High Masculine Tones

The CBC's flagship nightly newscast The National revels in its status as a beacon of calm in a frenetic media maelstrom. Commercial-free, conscientious, sober and more than a little bit pompous, it's a canonical news program to the marrow.

Last night, the third or fourth story off the top of the broadcast -- well before pieces on The Emperor's demented ravings, or the international AIDS conference -- was an obituary for the woman who played "Weezie" on The Jeffersons.

Is there something about the cultural significance of this program that I've missed? She made us laugh, she made us cry, she made us think. And that... made us feel better about ourselves. I suppose when the guy who played Radar O'Reilly kicks the bucket, they'll have Parson Mansbridge hosting a special broadcast live from the all-night candlelight vigil.

Just before Weezie, they announced the latest demise of "the first lady of Canadian theatre." Every time an octogenarian actress that I've never heard of dies, we learn that she was "the first lady of Canadian theatre." I don't know who the reigning first lady is now, but I fear she's been handed her death warrant.

Toward the end of the broadcast, they got around to airing a feature that noted, among other delightful factoids, that Canada's reserves of natural gas are near depletion, that as the supply dwindles trade obligations require us to sell whatever we have to our neighbours in the south, and that the proposed solution to this dilemma -- the development of coal bed methane -- is an environmental nightmare.