Black as knight

Over the past few years of reading your paper, I've noticed that many of your writers often poke fun at or criticize Conrad Black (like in Angels and Insects, June 24). I understand that your paper has a leftist agenda, and therefore considers Black's media success a "monopoly."

But to me, it is apparent that your publication's socialist slant has caused your writers to prematurely judge one of this country's best newspapers, The National Post, just because Conrad Black owns it. Unlike the dry Globe and Mail, or many of the antiseptic daily regional papers (like the Gazette) that Black owns, the Post is a smartly written, entertaining and fun, original paper. Not preoccupied with local politics or any other agenda (despite what leftist paranoids might think), the Post always proves to be a thought-provoking read.

I doubt anyone at the Mirror has even read the Post on a regular basis. If they have, I doubt they would condemn a great paper with guilt by association!

--David Hall

Conrad Black's quest for peerage deserves little sympathy from me. I have seen the man trying to lord it over everyone for years; it's good to see Chrétien finally standing up to the bully. Never mind if Chrétien has a motive in wanting to get even with him.

The National Post practically reeks of his personal biases. He indeed seems to be a Republican transported north. The Post, his prestige daily, carries tendentious headlines like "Greenpeace denied charitable status," as though he was flashing a message of ideological victory there.

The Gazette is less biased, but it too has moved more to the right than many readers are comfort`able with. In fact, the Gazette, Ottawa Citizen and National Post rarely carry much progressive opinion anymore. They're afraid to publish anything anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-free trade, anti-west. When they do, it's a gesture of tokenism to appease many readers: David Fennario is their token leftie and they occasionally publish commentary pieces, letters and editorials that have a progressive perspective. And their stance and reporting on environmental issues and human rights is only sometimes laudable.

I hope you continue your tradition of progressive reporting and independent, insightful commentary, not to forget good articles on music, the arts and film reviews.

--Melvin Renaldo

Bourque's bogus agenda

Okay, now, let's see if I've got this damn thing straight: the coconut-brained Mayor Bourque can afford to blow $50,000 a piece on 35 full-time garbage cops to make sure we don't put our trash out on the curb in Provigo bags. And yet he can't afford to buy up the Rialto to give us a second repertory movie house?

That goes to show you how he feels about the very people whose hands he shook last fall--and what's in store for us during the next three-and-a-half years under his hakuna matata attitude toward everything other than maintaining power. Well, when you have 39 puppets at your disposal covering your worthless ass while you cut ribbons, attend five-figure cocktail parties and hop the next plane to Asia the instant your party is in doo-doo, you really don't have to give a rat's ass about the citizens.

--Robert Pariseau

Ad buster

After having faithfully avoided most TV (except for Mr. Bean and Red Green), I locked on to the Stanley Cup finals after viewing a scintillating game one.

Hence, I came under the influence of the marketing of the "beer lifestyle" as portrayed by Budweiser and Labatt Bleue ads.

It's amazing, in this age of awareness--drug and sexual--where the young are cautioned to beware of things like date rape and new drugs, that the good old standby "beer" is so heavily marketed to just that vulnerable age group.

If you watch the ads there's obviously a lot of drunkenness and sex going on. The message has to be: "Drink this stuff and you'll probably have fun and get laid" (as it always has been). Maybe beer needs to be sold with a bottle of Tylenol and a morning-after pill.

--G. Berard