It’s hard to pull off humour in the middle of a pitched labour battle — the stakes are high, and earnestness has a huge gravitational pull all its own — but the locked-out CBCniks have done it.
Meet Tokyo Rose’s match, Contract Charlie:
“Contract Charlie”, an anti-union propagandist and CBC management true believer, began broadcasting his insidious patter via short wave radio soon after the lockout began in mid-August…. Is Charlie a pitiful traitor and harmless management patsy, or does he represent the tip of an iceberg of union revolt? Listen and decide for yourself.
The first Contract Charlie broadcast is a 700KB download, available at this link, and runs about two and a half minutes.
(Side note: Listening as a former teenage shortwave geek, I kept flashing on Radio Free Europe and Radio Moscow broadcasts from the bad old days of the Cold War, when each side figured their model of the world would emerge victorious if only they could send out enough QSL cards.)
(Hat tip to Tod Maffin.)
