{"id":53808,"date":"2024-05-19T02:04:05","date_gmt":"2024-05-19T02:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/19\/rex-murphy-a-dominant-pundit-on-the-right-in-canada-dies-at-77\/"},"modified":"2024-05-19T02:04:05","modified_gmt":"2024-05-19T02:04:05","slug":"rex-murphy-a-dominant-pundit-on-the-right-in-canada-dies-at-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/19\/rex-murphy-a-dominant-pundit-on-the-right-in-canada-dies-at-77\/","title":{"rendered":"Rex Murphy, a Dominant Pundit on the Right in Canada, Dies at 77"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/17\/multimedia\/17Murphy-01-vkcj\/17Murphy-01-vkcj-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Rex Murphy, a Dominant Pundit on the Right in Canada, Dies at 77\" title=\"Rex Murphy, a Dominant Pundit on the Right in Canada, Dies at 77\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Rex Murphy, a Canadian newspaper, radio and television commentator who delighted his country\u2019s conservatives with sharp attacks on environmentalists, liberal politicians and what he called their \u201cwoke politics,\u201d died on May 9 in Toronto. He was 77.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His death, from cancer, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/nationalpost.com\/news\/canada\/rex-murphy-dies-obituary\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">was announced<\/a> on the front page of The National Post, the widely read daily newspaper for which he wrote a column, one of several he had over the years in Canadian papers, including The Globe and Mail in Toronto. His editor at The National Post, Kevin Libin, said Mr. Murphy died in a hospital.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In his heyday, in the 1990s, Mr. Murphy was the rare political commentator who commanded a countrywide audience, skewering Canada\u2019s elites as well as its sometimes fragile sense of nationhood. His roots in Canada\u2019s youngest province, and one of its most rugged, Newfoundland, informed a combative patriotism and an affinity for the country\u2019s working class.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For 21 years, from 1994 to 2015, he was the host of <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/radio\/checkup\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cCross Country Checkup,\u201d<\/a> a popular weekly radio call-in show aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He would listen patiently as cranky listeners aired their views, then delivered his own back, pointedly. For much of that period he gave a weekly segment of commentary on the CBC\u2019s main nightly TV news program, \u201cThe National.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cFor a very long time, he was Canada\u2019s premier provocateur,\u201d said Tim Powers, a former CBC colleague and friend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca\/en\/article\/rex-murphy-profile\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">1996 profile<\/a>, the Canadian newsmagazine Maclean\u2019s wrote of Mr. Murphy: \u201cHe has become the unlikeliest of Canadian celebrities \u2014 a quirkily untelegenic presence who has defied the canons of conventional programming wisdom to etch himself upon the country\u2019s consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">With his long rolling sentences, regional accent and Rhodes Scholar vocabulary, Mr. Murphy was something new in Canadian broadcast journalism.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He professed a modest view of his own contribution. \u201cYou can kind of stir the pot a tiny little bit, but it\u2019s really conversational stuff,\u201d <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TftbkNNHw_k\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">he told a CBC interviewer in 1995.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His hold on a conservative national audience was unquestioned, however. \u201cIn a country where people are more likely to take a \u2018on the one hand, on the other hand\u2019 approach,\u201d Mr. Libin said, \u201cRex did nothing of the sort. He had full clarity on what he meant to say.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Murphy\u2019s sharp political turn to the right \u2014 from commenting for centrist outlets like the CBC and The Globe and Mail, where he had a regular column until 2010, to the right-wing views he espoused at The National Post \u2014 had its roots in his own working-class background, in the view of those who knew him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The National Post, founded by the media mogul <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/07\/14\/business\/14react.html\" title=\"\">Conrad Black<\/a> \u2014 who was convicted of fraud in the United States in 2007 and pardoned in 2019 by President Donald J. Trump, about whom Mr. Black had written admiringly \u2014 turned out to be a congenial forum for Mr. Murphy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He echoed, for instance, the standard U.S. conservative media defenses of Mr. Trump. The real story, he asserted in a 2021 column, \u201cwas the F.B.I. leadership trying to set up Trump by using the now infamous Steele dossier,\u201d a reference to the material compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele detailing unproved claims of links between Mr. Trump and Russia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Murphy\u2019s rightward journey could be traced through his commentaries. He went from mocking O.J. Simpson\u2019s \u201cplatoon of Rolex lawyers\u201d on the CBC in 1995 to a 2004 Globe and Mail column deriding what he called \u201cBush-haters\u201d \u2014 critics of President George W. Bush at the time \u2014 and then to tirades in The National Post against what he called \u201cthe climate alarmist,\u201d a person concerned about climate change.