Book “DEFERENCE TO AUTHORITY” emerged after professor binge-watched too much local Halifax TV

Dr Edgar Z Friedenberg was a highly respected professor of Education at Halifax’s Dalhousie University back when I was a student there.

But then he did a very bad thing.

He began to watch the local media and read the local newspapers, looking for news.

Well of course, it happened, it had to happen : he had a complete nervous breakdown, but when he emerged he had a classic explanation for the eternal - and infernal - Canadian character : usually known by its short title : DEFERENCE TO AUTHORITY.

(The complete title, as I recall, was “Canadians’ Abject, Craven Deference to Authority”.)

Boot licking, in other words.

What made this landmark effort so noteworthy was that he had drawn all his sweeping conclusions from a just few months of binge-watching local reporters “questioning” press officers at official briefings.

If Edgar came back and spent another few months watching the interactions between our local journalists and the authorities’ PR flaks here in Halifax, would he change his conclusions ?

I doubt it : if anything, forty years on, he’d strengthen them....