That was the thesis of Globe and Mail TV critic John Doyle's column on Thursday.
Yesterday on CBC Newsworld, Nancy Wilson was called upon to interview a chap who is about to lose his job at Sterling Truck in St. Thomas, Ont. An articulate man, he was pessimistic about the future and said, "All we can do is hope for the best, but unfortunately the best is not going to happen for us." He also had a few things to say about the North American free trade agreement ("fair trade, not free trade") and the policies of the Ontario government. Yet Wilson kept asking him about Christmas. Just how bleak would it be in the man's house? That sort of thing.
Clearly, the idea was to perversely romanticize the man's situation into a sort of Dickensian tale of an unemployed poor man's family huddled by the hearth, supping on gruel - probably by kerosene lamp - while others feasted on turkey and cake, supping fine wines.
It was an absurd conversation, an insult to the man's intelligence. And it highlights the startling disconnect between most news media - especially TV - and working men and women. Either the working person is being patronized, as the man in St. Thomas was, or is being elevated to the status of savant, thanks to a sheen of authenticity as it is perceived by some nitwit TV producer or reporter.
The trend is irritating and ludicrous. Watching TV news, we have all become experts on banking, hedge funds, derivatives, commodity prices and the devil-knows-what elements of the financial world. Yet we know diddly about the personal and working lives of people who actually toil in factories or work as plumbers or in similar trades. It's enough to turn anyone into a socialist. Up with workers!