A BoB Short:
It took half a week for Sun News to pick up on the joke, but the right-wing news network has finally managed to have comedian Scott Vrooman’s blatantly tongue-in-cheek interview with correspondent Adrienne Batra pulled from the Internet. Or not.
According to Vrooman, who honed his hyper-conservative alter-ego on CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes. he was chosen as an interviewee on a segment regarding CBC funding cuts because of an editorial he wrote for iPolitics in 2011, titled “What not to fund: The CBC.”
In the article, Vrooman states that “many have characterized the anti-CBC movement as a ‘witch hunt.'” Well I ask you: Why do you think there are no witches around today? It’s because the system worked. We hunted those witches down and killed them, just like we’re going to do to those bookish hobgoblins at the CBC.”
On-air, Vrooman’s voice was similar, referring to the CBC as “Communist Brain Control” and French as “a dead language, get over it.” Either his sarcasm got lost somewhere in the satellite link or Batra, who seemed to agree with Vrooman’s over-the-top statements, didn’t get the joke, which would mark the first time anybody from Sun News has done anything questionable.
Nevertheless, the interview was removed from the Sun News website after it went viral, and, on May 28th, Vrooman discovered that the upload on his personal Youtube account was “no longer available due to a copyright claim by Sun News Network.” Vrooman offered his thoughts once again via the Toronto Star.
“‘Nooooooooo!’ I screamed in slow motion at my cat. I was hurt and confused. How could a network that fights so vigorously for free speech try to silence my voice? Not just mine, but its own?”
Vrooman also urged anybody interested in seeing the video to email him at scott_vrooman@hotmail.com, though the video is still available on Youtube via BBBlogger, and, as we said, here. Or, for that matter, immediately below this article. And if it’s no longer there . . . the Sun News legal department has been really busy lately, hasn’t it?
– Drew McLachlan
