“When did you stop beating your wife?”

When I complain about the CBC that kind of reporting is what I’m talking about. You have to listen for it, it’s subtle, but it’s there and the bias is clear.

“Is the Monarchy an anachronism?”

When the title character of the Scottish play and his best friend are described as cleaving the Danish lines like “cannons double-cracked” that is an anachronism because the technology for double-cracking cannons didn’t exist contemporaneously with those characters.

But the Canadian monarchy currently exists. It cannot be an anachronism because it is contemporaneous. It’s crazy-making to argue the point, you get to definitional tautology that quickly. The answer is “no”, but only in the sense that the question is ridiculous.

Q: “Is the Monarchy a stylistic error in chronology?”
A: “How much scotch did you have for breakfast?”

The question frames the debate poorly (unless you hate royalty). CBC: If you want to get rid of the institution, just say so. Don’t ask if it’s a foible of timekeeping and leave dangling the implication that such “eccentricities” should be “corrected”. Asking questions like that is what salespeople do, it’s called yes-laddering, and it’s disgusting, manipulative journalism.

Ask this, it’s neutral: “Should the monarchy exist?”

Anyway, I have to stop there. It’s time for bed and I promised myself I wasn’t going to care about the news media.