Montreal media mediocrity

Just watched 'Entertainment Spotlight', CTV lifestyle and showbiz program featuring Mose Persico, the smarmy master of malapropism. It is fun to watch him suck up to celebs in media junkets, and try to make Hollywood dreck sound profound and insightful. Today he was in Hawaii interviewing the stars of 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall', but there was a funny moment when 'Bill Hader' (identified on the screen as 'Bill Nader'- good one, Mose) started subtly mocking the obviousness of his questions. And at the end of an interview he often tells the star, as if it was some sort of meangingful tete-a-tete, and his opinion actually mattered within the context of a junket, "And I wish you continued success". But seriously, Mose obviously knows next to nothing about cinema and culture, often mixing up actors and movie titles, or referring to Marie Antoinette as a 'Venetian beauty', or saying 18th century when he means 1800's, etc. etc. And only once did I ever hear him pan a movie. His inane banter with Brit airhead co-host Orla Johannes also stretches the limits of credulity. But watching his show is the highlight of my workday, and he beats local CBC radio host Dave Bronstetter, whose folksiness and weird, Montreal-Irish accent (earlier is pronounced 'eardier') have me swearing out loud at my work desk, much to the chagrin of my coworkers. When Dave interviews the lame, unfunny Canadian comedians he often interviews (Sugar Sammy, perhaps), laughing at their sad excuses for jokes and trying to provide a few of his own, it's time to turn off the radio. But, alas, I cannot, as this is work for me. Dave just seems like the ultimate bland Boomer. I wonder if it's all part of the dumbing-down of our national broadcaster.Maybe Russell Smith, a columnist I quite like, is right. Used to serve him subs when I worked at Subway briefly in 1988, by the way.

'Entertainment Spotlight' also featured a profile of a local fashion label and its Gino-boy founders. $800 t-shirts encrusted with Swarovski crystals: would a rich idiot really pay for something like this? One of the founders had that curious Montreal Anglo habit of saying "Us, we", as in "Us, we wanted to do something different". People also say "Me, I", as in "Me, I prefer Gina Lollobrigida". It's a very French style of syntax, and it seems particular to children of immigrants here, raised in households where neither English nor French was spoken much, if at all, going to school often, but not alway, in French, because of Bill 101, but growing up very attuned to American pop culture, and speaking English with friends. The result is a sort of English pidgin with strange galicisms: 'pass the mop', instead of 'mop up'; 'gallery' for front porch, 'library' for 'bookstore'. Laura Casella, a CJAD radio reporter of obvious Italian extraction, often makes gallicisms, just today referring to demonstrators at a protest "banging drums, and even 'casseroles'"