Talking Books on CBC radio gives free rein to hatred of rats
This morning I listened to a train wreck of half-truth and lies and complete bias on the show "talking books" aired on CBC at 9:30 to 10:00 AM.
It will likely be re-aired this week:
Broadcast time:
Fridays at 2:00 p.m. (2:30 NT) on CBC Radio One
This is available through streaming audio on the internet. http://www.cbc.ca/talkingbooks/
The contact information for the show, after you have listened to it, is also at that webpage and at the bottom banner of the CBC site.
I called in to their audience line to give them a talking-to about how they always choose commentators with obvious bias and provide little balance. One, in particular, is really bad, and another advocated that we return to 17th-century public justice methods in order to counter - i don't know, what, maybe a distaste for cruelty? - the "rising plague" of rodent infestation. (Yes, this is the level of analysis and dialogue that was going on on this show.) I would so love to hear them air my response but because I didn't say "Love your show!" as almost every aired message concludes (therefore, do that if you leave a message!), I highly doubt they will.
Why was it on Talking Books? Because they were commentating, loosely, on Rats : Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants (Hardcover)
They repeatedly raised the topic about how rats survived the French nuclear blast tests on some polynesian atoll. Yeah, severly deformed. What would you expect of an underground animal? That it ought to never survive anything, based on its icky, unsavoury, uncivilized subterranean habitat? Yet that's what HUMANS designed for nuclear fallout shelters. It's OK for us, but not them.
And another OH! The worst one of the lot, a woman named Alexandra with a toffee-nosed accent (which may be unfair, but also she fully deserves because she chooses to speak that way), said she called Toronto Public Health about the "rat problem" in Toronto, and said she was seriously put off by them saying "well, rats have rights" AND EVERYONE LAUGHED.
PLEASE give it a listen and send in your comments - try to disagree with at least one very specific thing they said, so they know you're really listening and therefore really serious about your complaint, not just a knee-jerk response, even though knee-jerk describes perfectly the attitudes of most of the panelists, even after reading a book that should have helped them address their attitudes. On my message, I told them that rat phobia is not innate, it is TAUGHT - and they are doing specifically that. They were so … self-righteous that they probably thought in all sincerity that they'd be doing a public good by spreading this manure.
I don't have anything against reading the above book, in fact I'd like to because I have great respect for research if not always for the conclusions. But I have no respect for this unmitigated bias.
