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Warrior queens and blind critics | Robin Rowland
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/features/kingarthur/
“Across North America, the film critics have largely scoffed at the premise – Arthur as a Dark Age cavalry commander – and in that they have revealed a collective failure of basic journalism: accurate reporting.”

In advertising, the Scots are hot | Dan Brown
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/features/scots_advertising/
“It’s hard not to notice how many television commercials have Scottish characters in them these days. From the guy who gets perturbed at bar patrons who don’t treat Keith’s beer with respect to the impossibly small spokesman for Kellogg’s to the tight-fisted uncle in the Money Mart spots, the Scots are currently the most overrepresented minority in TV advertising. It’s hard not to notice these characters for one simple reason: they yell a lot. In fact, they behave exactly as non-Scottish people expect the Scottish to behave: they’re quick to anger and slow to spend money. They’re stereotypes, in other words.”

Artorius Rex | Timothy Comeau
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/commentary/2004/07/artorius-rex_07.html
“What the reviews of King Arthur are failing to acknowledge – for no other reason than the apparent ignorance of the critics (otherwise I feel they should clarify their criticism with this knowledge) is that any one who has looked into this story knows, it was made up in the late Medieval Era, and further, was made up as Kingly Propaganda. It would be as if the President of the United States, seeking to assert a dictatorship, had someone write a story connecting his bloodline to the throne of England, and somehow made it seem that the Revolutionary War ended in a treaty of peace with a country later renamed Airstrip One. […] We should be aware that the ‘fictionalization’ of history has for most centuries been exactly how that field was conducted. Based on hearsay and rumour, people would write down what they’d heard – and what they heard may have included heavy doses of speculation. An oral history got taken up by Homer and turned into the Illiad; Edward I, wanting to legitimize his reign, took up the oral history of Arthur and began the process that would lead to Malory. Fictional history has for centuries also served as ‘practical history’ that is, what most people are exposed to and use in their lives, to whatever extant that history proves useful. Shakespeare’s History Plays were not going to be cross-referenced and looked into by the 16th Century audiences. They paid their penny and left the theatre knowing more about the past then they had when they’d entered.”

Canada’s Angry Scotsman | Timothy Comeau
http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/commentary/2004/03/canadas-angry-scotsman.html
“I’m currently a little tired of overhearing aggressive Scotsman on TV. There is currently an angry Scotsman on commercials for Alexander Keith’s, Kellog’s Nutra-Grain Mini-Bites and Money Mart. What’s horrible about them all is that they all seem based on Mike Myers’ ‘If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!’ skit from his SNL days over ten years ago, and expanded upon in his 1993 film, So I Married an Ax Murderer. The angry Scottish father’s rant about his son’s big head is lifted almost verbatim in the Mini-Bites commercial. ”