"Listen," I said. "I come from a small country, too, a country with a big neighbour, and so I understand. And yes, Poland got squashed several times by its big neighbours. But you mustn't care so much about what other nations think about you. You should concentrate on your achievements."
This advice did not seem to console my interlocutor one jot. Living in the UK, she bears the brunt of other people's misconceptions about Poland and the Poles. The misconceptions come mainly from the media, and I am not talking just the Daily Mail here. I am talking about the oh-so-correct Guardian and all the rest of the British establishment media. The woman who told me that Polish must come in handy for speaking to workmen at the Historical House does not read the Daily Mail.
Reflecting on what the western mainstream media has published about Poland, the woman sitting beside me seemed to be on the point of tears. Therefore, I was once again glad that last November I was able to publish this. If I never again write anything of any importance, at least I wrote that.
One of the problems with contemporary journalism is that most newspapers can no longer afford to keep offices in several foreign countries. That is one explanation for the scandalous and appalling fake news about Poland that was foisted on the British, the Canadians and, especially, the Americans about the 2017 Polish Independence Parade in Warsaw.
There are other explanations, of course, and I remember when I first lost my touching faith in mainstream media: it was while watching a Toronto TV station's coverage of a pro-life demonstration. I had been there, and I knew that something City-TV said about it was not true.
I also flinched at the unmistakable contempt in newscaster Mark Dailey's universally beloved voice. The fake news I don't recall, but the contempt left a permanent scar. By the age of 18, I knew that lots of Torontonians despised pro-lifers, but it hadn't occurred to me that Toronto's big-voiced sweetheart did, too. I thought the press would be like, you know, neutral.
Goodness knows why I thought that after years of reading Doris Anderson in the Toronto Star. Anderson was a famous feminist, but that did disturb me until I came up with a bang against her sneering prediction that Pope John Paul II's play would bomb on Broadway but be a hit in church basements. Somehow I remember that and not all her abortion apologetics, probably because the slam was just so bizarrely petty.
I recall asking my mother about it and my mother saying something about Anderson being from out West (where anti-Catholicism presumably festered). But the objections of the lady columnists of the Toronto Star also included the saint's Polish birth. (I forget which one it was, exactly, attributed John Paul's alleged dislike of women (!) to being Polish. It probably was Anderson, but it might have been Michelle Landsberg.) "Polish jokes" had recently been banned from the schoolyard, and I was surprised to see such an obvious ethnic slur in the Star.
As a matter of fact I had very little interest in Poland, but things I heard about it in childhood did linger. For example, I still cannot shake the impression, formed in 1977, that Poles (all Poles) are desperately poor. The beautifully paved road from the John Paul II airport to Krakow was, therefore, quite a shock.
I'm not sure if there's a moral in that, other than that one needs to be intelligent and be cognisant of historical changes in the countries one visits or one risks sounding stupid or even offensive.
My real point in writing this post is to celebrate the existence of a truly free press--which in English-speaking countries may mean the online press--that interrupts the unjust or merely craven narratives of the mainstream press.
I don't mean to abjure all the MSM. As long as The New York Times continues to publish Ross Douthat I will have some respect for The New York Times. But I am highly suspicious of any British, Canadian or American MSM narrative about Central and Eastern Europe right now.
Meanwhile, I am deeply contemptuous of how the British mainstream press swallows the abortion industry's lies about the British pro-life movement. (It really astonishes me how an obvious INDUSTRY has the British press in thrall, but I don't discount the role of blackmail. In Canada, abortionist Henry Morgantaler blackmailed Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.) That, however, is a topic for another time.
Update: The Spectator is good value, though. See this article from January, for example. It looks okay to me.
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