Transformation: CBC to Al Jazeera

How about that, a nice Jewish boy has finally made it. To the big time. Just where he deserves to be. His grandfather, David Lewis, was a good and a just man. A proud Jew, a proud Canadian, a disciplined politician; a practical-minded, socially aware human being.

His father, hmmm, Stephen Lewis, born with a silver spoon, but raised on Socialist gruel. Attending a public school like any other normal kid, but transcending normal, chauffeur-driven to and from.

Avi has moved beyond kvetching Judaism. He's one of those self-loathers; his Jewish heritage is such a drag. Now that other heritage, socialist devotion to a better world for everyone - it too has been transformed, has become another kind of left-wing ideology, the kind that sees companionship in understanding between fascism and the far left; truly two of a kind.

Avi has become what one radical communist touted as a class warrior. "Whoever cries out against Jewish capitalists is already a class warrior, even when he does not know it... Kick down the Jewish capitalists, hang them from the lampposts and stamp upon them."

In lieu of Jewish capitalists, Avi has carefully selected Americans, the U.S. Its society, culture, politics. And he sincerely hangs them from the lampposts of his scornful dismissal, believing them to be the scourge of the earth. But there's a place for Jewish identity and Jewish politics and Jewish loathing in all of this; just opt to perform as a spokesman for the very source of anti-Semitic enablement.

Now he's taking up a post in that very den of social/political iniquity. To report on their unfortunate excesses against humanity so all may read and take umbrage along with Avi Lewis. His audience will be wide, and for this he is most appreciative. His audience will range from the English-speaking world, to translation for the Arab-speaking world.

Because he is a Jew, speaking not as a Jew - although his audience does not recognize this - but as a radical leftist, his words will be received well.

In the Arab world he will be perceived as a triumphant discovery, yet another Jew anxiously willing to sell out his ancestry for a pottage of fame. Mind, it is infamy he brings on his grandfather's name. But he learned his grandstanding aptitude well, patterning himself effortlessly after his father's style. Concern for humankind? So they insist.

Like most radicals, the background is one of privilege, and all patricians know they must defer to the masses, that great proletariat for whom they deign to speak. Railing, in the process, against the very privilege that gave them the opportunities they chose to spurn. Representing themselves as one with the people whom they purport to serve.

And let's face it, he just wasn't getting anywhere fast with the CBC. That once-proud Canadian institution since become drearily irrelevant, just as it slid irrevocably into the same leftist trend that Avi Lewis now exemplifies. That same social democratic left-turned infrastructure that lauds the unprivileged Palestinians's struggle against the oppressive Israeli military might.

One doubts he will be missed by his CBC audience, let alone the CBC network, which appears to have struggled with the difficulty of sufficiently recognizing their erstwhile host's talents. In an interview, Mr. Lewis appears to have spoken most disdainfully of the lacks apparent in the CBC structure, as opposed to the "resource-rich" work environment of Al Jazeera.

He denies Al Jazeera's reputation as an apologist for the Arab world: "absolutely hilarious", he declares. It's the nationalist right-wingers in the United States that has given Al Jazeera its black eye. As a journalist, he says, "I like to judge things on the evidence", without, alas, recounting the evidence, as it would be of such interest to everyone to hear it.

Things may be a little tough for Mr. Lewis at this juncture. His biting reproach of America's social conscience has garnered him scant few admirers there, so he's finding it "pretty difficult", what with public officials declining to be interviewed with him on the record. People aren't fond of shooting themselves wilfully. Unless you're an Avi Lewis.

And he's revelling in his newfound future, hugging himself with satisfaction in the fact that his value has been recognized and he now has the opportunity "to have the resources to do stories properly; a rare luxury". A shill for Al Jazeera.

But then my opinion is somewhat tainted, unlike his.