Andy Barrie’s Secret? Gutless Americanism

Mind you, Rick Salutin has said, it was “Respect for listeners” (Globe and Mail, Feb. 25, 2010).  Here is a link to Rick Salutin’s column –

 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/andy-barries-secret-respect-for-listeners/article1481621/  

(the Globe and Mail, not me, and of course not Rick Salutin, the person who actually worked on it and wrote it, will decide when it gets taken down).

Well, on looking back at Rick Salutin’s column, and on what’s gone on with Rick Salutin since, it’s pretty plain to see that he was grinding so many axes of his own that it was hard to find Andy’s shavings under the stone.  I support Rick Salutin, but I think he would find his proxy admiration column regrettable, in hindsight.

Let’s get a few things straight—draft-dodgin’ opportunist Andy was a guy who never left the U.S. behind, and never stopped trading on the fact that he was a big-time U.S. guy who awestruck Canadians were desperate to hire (compare at: the mystifyingly credentialless Margaret Wente, Texan Tommy Flanagan and his sidekick pal Ted Morton, aka Frederick Lee if he doesn't want his name known by the public he takes his paycheque from). 

Allow me to dilate.

Back in his non-old but fairly old CFRB days, Andy was the mellifluous lord of all that he surveyed.  He was a person with that most astonishing of qualities that you almost never, ever see in nature.  He was that one individual in . . . surely a million, who could actually listen to himself as he spoke.  If you’ve had any experience in journalism, or broadcasting, or TV, or reporting (and I’m in there for nigh on all of those), you know what a remarkable quality that is.  To hear Andy Barrie was to hear a man speaking to himself so profoundly that he essentially eliminated any presence other than his own.  There was no question, pace Rick Salutin, of listening, but rather only of hearing Andy. 

In his CFRB days (far from the start of his stateside broadcasting career), Andy basically had to bridge commercials as a morning man, speaking adoringly to himself for a few minutes at a time.  On one occasion, a woman who wrote for Eye wrote an article in which she said she loved bad boys in leather on motorbikes.  Stuff like that is meant to be attention-grabbing for the writers so that they can be catnip for AM radio, and CFRB sure wasn’t asleep at that switcheroo.  Andy, that big ol’ chucklin’ big ol’ big-time (deserter) American made a big thing of showin’ that he threw his big ol’ cowboy boots up on the table when he was interviewin’ this done gone feisty sensible chick (and he made a big-ol’ point of telling us just how did throw up his big ol’ boots up there).  

Of course it was cringeworthy, but it was just what CBC needed to hear.  Here they had a pompous blowhard American who actually thought he could tempt a hot young girl half his age talking about how she liked bikers by tossing them big-ol’ draft-dodgin’ boots up on the table in front of her. 

At CBC, Andy just never was a fit.  He tried and tried, lovingly, to listen to himself, but alas the constraints of national and provincial newscasts, public notices and the like, just hemmed him in and hamstrung him no end.  When he started, he would often miss posts, and then try to be jocular about it.  But when it’s a network and not ads, you just can’t get away with that kind of personal indulgence (and I don’t remember Andy formerly getting too many private sponsorship spots for furniture warehouses or car dealerships, anyway).  If you know *anything* about jobs or work or radio—or just being a human being in general--you would find Andy Barrie’s smug arrogance that makes other people have to run around trying to put out fires for you unbelievably reprehensible.

But no matter.  Andy was easy on himself.  Near the beginning of his CBC morning tenure, Andy “interviewed” political footnote, but very wealthily public-pensioned—every Canadian who might read this is paying for him--Tory minister David Tsubouchi.  Tsubouchi had been in the news, part of the Mike Harris “common-sense revolution,” for saying that consumers oughta just go into stores and say to proprietors, “hey, this can of tuna is dented; I’ll give you 69 cents for it.”   Tsubouchi said that poor people just had to “haggle” to get better deals.  I think Rick Salutin might remember moments such as this.  A few bold individuals, following Tsubouchi’s visionary and sensible lead, actually did go into stores and say, “well, look, it says here this ravioli is .99, but the label is ripped, and I’ll give you a quarter.”

Andy listened as David Tsubouchi told Andy that single welfare moms were putting their kids through university on the public teat.  Andy listened dreamily and impassively, presumably thinking up his next big Andy intervention.  Ah yes.  Single moms on welfare raking in so much cash that they can put their kids through university on it.  To big ‘ol American self-regarding Andy, it just made so much obvious sense, it sure didn’t require any comment of his. 

It’s hard to discern any legacy of Andy’s.  Hard indeed.  But all those single welfare moms out there who managed to just shoot their kids right on through university, well, they’ve got a soft spot for Andy Barrie and Rick Salutin, sure they do. 

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