or discrimination angle on every issue.

Sportswriters across the country are very creative when it comes to pointing out potentially divisive scenarios. In fact "they" are part of the problem as anger is driven by suggestion more than reality often.

These guys need controversy to sell. It's like liberals, socialists and unions using class anger to motivate votes. It's another form of deception for gain.

11 posted on 07/04/2003 7:41:22 AM PDT by alrea
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