If you’re like me and spent most of Sunday roasting a turkey, you might have missed this clip of hero venture capitalist and popular game show host Kevin O’Leary managing to do a thing I’m not sure I’ve ever seen on the CBC: make a guest say he’d never come back. Hooray!
Truthdig columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Chris Hedges has actually spent time at the Occupy Wall Street protests, but that doesn’t mean anything to Kevin O’Leary! O’Leary is a rich person who was once paid $5 million to not work at a company he was employed by! (The Globe & Mail) Surely he understands the protesters, who nobody can understand because they’re disorganized and what are their demands anyways, better than a journalist who’s done his research and sat down to think for five seconds about something other than a stock exchange or how to play down the fact that he came from a family of rich people in order to appear more self-made.
After O’Leary (patriotically!) calls Hedges a “left-wing nutbar” (boooo) at around the 3:20 mark, the 20-year journalism vet has the sheer audacity to suggest that he isn’t interested in being insulted. He does, however, proceed to compare the CBC unfavourably to Fox News, so that part of this episode is a wash, maybe? And then at the end of the interview, after articulating the protesters’ desire to apply laws & regulations to American banks rather than strip them away, Hedges declares that this is the “last time” he’ll be on the program. Another victory for journalism!
Kevin O’Leary should definitely continue to be paid to host a business newsmagazine on Canada’s publicly-owned national news channel!
EDIT: And you definitely shouldn’t send any messages to CBC’s ombudsman telling him otherwise!
