Here.
“Know the star you are. And see yourself as part of a galaxy.”
So sayeth the Mother of All Influencers, the Hashtag Highness, the Rich Stick Insect, Paris Hilton. Paris – who I met at a Super Bowl Playboy party in Texas once, full disclosure, and who couldn’t put two words together without a team of ghost-writers – is right, says a new report.
Influencers – at least in Canada, and at least in respect of politics – are the new galactic stars, says a report written by assorted tall foreheads. Influencers rule, dude. They slay.
The detailed, 80-page report, which had many big words in it, was authored by the Canadian Digital Media Research Network, with the assistance of some brainy people at the McGill University and University of Toronto-led Media Ecosystem Observatory. Its main conclusion can be stated thusly:
Influencers had a bigger impact on the 2025 Canadian federal general election than the mainstream media and the politicians and political parties put together.
Like, way more.
The report found that influencers produced almost half, 47 per cent, of the political content that pinged around the Internet during the election. News organizations made up only 28 per cent, and politicians a piddly 18 per cent. Ouch.
Way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and when Stockwell Day allegedly interacted with them, the mainstream media dominated the discourse. So, too, politicians and political parties, who spent truckloads of dough on ads. Not anymore.
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My Daisy Group email has been hacked. Please don’t open it. Apologies.
Dani Miran stopped shaving when his son Omri was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7, 2023. As far as I know, he hasn’t shaved it off yet, but he could.
That’s because his son was finally freed over the weekend. Freed, after 737 days living in 23 different places, above ground and in dirty, dark tunnels.
His father, Dani, was 80 years old when I interviewed him at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. Dani’s hair was gone on top, but the beard was impressively white and full, like Santa. Unlike Santa, Dani didn’t smile much. Understandably.
The sun was blazing, so we sat in a tent at Hostages Square, which is across the street from the IDF headquarters. Other hostage family and friends were with us, listening to Dani speak about his son, the hostages and Israel. They would nod as he spoke.
“I’m not here about anyone or anything else,” Dani says. “I’m here for my son.”
He looked around. “I want the whole world to know my son, to remember my son. And I want my son back.”
On October 7, Omri Miran and his family – wife Lishay and two very young daughters – lived at kibbutz Nahal Oz in Israel’s South, near the border with Gaza. On that fateful morning, Hamas terrorists forced the family to open a locked door by threatening to shoot a 16-year-old neighbour in the head. As Omri was taken away, his wife Lishay told him: “Don’t be a hero. I love you, and I’ll take care of the girls. I’ll wait for you.”
She, and Dani, did. For two years, they tirelessly advocated for Omri and the other hostages, imploring Israelis and the world to remember them. At one press conference outside the home where Omri was taken, they spoke directly to him, telling him his daughters loved him, they all loved him, and to “just come back.”
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This is me interviewing Dani Miran, father of hostage Omri Miran, in Hostages Square for our documentary The Campaign. Omri was in the first group of hostages released. So happy for his Dad.
New one, finished the morning of the hostages’ release. Dark skies have light.
Someone observed that I wrote more about Trump 1 than Trump 2.
Me: “The first time I thought it was the exception, not the rule. I thought they’d reclaim sanity.
I can’t read or listen to them anymore. They demanded crucifixion and now they complain about the view.”
