Rex Murphy, the blustering defamer of societal ills (real and imagined), fraudulent politicians and the eternal menace of the youth, met with the Grim Reaper yesterday after 77 turns around the sun.
Born on the cliffs of that mighty island of Newfoundland back when it was its own Dominion of the British Isles, his family knew from a young age that he was destined for punditry. His first word was obfuscate.
He matriculated well enough at Memorial University to earn a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, back when that designation meant something and wasn’t just an excuse for the moronic and mentally unstable members of the Antifa brigade to scream about the crimes dear old Cecil supposedly committed some 130 years back.
He returned, not with a fake English accent as a young person today would do (Murphy’s slight Newfoundland tilt only added to his oratory ((something which managed to transfer to his column writing if you closed your eyes and imagined he said it on the CBC (((or one of his paid speeches to the Oil Industry)))))), but with a love for speaking his mind.
He did this first at the almost but not quite naughty sounding VOCM in St. John’s before heaving away to the mainland, and that bright shiny butterfly glowing high above our heads and in our hearts: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
There his firebrand editorials had Canadians reaching for the thesaurus as he laid out a verbal buffet of words and phrases so complicated and labyrinthine they made us say “surely this person is smart, and not just an angry man with access to a slightly elevated vocabulary.”
Columns in the Globe and National Post followed, as did controversy. Murphy’s opinions were not for the faint of heart and offending the mewling cacophony of environmentalists, anti-racists and pink-haired ne’er do wells was never a problem for him. Indeed he relished it (and possibly got off on it).
So naturally when he dared to challenge Liberal orthodoxy by suggesting Black Lives Matter protestors were thugs looking for an excuse to loot stores, or defended the Oil and Gas Industry while taking money from the Industry for speeches, a hue and cry went up louder than the thunderous canons at Vimy Ridge. But unlike the artillery on that fine morning, the noise was all for naught.
Rex carried on.
Tell me dear Rex, what are we to do without you? Who will we turn to when we want to hear how Israel is absolutely right, and anyone who doubts them is a terrorist? Sure, there are 8 other columnists at the National Post who do that, but they don’t do it using words like ‘orgiastic jubilation’ or with an extended allegory about the Merchant Of Venice. Who will teach us that woke cancel culture is wrong? Every single comedian on Netflix? I guess. But who will be the beacon, that shining light in the darkness, that powerful baritone echoing above the din, crying out that Justin Trudeau sucks?
Without you, we are truly lost.
