I refer to the disap-
pearance of Les Bewley’s
column from the Van-
couver Sun

The former judge’s last
piece was printed Dec. 28,
the following statement be-
ing appended to it:

“This column concludes
Les Bewley's contract with
The Sun.”? -

" That was the truth, but
not the whole truth, so help
me God. The whole truth is
that Bewley. had too much
to say for a. newspaper
dedicated to the mores of
Wimpland, and much too
much to say for the likes of
the Canadian Jewish Con-
gress, and. the Little Old
Editors Quiet Life League.

What the League craves
is more stuff. on. ham-
burgers, lovely sunsets, and
why we should give. the
country to the Indians.’

Clark Davey, a publisher
who has since moved to
Montreal, hired Bewley
four years ago because the
paper had no’ right-wing
voice. Most of its columns
— and all of its editorials —
read as if they were being

_| written by social workers.
So Bewley became the Sun’s -

token dissident.

With the possible excep-
tion of the Toronto Sun,
however, there. are. strict

- 8 - Sunday, January 12, 1986 - North Shore: News

CHALK IT up as a victory for media feebleness
and pressure-group power.

limits on how much
dissidence the dailies of
Wimpland will take. Within
a year, Bewley’s pieces were
cut from three a week to
two; then from two to one;
then he was moved from
Page Five to Page Six. Not
that it mattered a lot where
they put him. He would
have been read even among
the truss acs. But you get
the idea.

- The crux came last July
when he wrote a column

-headed ‘“‘Israeli Terrorism

Invites War’’. It explained
how Israel, through Jewish
groups in ‘the U.S., has a
Stranglehold on American
policy in the Middle East;
how Israel is as guilty of ter-
rorism as anyone else in
those parts, and how the
U.S. seems determined to
make ‘‘implacable
enemies’’ of the Arab and
Moslem worlds.

There couldn’t have been:
more fuss if someone had
said that the Pope was a
pimp. Mark ‘Silverberg of
the Canadian Jewish Con-
gress took pen in hand, as
did all the little Silverbergs.

- Professor William Nicholls

of the UBC Department of .
. Religious Studies was given
. half a page in.which to warn

that what Bewley had to say

showed that another

ra

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pg

Holocaust was nigh, and
nearly everyone agreed,
naturally, that Bewley was
an anli-Semite (a smear ap-
plied to anyone who
disputes israeli policies or
those of Organized Jewry).

“If he had been
a standard-issue
parlor pink he
could have
ridden round the
Sun’s offices on
a donkey.’’

It may have been

overkill, but in itself the
response didn’t matter. The
Silverbergs are just as entitl-
ed to their views as Bewley
is to his. It didn't stop
there, though. In its
eagerness to prove that it is
quite well behaved, really,
the Sun's letters page also
tan a picture of Dr. Goeb-
bels, the implication being
that Dr. Goebbels and Dr.
Bewley were twins. Bewley
was not amused.

O.K. Hand it out and
also take it. That’s the
name of the game. But
Bewley knew he was swim-

_™Ming against the editorial

tide. The editors never once

gave him any encourage- |

ment, he says. Instead, they
held their heads in their
hands and wailed that he
would never know the trou-
ble he was causing them. He
also had to put up with con-
stant nit-picking. If he had
been a standard-issue parlor
pink, of course, he could
have ridden round the Sun's
offices on a donkey.
When contract time
came, Bewley asked what
the time was. And it didn’t
take psychic powers to
divine that for a guy with
any pride, time was up. So
he said he wasn’t all that

keen about carrying on {

anyway. His editor said he
felt the same way. And that
was that. A fine example of
how success breeds failure.

Stu Keate, another
former Sun publisher, once
observed that Les was the
best thing that had happen-
ed to the paper in years. But
despite the literate and
penetrating work he had
done, nobody waved’ good-
bye and no letters lamenting

his departure have béen j

printed. As happened with
Sir John Moore, ‘They
buried him darkly at dead
of night...’’. Into the
memory hole, friend.

We already had the Mor-
ning Wimp. And now we
have the Evening Wimp,

too. Wimpland wins again! ]

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