I HAVE SAID BEFORE, IN ANOTHER publication, that if magazine and newspaper columns were CDs they would be tucked away in the Easy Listening section of the music store. The Perry Comos of Canadian journalism. Anodyne, asinine, and slavishly discreet. Their writers concerned that they might not be invited onto "Momingside," receive another government grant, or be mentioned in the "Noises Off" column of the Globe and Mail alongside Stuart McLean, Ian Brown, and Stephen Lewis (sorry about the juxtaposition, Ian).

I use the phenomenon of the column as a yardstick because it indicates just how free and feisty is a country's journalism, and by extension a country's culture. Lament, oh Canada. The most noxious are the coy ones, mostly retreads from the '60s. With these we might assume the influence of dinner-party and "Of course you can have a column, darling" styles of hiring. Bronwyn Drainie wishing her important, famous friends at the CBC a Merry Christmas in the Globe is a fitting example. Or Marni Jackson writing in Toronto Life about removing avocado stains from her futon, or about other hilarious antics of the comfortably off Toronto WASP. All to be collected in a book entitled The "Only in Canada Could This Person Be a Journalist" Zone.

Both columnists, and many others, are part of the literary family compact. They are related to others in the media by blood, by marriage, by their school and college days, and by political affiliation. One of the reasons that they are a] lowed to get away with such a travesty is that Canada is a country ruled by a nasty concoction of fear and reverence and few people are prepared to point out that the emperor is naked. This dull acceptance should come as no surprise, as what we now call Canada was founded by refugees from revolution. They were either patrician Anglicans or militant Presbyterians with a penchant for authority and decree. And thus the Canadian media are the poodles of the status quo rather than the watch-dogs of the nation. The United States, on the other hand, owes its modem foundation to Anabaptists, congregationalists, people who were innately suspicious of secular and religious government. Australia is Irish, Canada Scottish, which accounts for the former's delightful contempt for the powerful. Britain has long been a cynical, sardonic country and its columnists are similarly sharp and virile.

Canadian political columns are little better than the apolitical varieties. In a country with a liberal establishment, hierarchy, and media, a leftist column is nothing if not conformist, and so many of them are indisputably of the left, and indisputably conformist. There are a few good ones -- I seldom agree with Carole Corbeil in the Toronto Star but she does make some original points -- but most of the breed are boorish and pusillanimous. Their socialist lustre amounts to refusing to wear ties at dinner parties where they receive newspaper awards from their friends.

Of the humorous columns, the Toronto Star offers what seems like dozens; but Joey Slinger is the only writer of the kind in any way worth reading, with most of the others being of the "Please love me, please. I'm sensitive. Look, I'm going to make a joke about rednecks" ilk. Humour requires a willingness to outrage. Niceness is rarely amusing, particularly a politically correct niceness. We also have that most Canadian species, the Doolittle columnist who is part fiscal conservative, part social liberal. There are several of these creatures about, loath to lose their chances of an Order of Canada or a seat on a Canada Council jury.

Then there are a handful of columnists who write for the Sun chain, Maclean's or the Financial Post who refuse to tread the accepted Canadian line, and one or two other writers spread out in the West and in the Maritime provinces who occasionally restore one's faith in individuality and principle. Sadly they are few, and they do themselves no good with those in the media with money and influence.

Somebody once wrote to me about my column in Books in Canada complaining that I was tendentious. The belief that columns should not be calculated to promote a particular cause or viewpoint is astounding. My correspondent, who is probably far from untypical, thinks that columns have to be objective, in the centre, balanced. What nonsense. I have suffered petitions against me at the Globe and Mail, threats of murder, attempts to have me fired from magazines and television stations. It is how it is meant to be. I am succeeding. The worst fate for any columnist is to be ignored, the second most dire is to have myriad letters of support sent to the editor. The job of the columnist is not to comfort. John Wilkes, he of 18th-century sedition, was obliged to flee England to protect his life. His sin was to write that liberty was everything. He'd barely get an immigration hearing in modem Canada.

We'd do well to remember the sneering advice given by the Duke of Wellington to a would-be blackmailer: "Publish and be damned." Advice to any self-respecting columnist: publish and damn them.

Michael Coren's latest book is The Man Who Created Narnia (Lester).