64. Finkleman’s Tears

Unpublished
18 April 1998

Re: “Cry me no More crocodile tears.” Does Mr. Allemang’s critique of Ken Finkleman’s work and politics signal a change in the rules of the Globe’s exchanges of opinion? When was the last time a reader was given space in this paper to refer to a Globe critic or columnist as persons “unhappy with his/her work, perplexed by his/her fame...covering his/her ass; ” as persons that have “developed a self-absorbed hectoring style that [makes] little effort to entertain [or inform] ?” Mr. Allemang’s critique illustrates well that unless you have exhausted or have no access to alternatives, “denunciation...just isn’t good enough.”
Ken Finkleman has made three brief and welcome recent forays into the world of CBC TV, a haven — much like the Globe’s Arts Section — for light entertainment that serves as civil antidotes to the bigots and hypocrites whose abilities and public worth are otherwise constantly overstated and overpresented in the same media. Why should Mr. Finkleman be “sensitive” and “open-minded” and “courageous enough” to “make a real movie about real people on the right” and other anti-intellectuals when news and cultural journalism is so good at protecting and forgiving them – and avoiding libel? More Tears is not, as Mr Allemang suggests, “television for people who don’t watch TV” but television for people and their surprisingly common and legitimate view of the world who don’t appear frequently enough on Canadian television.