By Kyle Francis
“Jamie Foxx! Canada wants to know… now that you’ve been doubly nominated for best actor, are you doubly nervous?”
– Ben Mulroney, Host of Canadian Idol, eTalk Daily, to Jamie Foxx on the red carpet of the 2005 Academy Awards.
When Ben Mulroney, son of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney let this coil of verbal excrement slide from his lips last Sunday, a million questions painfully exploded in my mind. First and foremost: How does somebody this balefully stupid even manage to breathe? Is so much of his guppy-transplant brain devoted to the most primitive of functions that he can’t even ask a real fucking question?
By some cruel twist of fate, he manages far more than breathing. Somehow–god, somehow–he’s famous. By flaunting his last name and pretty white teeth, Benny-boy managed to gain the position of “host” on a show that just barely makes the “journalistic vomit” category. Without his famous last name, Ben Mulroney would probably be sitting in a gutter with a pile of empty whiskey bottles wondering what the hell happened, but instead he gets to shit on the airwaves every night at 10:30 p.m. (Central Time). Is being the son of a public figure really enough to net you a job in the public eye, especially when you’re stupid enough to be infectious?
The answer is simple, and pathetic. Like Paris Hilton, Ben Mulroney is another sad example of celebrity status perpetuating celebrity status. They have no right to be famous. They’re not smart, talented or funny. The only reason we talk about them is because they’re talked about. It would be pushing the envelope to say these people have a right to exist, but for Ben Mulroney to represent Canadian journalism at an event watched all over the world just offends reason.
It almost made my eyes bleed when the host of fucking eTalk daily was the only Canadian journalist at an event as big as the Academy Awards, but it made my heart ache for our once-proud nation when I realized he was the only real choice. He’s a douche-nozzle for a lot of reasons, but the Jay Leno-looking motherfucker really is the most well-known entertainment journalist in Canada. Some have even said he’ll soon replace Don Cherry as “Canada’s face to the world,” and sadly, they may even be right. Come on folks, how the hell did we let this happen? Is this really the best we can come up with? We invented insulin, basketball and Superman, and now our “face to the world” is Ben-fucking-Mulroney? We should be ashamed of ourselves.