Rex Murphy is a Canadian newspaper, radio and television commentator who has delighted Canadian conservatives with his sharp attacks on environmentalists, liberal politicians and what he calls their “woke politics.” , died in Toronto on May 9th. He was 77 years old.
His death from cancer was announced on the front page of the National Post, a widely read daily newspaper in which he wrote a column, part of a series he had published over the years in Canadian newspapers such as the Globe and Mail in Toronto. It was one of the National Post editor Kevin Libin said Murphy died at a hospital.
During his heyday in the 1990s, Mr. Murphy was a rare political commentator who commanded national audiences and skewered Canada's elites and, at times, a fragile national consciousness. His roots in Newfoundland, Canada's youngest province and one of its most rugged, fostered his militant patriotism and affinity for the country's working class.
For 21 years, from 1994 to 2015, he hosted the popular Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's weekly radio show Cross Country Checkup. He would patiently listen to a picky listener air his opinion, and then he would harshly retort his opinion. For most of that period, he hosted a weekly commentary segment on his CBC's main nightly television news program, “The National.''
“For a very long time, he was Canada's greatest provocateur,” said friend and former CBC colleague Tim Powers.
In a 1996 profile, Canadian news magazine Maclean's said of Mr. Murphy, “He has become one of the most unlikely of Canadian celebrities, defying the norms of conventional programming wisdom and thrusting himself into the nation's consciousness.” “He is an eccentric, non-telegenic being, imprinted with
Mr. Murphy was a newcomer to Canadian broadcast journalism, with his long sentences, regional accent, and the vocabulary of a Rhodes scholar.
He professed modest views about his contributions. “You can stir the pot a little bit, but it's really more like a conversation,” he told a CBC interviewer in 1995.
However, his staying power with a conservative national audience was never in doubt. “In a country where people are more likely to take a 'one for the other' approach,” Libin said. “Rex did nothing like that. He knew perfectly clearly what he was trying to say.”
Mr. Murphy's sudden shift to the right in politics is evidenced by his comments in centrist media outlets such as the CBC and the Globe and Mail, where he had a regular column until 2010, as well as the right-wing partisanship he supported at the National Post. The roots of this opinion are as follows. His own working-class background from the perspective of those who knew him.
The National Post, founded by media mogul Conrad Black, who was convicted of fraud in the United States in 2007 and pardoned by President Donald J. Trump in 2019, has written praising comments about Black. However, it ended up being a comfortable forum. To Mr. Murphy.
For example, he echoed the standard practice of US conservative media defending Mr. Trump. In a 2021 column, he claimed that “FBI leadership used the now-infamous Steele dossier to try to frame Trump.” The document is a reference to a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele detailing unproven claims about Trump's relationship with Trump. . Trump and Russia.
Mr. Murphy's path to the right can be traced through his commentary. He began in 1995 on the CBC mocking O.J. , a critic of President George W. Bush), and then launched a fierce attack. The National Post opposed what he called a “climate change nerd.”
He regularly took on what he considered the sins of “woke” politics and “woke doctrine.” In a February 2023 column, he wrote: It means abandoning everything that is important, being indifferent to what makes life difficult for most people, and contempt for everyday reality. Instead, it guides very specific political interest groups. ”
His later years included criticism of Israel during its war with Hamas and attacks on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's liberalism.
In his previous column on May 7, he called Trudeau “clumsy, incompetent and an amateur” and argued that Canada is “fading on the world stage.”
Libin said Murphy was animated by “a sense of being controlled by people who looked down on us.”
Still, despite his professed distaste for what Libin called “elite politics,” Murphy was a champion of some of the country's economic elites, particularly the oil industry. In 2014, he came under fire from CBC viewers and listeners for giving paid lectures to industry executives. He left the network after his third year.
Robert Rex Raphael Murphy was born in March 1947 in Carbonear, then part of British Newfoundland. (Mr. MacLean's 1996 profile said, “His date of birth is a subject of controversy.”) Mr. Murphy himself has been cautious about answering questions about his career in interviews. was.)
He was the second of Harry and Marie Murphy's five children. His father was a cook at a U.S. military base in the Newfoundland port city of Argentia, and Rex attended school in nearby Freshwater. He entered Memorial University of Newfoundland at the age of 15 and graduated with a degree in English at the age of 19. He won a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University in 1968 where he studied law for one year.
After returning from Oxford, he worked in local radio and television in Newfoundland and ran unsuccessfully for Newfoundland's House of Commons three times, twice as a Liberal candidate, in the 1970s and 1980s. He appeared on CBC Television's satirical show “Up Canada!” He gained national attention and became a national celebrity in 1994 when he began hosting “Cross Country Checkup.”
Mr. Murphy has produced several documentaries for the CBC, including one about his native Newfoundland.
Powers said he was briefly married to Jennifer Davis Guy, with whom he had a daughter, but they were long divorced. Complete information about his survivors was not immediately available.
Throughout his career, Mr. Murphy has achieved remarkable feats of verbal expression. His fans and critics agreed that his unique and sometimes arrogant use of English set him apart from other journalists in his country. According to his profile, he was as obsessed with the works of John Milton as he was with The Simpsons.
“I've always thought style was more important than substance,” he told CBC in 1995. “If you're sloppy, vulgar, vulgar, blasphemous, the mindset is the same,” he added.