The CBC continues its swirling and twirling turns down the drain of irrelevancy as it tries mightily to attract an audience with a continuing performance of Dumb and Dumber.

This week the one-time intelligent arm of CBC, the radio service, hurtled headlong into the story of the governor and the hooker. While there was a time when the CBC might examine what this story says about power, hypocrisy or morality, not so today.

No, the Winnipeg afternoon radio program asked people to call in and comment on the fact that the governor’s wife was at his side when he apologized for his actions and finally resigned.

Just what information, or opinion based on any facts, the average Winnipeg might have about Eliott Spitzer’s relationship with his wife is a mystery that was certainly not solved by listening. People might just as well have called in and commented on the host’s relationships.

Granted, everyone has opinions on the various aspects of this story and are quite content to discuss them among friends. But this is the CBC. To provide megaphones to barstool sages is not part of its mandate.

We can get programming that enlightening, free, and usually more entertaining, at any deadbeat saloon on a Saturday night.

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy, the wheat field version of the right wing Fraser Institute, has outdone itself for sheer wackiness.

A couple of weeks ago, the "think" tank came up with a report suggesting that schools are spending too much time introducing kids to computers. Too expensive, said the centre. And, besides, kids with computers don't learn any better than anyone else.

One might have thought the author still had shares in some kind of chisel-and-tablet company. Well, after all, the old Remington Selectric was good enough for grandpa, it should be good enough for today's kids.

If that wasn't bad enough, the centre for hayseeds has come up with a report that tops that, this one claiming that students are getting a lopsided view of the environment.

The report makes such sweeping conclusions as "most textbooks and children's books that deal with the environment contain significant exaggerations and fallacies." Apparently, unlike reports from the Frontier Centre on Public Policy.

Children's books?

You mean to say that the Once-ler in Dr. Suess's book The Lorax didn't chop down all the Truffula trees? Get outta town.

Not only that, the centre says that despite "the fact" that "not all scientists accept global warming is caused by man-mad CO2 emissions … students are normally only exposed to the accepted view on global warming."

Indeed. Because it is "accepted." Accepted by, oh, 99 per cent of the world's top scientists. The centre must be one of the lone castles standing against what everyone else accepted years ago.

The author, no doubt, yearns for that old family buckboard and those lazy, hazy school days when he could dunk girls' pigtails in the inkwell on his desk.

That will be next week's report.

The Daily Mail in London reports that a survey of 3,000 Britons discovered that one in four believe Winston Churchill is a fictional character. At the same time, the survey found many believe Sherlock Holmes and the Three Musketeers were actual, legendary heroes. Historians and educators are said to be aghast that some many, especially those under 20 years old, had such a pathetic knowledge of British history and its real heroes. James Bond and Eleanor Rigby must be rolling in their graves.

The Winnipeg Free Press seems to have discovered the unbridled fun one can have with that new-fangled computer program called Photoshop.

Apparently, believing the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words the FP has decided that a doctored photo must be worth at least 500 or 600 more.

So, there in the Saturday paper was Education Minister Peter Bjornson standing around holding stacks of 20-dollar bills, alongside a story about the new tax-incentive grant the province is offering to divisions which freeze taxes.

Just to be ethical, the Free Press put a little disclaimer on the picture in the newspaper, saying it was a "photo illustration." By that, readers are supposed to divine that the picture is a fake. Of course, any photo is an illustration so maybe they're making it all up as they go along.

On its website, the paper offered no disclaimer, just ran the picture as it was invented, leaving folks to believe that the education minister is walking around the province with giant bricks of cash.

We can hardly wait to see the illustration it has in mind for the inquiry into Brian Mulroney's relationship with Karlheinz Schreiber. They could go for a triple play: picture of ex-prime minister, picture of money stacks, picture of wheelbarrow.

"We don't really conversate.”

--New England Patriots wide receiver Randy Moss, conversating with reporters about his relationship with coach Bill Belichick.