I went for a long walk with a pal this morning. Not good news on the home front: His wife was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Second time in as many weeks someone has shared such bad news with me. I suppose we’re all getting older and the chances of such challenges grow with every year…

On our drive down to the water, he was playing CKNW in the background. I didn’t have the heart to ask him to change the station.  As you are aware, I gave up on NW after I was so very rudely treated by Bill Good during an interview he was conducting of local climate change liar James Hoggan. But this morning’s opening segment, I must say, was as pathetic as anything I have endured listening to by Bill. It is so very remarkable that CKNW care so little about the artificial bubble they have created. If this is what they think good radio is, maybe Rafe should just jettison NW from his resume. George Garrett should do the same and Bill Hughes, David Berner, Shell Busey and other greats should be hauled off the past masters roster…

Today’s clamouring for the Olympic fluffing button was all related to Bill’s obscene suggestion that since 9/11 we’ve given in to fear: That somehow our predilection for following the Yanks has us at $1 billion in the tank for Olympic security alone (how he connected these is beyond comprehension since it’s the least expensive security bill of the last three Olympics), and how “saddened” he was when one caller told him she was not going to ride transit for fear of a terrorist attack. This was followed by the usual stupidity about how Bill can’t understand why so many people are still down on the 2010 Games, blah, blah, blah, belch and fizzle…

What incredible buffoonery…

Maybe, Bill, it’s because your friend, the Premier of B.C., is delivering the 2010 Games on the backs of the poor, underprivileged and most needy and that some of us with a collective conscience give a damn about our freedom of speech being serrated, etc…

Think about the implied insult to the families of 3,000 lost souls by this man: Because of what happened to you, our doors are not just locked, but bolted–twice. But didn’t the vicious bastard Bin Laden have us on his ‘list’ even before we were engaged in Afghanistan?  Of course he did. Our relationship with the U.S. was enough to do that long ago, but Bill’s memory is selective. Heaven forbid, but if a 9/11 type even took place in Canada, should some other country blame us for an increase in their ‘fear factor’? What idiocy.  I have former colleagues and classmates, now in Israel, who laugh at suggestions like those Bill was making this morning. Forewarned is forearmed. “But we’ve never had an attack on Canadian soil” claimed the Vanilla Man. Please, don’t pre-curse us…

I wonder if it’s ever occurred to Bill or the geniuses that are fawning all over what will surely become an event that will leave us with an Olympic hangover of monumental proportions, what would happen to all the pie-in-the-skyers if the Skytrain was bombed or if a plane was brought down…  ”Help, Help America! F-16s?? Hell, bring in the Marines too, please!”

Not a month ago, NW did a terrific piece on how easy it was for one of their reporters to gain the easiest of access at Vancouver International to a major jetliner, not fifty feet away, AND ON THE TARMAC, AWAITING CLEARANCE NO LESS. It was a segment I was alerted to by a reader and when I heard it I thought Philip Till did a stupendous job on the morning show. But I also thought Bill did a superb job in the follow-up. However, today’s poor Vanilla Bill must have forgotten that segment since this morning he was all over the map about how we have given up our civil liberties to fear. And it was so in terms of callers: The first one echoed Bill’s absurd sentiments, the second was a woman scared out of her mind and not willing to attend events but watch from home and the third was a truck driver, whose meandering opinion had me looking at my watch after about ten seconds of his drivel… 8:48am.

So I reached over and hit another preset. News 1130, thank God…

In all seriousness, here are some realities, my friends:

1) After the progressive creep of increased terrorist threats (and attacks) over the last twenty years, we are right to be worried. Not wanting to go to the bloody Olympics isn’t living in fear, it’s intelligently working with the law of averages (it’s also watching your pocketbook, since the tickets, mostly, are for the comfortable, if not rich). Terrorists look for the biggest splash: Main events, buses, planes, trains, stadiums, etc. Of course you should be vigilant and worry. Only an idiot would cast his family’s fate into the wind–or, at the outset, wonder why…

2) The Olympic security bill has NOTHING to do with any ADDITIONAL ‘fear factor’. The basic security bill is about safeguarding the athletes, spectators, dignitaries, etc. Any additional ‘terrorist’ measures are factored in, yes, but the basic premise is no different from what it’s been, preceding 9/11. Ever heard of Munich, Bill? Security costs have risen ever since then.

3) Lord Vanilla takes PREEMPTIVE positions on climate change, where the boundaries are so much more diffuse and the issue is certainly not of the clear and present danger potential. Yet on issues of life or death, like a possible terrorist strike, he wallows in lament over less militaristic days. Incredible.

4) There is no question that we have given up some liberty to caution. We should. But instead of worrying about freedom of speech issues and the truncated right to protest during the Olympics, Bill nonsensically tacks 9/11 to an appropriate, pre-cautionary expenditure, in some feeble effort to whisk us a way to more positive mentality over the Games. Inanities abound.

All this serves to remind us is that Bill Good works for CTV, who as a result of their lead sponsorship of the Games has not covered one investigative, hard-nosed story on the Games. Not one. Their bias was paid for, in full, long ago. So any story that shows up why we should be happy, shiny people (Read: stupid and dense) about an Olympic Games that will make this province insolvent and has adversely affected our most vulnerable, is fair game.

Sad that NW would allow such poor journalistic standards to extend to them, too.