Big Shiny Takes

Canadian media does a lot of things poorly. Its cowardice when it comes to talking about Palestine is right at the top of the list.

We’re joined by our Palestinian friend Hammam Farah (@HumHum83) and our Israeli friend Eytan Tobin (@RabbiDieHardman) to talk about how Israel, like Canada, is a fake ass genocidal settler state.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, Israel attacked Gaza recently, killing about 250 people, including dozens of children, after provoking violence at al-Aqsa Mosque. This time something feels different. People are actually taking Palestinian perspectives seriously.

But over at Postmedia, of course, it’s business as usual. We talk about two Sun columns that regurgitate the usual Hasbara talking points about how Israel is never wrong and you’re all a bunch of anti-Semites.

It is our hope that "it's complicated" begins to be seen as an unnacceptable response for news organizations that are supposed to be informing the population about what is going on in the world.

Plugs and Recs

BDS Movement

Donate to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

Donate to UNRWA

Petition for Javier Davila

Off Court

Drum Circle Jerk

The Onion - AP fires journalist at Palestinian civilians

Big Shiny Takes is a proud part of the Harbinger Media Network. Theme music is by Jack Dump.

If you like our show, give us a follow on social media @bigshinytakes, leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, or give us some money at Patreon to unlock bonus content! 

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

Abdul Malik (@socialistraptor) makes his triumphant return to the Big Shiny Takes Institute to talk about two simpletons writing in newspapers to let the public know that diversity is bad, actually.

One columnist is Intellectual Dark Web C-lister, furry enthusiast and Jon Kay podcast co-host Dr. Debra Soh, who's writing in the Globe and Mail to warn us of white genocide, coming to a university campus near you.

The other is Lawrie Macfarlane in the  Victoria Times-Colonist. We're not sure he actually exists, but if he does, man is he stupid. Macfarlane is very concerned 

Throughout it, we also name doctors, both real and fake, like Soh.

Plugs and Rec(ommendation)s

Off Court

The Hoser: Why We Write

James Harkin - Sign of the Times: Caliphate and the perils of reporting online

Taylor Lambert - The Human Cost of Climate Change

Big Shiny Takes is a proud part of the Harbinger Media Network. Theme music is by Jack Dump.

If you like our show, give us a follow on social media @bigshinytakes, leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, or give us some money at Patreon to unlock bonus content! 

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

The Big Shiny Guests keep on coming. This time we’ve got famed musician, podcaster and poster Dan Boeckner, joining us to talk about a little country called China, specifically Canadian pundits’ obsession with it.

First up is a piece in the Globe and Mail from Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, who’s very not mad about China sanctioning him.

Next up is J. Cole, not that rapper, unfortunately, but a Macdonald-Laurier Institute spook who writes about China like it’s his ex-wife trying to get full custody of the kids.

Plugs and Rec(ommendations)

Support Dan Boeckner:

Operators 

The Bottlemen

Jeremy: The definitive guide to W. Brett Wilson’s orphan wells

John Boyko: Canada is making the same mistakes in Yemen that it did in Vietnam

Vicky Mochama: Goodbye to Prince Phillip, Insult Comic

Big Shiny Takes is a proud part of the Harbinger Media Network. Theme music is by Jack Dump.

If you like our show, give us a follow on social media @bigshinytakes, leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, or give us some money at Patreon! 

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

PULL THE EMERGENCY BRAKE, IT'S TIME FOR ANOTHER EPISODE OF BIG SHINY TAKES! 

Marino, Eric and Jeremy are joined by the great Nora Loreto to review columns by two incredibly talentless hacks: Konrad Yakabuski and Kelly McParland.

Yakabuski covers Quebec in a completely addled column which is both infuriating and disorienting. He manages to jam in references to Mordecai Richler, Matt Green, Amir Attaran, The University of Ottawa, The Bosnian War, and a specific word that he seems particularly annoyed about not being allowed to say, but he doesn't seem to know what point he's trying to make in this column. It's truly terrible and possibly the only memorable thing Konrad has ever managed to do in his whole life. 

Meanwhile McParland tries to use this pandemic as a vehicle to advocate for all us young people to rely less on the government because someone was sent to the wrong address for a vaccination. It's really stupid and the whole thing really just doesn't go over well.

