Go away, Jon Dore

Dear Metro,

Please get rid of this unfunny Jon Dore idiot, whoever he is.

Sincerely,
Peter Lynn

I sent that unpublished letter to Metro, the free subway paper, because as long as they keep printing the asinine rambling of this Dore imbecile, I'm getting less than what I'm paying for -- and as I said, Metro is a free paper. As far as I can tell, the only one who benefits from Dore's continued presence in Metro is Sandy Garcia, who's no longer quite the worst columnist in the paper writing about Canadian Idol on a regular basis.

Garcia is still bad, mind you; about the only thing more unsavory than last year's creepy albino contestant, Billy Klippert, was Garcia's obvious wet-between-her-chubby-thighs crush on him. And her point-counterpoint Idol Showdown discussions with Chris Atchison seemed to get uncomfortably personal, to the point that readers began to write in to demand that they ease up on each other with the personal attacks. (Hard to blame Atchison, though: The phrase "Sandy, you ignorant slut" seems to be self-evidently at least half right.) And she's got an off-putting habit of writing things like "Billy Crystal kept the audience entertained with his hilarious antics" in stories about the Oscars; calling Crystal's antics "hilarious" is injecting unnecessary editorial opinion into a news story, and wrong opinion at that.

But bad as Garcia is, Dore is worse by several orders of magnitude. His columns are virtually content-free, serving only to annoy. Witness this example from an early column:

Metro has given me 300 words per column to infotain, alarm and shock the community of Toronto about what it doesn’t see on television. Three hundred words per column. THREE HUNDRED WORDS. Oh sweet soul sister of mercy! Let the filthy gossip flow from my fingertips into the hearts and souls of Idol fans everywhere.

How will I convey this information you ask? Each and every gossipy letter will be carefully selected and then delicately placed into a word. Which, in turn, will be strung together with other carefully chosen words. Soon forming tantalizing sentences creating dazzling paragraphs altogether a masterpiece gossip column of 300 words! Here we go! Buckle up! Put the kids to bed! Turn off the phone! Cancel your dinner plans! Lock up your bike! Hold on to the railing! Feed the Sea Monkeys! Put out that back alley can fire!

That's 144 words of nothing worth saying. The column purports to offer "A look behind the scenes with Idol's special correspondent" ("Most of my readers are absorbing my always entertaining, gossipy prose while they are travelling to work via bus, streetcar, or subway," says Jon in one column, self-congratulatorily), but I've seen no insider gossip. It's almost nothing other than self-indulgent rambling and attempts at "wacky" humour. Take the lead to his last column, for example, which is about typical:

I was lying in bed Sunday afternoon watching a videotape of my grandfather’s eye surgery while eating blueberry waffles with Kahlua when I was suddenly struck by a horrible realization.

Not a single Idol performer has a moustache. "SWEET SUNNY SIDE SMOKE STACKS!" I exclaimed to myself. What happened to the moustache? When did it leave? Where did it go? Why are tomatoes red?

See? It's so wacky! What a way to spend a Sunday afternoon! Watching his grandfather's eye surgery? Who does that? And look at the foods he mixes together! Crazy! And his expressions? Unprecedented looniness! Hilarious!

Well, no. I'd call this style of humour sophomoric, but I remember that I didn't find this kind of throw-random-things-together-and-hope-a-joke-comes-out-of-it business funny when I was a sophomore. It was cutting-edge comedy when I was in grade three, though. I'll admit that.

When it's not self-consciously "wacky", Dore's column is self-servingly masturbatory:

Please ladies … Leave me alone! I get it. I understand. Consider your message decoded. I’m catching your drift. I’m reading your mail. I’m walking your dogs. I am a writer. Sure, I’m a writer with his very own column. I suppose you could say that I’m an intellectual Casanova. Sure, I’m pulsating with excessive levels of witty, sexual energy. However, I don’t need to be distracted from my writing by clumsy, heterosexual, romantic advances. As a writer, I obviously have no problem meeting women so please stop throwing yourself at me. Holy sheesh kabobs! Besides, I would never abuse my position as a columnist to lure the ladies into my exciting lifestyle of movie premieres and celebrity parties.

So who the hell is this idiot, anyway? Why would a newspaper allow this? What kind of columnist can get away with 300 words of incoherent drivel that serves only a reminder to watch Canadian Idol before wrapping it all up with an annoying "Love, Jon"?

Well, one suspects that Dore must somehow be involved with Canadian Idol, although Metro didn't do much to explain how (probably assuming I should already know what the connection is, since presumably anyone reading a Canadian Idol-related article must be doing so because he watches the show, and not because he's trying to find a way to stay occupied during an overlong commute). And it turns out that in addition to his career as a stand-up comedian, Dore is indeed a special correspondent on Canadian Idol. So getting him to write for Metro probably seems like some sort of "coup" to the editors, which makes me sad for Metro. I would probably know Dore worked for the show if I watched it, but I won't because I don't particularly like most reality TV, although I do particularly hate Canadian Idol host Ben Mulroney, who's managed to keep himself in the public eye by virtue of having a famous (or notorious, depending on your politics) dad, despite failing to show evidence of any discernable talent of his own. So now I have at least two people on Canadian Idol to hate with a burning passion.

I'm going to hate Dore a little more than Mulroney, however, because while it's easy enough to just not watch Canadian Idol, he also keeps popping up in the paper and making me wonder, "Oh for Christ's sake -- what's this idiot rambling about now?" Then I read the latest column and hate him anew. He might actually make Canadian Idol watchable, for all I know. He might be the funniest man alive on the stage. But for God's sake, keep Jon Dore off the printed page.