The usual suspects, it seems, are getting restless. Not to mention silly. Famed Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood is the latest - and in some ways, the saddest - person to go ballistic over Quebecor’s proposal to broadcast a new cable station.

Formally called Sun TV, its’ left-wing detractors are calling it “Fox News North,” ostensibly an insult, even though the real Fox News is far and away the most successful cable network in the history of television. But hey, it doesn’t think the appropriate thoughts. And therefore, well, it just shouldn’t be allowed to sully our airwaves.

To be sure, Atwood - who really is too intelligent to even attempt such a weak argument - claims that the fact that Sun TV will be predominately right-of-centre is totally irrelevant to her objections.

It’s the process, stupid. Or so she claims.

Buying into the unproven and questionable theory that because Prime Minister Harper’s former top aide Kory Teneycke is organizing the new station, it is clearly getting preferential treatment from the CRTC.

So Atwood became one of the most high-profile lefties to sign an on-line position wanting the CRTC to kill Quebecor’s bid and not even allow this new - clearly evil - network to get off the ground. In doing so, Atwood claimed, as mentioned earlier, that the conservative ideology of those behind the network has nothing to do with her concern.

Yeah, sure Margaret. Hard to believe when the petition she supported is headed: “Stop ‘Fox News North.’”

The petition goes on to accuse Harper - who doesn’t have anything to do with the bid - of “trying to push American-style hate media onto our airwaves, and makes us all pay for it - The Channel will be run by Harper’s former top aide and will be funded with money from our cable TV fees.”

Now I don’t know about you, but my cable TV fees fund all sorts of stations which I don’t have the least interest in funding.

It’s because of the outrageous “bundles” that TV viewers are forced to buy.

Rather than paying just for those stations you want, if you have cable - and who doesn’t? -you’re forced to pay for all sorts of stuff that you have no interest in.

But that, apparently, doesn’t bother Atwood and her fellow travelers.

No, no. It’s only the possibility that some cable fees may go to a conservative-oriented station - as opposed to the perennially left-leaning CBC, the favourite of the elites - when the system is called into question.

As has been mentioned in this space many times before, a common characteristic of the left is not just to express disagreement with those who think differently - and are clearly wrongheaded - but to essentially smear them and argue that they shouldn’t even have the right to hold such views. Hence the extraordinarily cheap shot that Fox News itself

represents “American-style hate media.”

Really? Do they offer a single example to back up this scurrilous charge? Of course not. After all - nudge, nudge, wink, wink - everybody “knows” that conservativeminded people are hatemongers by definition. No need to offer evidence. It’s enough simply to make the charge.

One might have hoped that somebody with Atwood’s experience and success in the world of literature and the media might actually have a soft spot for that hoary old concept known as free speech. One might have hoped that this Canadian icon would see the free exchange of ideas - even if she thinks they are bad ideas - as a good thing in a democracy.

Apparently not.

The prospect of Sun TV, it seems, is so horrific, so dangerous to the very existence of our country - perhaps even to the universe for all I know - that everything possible must be done to stop the possibility of unwitting Canadians - none of whom would be smart enough, unlike Atwood, to make their own viewing decisions - being spoon fed all these horrid, “American-style” conservative lies and deceits.

One might even grudgingly applaud Atwood - although I wouldn’t - if she opposed this new station and had the gumption, nay the honesty, to admit that what upsets her is the ideology of its’ backers.

Instead, she pretends to be upset about the process, a process which is exactly the same that every previous cable station has gone through without so much as a murmur of concern from the likes of Atwood.

The whole thing is downright disgusting. And it hardly does credit to one of the most successful authors in Canadian history.