We take the time to talk about Brian Lilley's romantic life (yuck), professional life (also yuck) and where they overlap, We also discuss Dan Marino (no, not that Dan Marino) and how much responsibility he should take for the latest COVID wave hitting Quebec City.

Plugs and Rec(ommendations)

Take Back The Fight: Organizing Feminism for the Digital Age
By Nora Loreto

Sandy and Nora Talk Politics

Emma Jackson: the Supreme Court's Carbon Tax Ruling Is Hardly A Climate Victory

Davide Mastracci: Doug Ford has Turned The Pandemic Into A Game Show We All Lose

Evan Millar: Get Acquainted with a Scarily Underrated Gaming Handheld In "Neogeo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1"

Unrelated but still important: To the CBC Radio guy I met in the park on my walk who patiently listened to me talk about my podcast for much longer than I answered his COVID-related streeters: you better give this a listen Jason, I told you it would be a good episode. 

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

John Robson tried to write some lyrics
He was so incensed he wouldn't even hear it
The issue at hand? Cancel culture of course
He shouted so loud that his voice became hoarse

"They're coming for Seuss, the woke crowd, the leftists"
"These books are such classics, I'm left the bereft-ist"
But one simple truth escaped the columnist's glare
Nobody with a brain would actually care.

Also, a painful advertorial by Mikhaila Peterson. Be sure to not check out what she does next!

Big Shiny Takes is a proud part of the Harbinger Media Network. Theme music is by Jack Dump.

If you like our show, give us a follow on social media @bigshinytakes, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, or give us some money on Patreon! We love doing this show, and we do it for free, but a little bit of help could really go a long way for us.

Become a Patron today!
Follow us on Twitter

Recommended Reads

Nearly half of local news subscribers visit the sites they pay for less than once a month, analysis finds

https://www.poynter.org/locally/2021/nearly-half-of-local-news-subscribers-visit-the-sites-they-pay-for-less-than-once-a-month-analysis-finds/

Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging by Jodi Dean

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45184596-comrade

TrueAnon UNLOCKED! Episode 132: Norman Finkelstein Pt. 2

https://soundcloud.com/trueanonpod/norman-finkelstein-2

And Jeremy (as well as Marino!) recommend the rouge-lite Hades, out now on PC and Nintendo Switch.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

Head to patreon.com/bigshinytakes to unlock this and all of our other bonus episodes for as little as $3 a month!

We decided to unlock this bonus episode, because everyone deserves to celebrate Rush Limbaugh's death. 

Finally, a representative of a modern organization (the Catholic Church) we can trust to cover current events weighs in with a terrible, terrible column. Of course last week you may have heard that notable right-wing crank and tobacco enjoyer Rush Limbaugh died of lung cancer. Relive that moment as the boys read from Raymond De Souza's treatise/attempt to rehabilitate an awful person's reputation in the National Post.

He never really listened to Rush, and he definitely doesn't bring up any of the content from Rush's show, but he does not fail to mention that the show existed and was very popular. He doesn't say who the show was popular with.

De Souza isn't a details guy, he's more of a big picture, don't ask questions kind of guy.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

The boys are back with two trash columns. One is written by a pretentious hack desperately shoehorning disjointed allusions to ephemera rattling around his decaying brain in yet another unfocused rant ending with him shouting about climate change not being real. The other is written by an unpretentious hack who actually thinks that COVID quarantine hotels are an attack on civil liberties.

Of course we are talking about Rex Murphy and Joe Warmington - truly two of the dimmest bulbs in the malfunctioning highway diner sign that is the Canadian media landscape.

Big Shiny Takes is a proud part of the Harbinger Media Network. Theme music is by Jack Dump.

If you like our show, give us a follow on social media @bigshinytakes, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, or give us some money on Patreon! We love doing this show, and we do it for free, but a little bit of help could really go a long way for us.

