Monday digest

- Remember all the weeping and gnashing of teeth some time ago when Conrad Black was going to buy up a bunch of newspapers? If you believed all of the hue and cry back then, it was going to be the end of Canada as we then knew it, because he'd have just far too much influence over the masses with his right-wing views about the free market and the welfare state.

Fast foward ten years. Now, we have CTV, led by CEO Ivan Fecan, buying up CHUM Media. This guy now owns everything from Sympatico to dozens of radio stations to Canada's "national newspaper" to probably the largest private TV network in Canada, and he just got bigger. However, you probably haven't heard a peep from the likes of Maude Barlow about the dangers of media ownership. Why? Well, Fecan happens to be a long-time Liberal fundraiser. In other words, conservative media bosses = bad, but Trudeaupian media ownership (on a much wider scale than Black's ever was, I might add), is A-OK.

You may point to the fact that the Competition Commissioner forced the sale of five Citytv stations as part of the deal, but so what? I'm still hearing boo from the Left.

Did I also mention that Torstar has a 20% ownership stake in CTVglobemedia?

- Speaking of the mainscream press, here's a must read from former Mayor of New York City Ed Koch, a Democrat who thinks the New York Times has really gone downhill.

- Maybe I'm an intolerant jerk, a shill for Bush or both, but Rosie O'Donnell is the last person I'd want to see fill Bob Barker's shoes.