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kitsch for the king

The black Superman, aka Muhammad Ali, was in town for the Argos game on the weekend in a fundraiser for Parkinson’s. Class act. Too bad we can’t say the same for organizers of the event, beginning with the dignitaries loosed on the ailing king for autographs in his hotel room, among them king of kitsch and son of the mayor Blaine Lastman, who had a pair of boxing gloves for the champ to sign. Look for them in his next furniture commercial. The embarrassment continued during the on-field ceremonies, with the Jumbotron’s misspelling of Ali’s name as Muhammed and Canadian boxing legend George Chuvalo as Chirallo. The banner raised to commemorate the occasion was a nice touch — except for the huge Coke promo on the top. We’ll resist the temptation to say the brains behind the event, theatre impresario Garth Drabinsky, should be sacked and arrested for bad taste, since he’s now facing a raft of fraud charges in an unrelated matter.

lie of the week

Police Chief Julian Fantino, in a hastily written memo to the rank and file after catching wind of the Star’s plan to run a feature charging the force with racial profiling against blacks: The Toronto police service will take the moral high ground on these issues because it has earned the right to do so. This before turning over the Star’s incriminating findings to arch-rival the Sun, in hopes of generating some positive spin.

cabbagetown

The folks on Winchester in Cabbagetown finally got the Globe to print that clarification they’ve been after ever since a September 28 story on the Governor General’s relocation to the neighbourhood. That report carried some shall we say “impolite” comments from a tenant in a nearby rooming house that “painted a bleak picture of local residents.” Yeah, well, you’d probably have a “bleak picture” of the locals, too, if they kept complaining to the cops about how you should be moved out of the area.

and the wieners are

B’nai Brith handed out its 2002 Awards of Distinction for Excellence in Journalism this week to recognize “individuals whose coverage of complex and often controversial issues goes to the heart of the key social, cultural and political concerns of the day.” Read: justification for everything Israel does and says. This year’s winners, not surprisingly, are Stewart Bell of the National Post, the Star’s Rosie DiManno, the Sun’s John Downing and the Globe’s Marcus Gee. Later this year B’nai Brith will hand out it’s human right awards. We wait with bated breath.

totally naked news

News orgs were reportedly sent into a tizzy this week over the now famous CP photo of that hockey fan who decided to make an ass of himself by jumping over the glass in the buff during a Flames game.

The dailies said they couldn’t run the shot because of ethical considerations — CP had digitally erased the guy’s private parts. But would the guardians of morality have run the little willie anyway? The Star later ran the mutilated shot in an exposition of its journalistic purity in not running it in the first place — thus cashing in on full frontal castration.

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