Become a Patron today!
Follow us on Twitter

Recommended Reads

Roberta Lexier - Canada's NDP Should Stop Making Excuses and Find Ways to Win
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/02/canada-ndp-strategy

Jeremy Appel - Canada's Largest Meatpacking Facility is on Trial for Endangering its Workers During the Pandemic
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/02/canada-alberta-meatpacking-covid

Abdul Malik - Canada Should not host the Olympics, Ever
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/canada-should-not-host-the-olympics-ever

Bruce Livesy - The fall of Jason Kenney
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/02/08/opinion/fall-of-jason-kenney

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

Our pal Elaine Pauls (@heylaineys) joins us again to talk about Derek Sloan's donation from white supremacist douche Paul Fromm.

Former UCP bad boy Derek Fildebrandt, who was kicked out of the party after getting caught renting out his publicly-funded Edmonton apartment on AirBnB, doing a hit-and-run, and illegally hunting, to talk about how Derek Sloan did nothing wrong, or if he did do something wrong it wasn't a big deal.

Now why would a notorious neo-Nazi want to donate money to the Conservative Party?

For dessert, we talk about Barbara Kay's 4,000-word "scoop" on Jessica Mulroney's text messages and cancel culture, or some bullshit. 

Links  

PressProgress - Conservative Party of Canada Confirms Conservative MP Derek Sloan Accepted Donation from neo-Nazi

Dennis Romero - L.A. teachers strike: What they won and what they didn't in tentative deal

Akanksha Singh - The race for a COVID-19 vaccine isn't about humanity, it's about imperialism

ProPublica - What Parler Saw During the Attack on the Capitol

Aris Roussinos - The Armies of the Right

Like what you hear?
Give us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts. You can also throw us a few bucks on our Patreon to access exclusive content and maybe even appear on the show.

Follow Big Shiny Takes on Twitter or Instagram!
@bigshinytakes

Theme music courtesy of Jack Dump. 

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

New year, new theme music, new BST!

We've got a couple 2020 in review pieces that suggest maybe the hell year we're all traumatized from wasn't so bad after all. 

We start off with Never Trumper-turned-Trumper Hugh Hewitt's piece in the Washington Post, which contends that, sure, there was the whole pandemic thing, but there were also some bright spots, such as the amazing work Trump has done combatting the virus. We challenge you to name a U.S. president who has handled COVID-19 better.

Next, we go for some Canadian content from washed up Liberal partisan hack turned Conservative hack Warren Kinsella, who gives us his 10 winners and losers from the year that was. To give a preview of the list's coherence, his top 3 were the country's premiers, Doug Ford (a premier) and Brian Pallister (a premier). 

Links

Charlie Angus defends himself from the smears

Oliver Holmes and Hazem Balousha - Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers

Valerie Hopkins - Old tensions still alive in Bosnia 25 years after Dayton

Nora Loreto - Canada Is Robbing the Global South of a Pandemic Recovery

Like what you hear?
Give us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts. You can also throw us a few bucks on our Patreon to access exclusive content and maybe even appear on the show.

Follow Big Shiny Takes on Twitter or Instagram!
@bigshinytakes

Theme music courtesy of Jack Dump. 

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.

It's a Christmas miracle — a new BST episode right on schedule!

We start off with a little apertif in the form of BST favourite Barbara Kay and her review of the Queen's Gambit. It turns out, a fictional show isn't entirely accurate. But Babs says this is because women can't play chess.

Then,  special guest Clinton Hallahan (@StoicRomance) of Alberta Advantage fame tells us about right-wing Canadian YouTuber and Washington Post columnist.  J.J. McCullough, who happens to be a close friend and former roommate of his.

In his WaPo piece, J.J. tells Americans how Justin Trudeau may refuse to leave office, a la Trump, based on a lazy conflation of the Electoral College and Canadian parliamentary procedure.

Links

Emily McCullar - Texas Wedding Photographers Have Seen Some Shit

Mike Isaac & Kellen Browning - Cyberpunk 2077 Was Supposed to Be the Biggest Video Game of the Year. What Happened?

Jeremy - The Alberta Model: Who Benefits from the Alberta Government's Shift Away from Harm Reduction to Abstinence-Only Recovery

Jeremy on Alberta Advantage with Garth Mullins of Crackdown

Like what you hear?
Give us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts. You can also throw us a few bucks on our Patreon to access exclusive content and maybe even appear on the show.

Follow Big Shiny Takes on Twitter or Instagram!
@bigshinytakes

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give us a follow on Twitter and Instagram.