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He regularly took on what he deemed the sins of \u201cwoke\u201d politics and \u201cwokeism.\u201d In a February 2023 column, he wrote: \u201cI have finally fixed upon the definition of progressivism. It means the dismissal of everything that counts, unconcern with what makes life hard for most, and a scorn for the realities of day to day; instead shepherding to very particular political interest groups.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In his final days there were diatribes against critics of Israel during its war with Hamas and against the liberalism of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In his last column, this month, he called Mr. Trudeau \u201cclumsy, incompetent and amateur\u201d and asserted that Canada \u201cis diminished on the world stage.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Murphy was animated, Mr. Libin said, by \u201cthe sense that we were being governed by people who looked down on us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Still, for all his professed dislike of what Mr. Libin called \u201celitist politics,\u201d Mr. Murphy was a defender of some of the country\u2019s economic elites, especially the oil industry. In 2014, he came under fire from CBC viewers and listeners for giving paid speeches to the industry\u2019s executives. He left the network three years later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Robert Rex Rafael Murphy was born in March 1947 in Carbonear, in what was then the British Dominion of Newfoundland. (The 1996 Maclean\u2019s profile said \u201chis birth date is the subject of dispute.\u201d Mr. Murphy himself was chary in interviews about answering questions about his background.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He was the second of five children of Harry and Marie Murphy. His father was a cook at the American military base in Newfoundland\u2019s port city of Argentia, and Rex attended schools in nearby Freshwater. He entered Memorial University in Newfoundland at 15 and graduated with a degree in English at 19. Awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, he studied law for a year at the University of Oxford in 1968.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After returning from Oxford, he worked in local radio and television in Newfoundland and three times ran unsuccessfully for the province\u2019s House of Assembly in the 1970s and \u201980s, twice as a Liberal. Stints on a satirical CBC television program, \u201cUp Canada!\u201d brought him to national attention, and when he began hosting \u201cCross Country Checkup\u201d in 1994, he became a national celebrity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Murphy made several documentaries for the CBC as well, including about his native Newfoundland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He was briefly married to Jennifer Davis Guy, with whom he had a daughter, and had long been divorced, Mr. Powers said. Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Throughout his career, Mr. Murphy set great store by verbal expression. His fans and his critics agreed that his distinctive, sometimes high-flown use of English was what set him apart from his country\u2019s other journalists. Profiles noted that he was as devoted to the works of John Milton as he was to \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI\u2019ve always considered that style was more important than substance,\u201d he told the CBC in 1995. \u201cIf you\u2019re sloppy, slangy, vulgar, blasphemous,\u201d he said, \u201cthen your thoughts are the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/18\/world\/canada\/rex-murphy-dead.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rex Murphy, a Canadian newspaper, radio and television commentator who delighted his country\u2019s conservatives with sharp attacks on environmentalists, liberal politicians and what he called their \u201cwoke politics,\u201d died on May 9 in Toronto. He was 77. His death, from cancer, was announced on the front page of The National Post, the widely read daily [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/17\/multimedia\/17Murphy-01-vkcj\/17Murphy-01-vkcj-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[740,16,4427,53378,53379,40977],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53810,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53808\/revisions\/53810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}