The notion that Roger Ebert has finally figured out how to monetize his writings on the internet by charging $5 a year to join The Ebert Club has only enhanced his hero status, after the Oprah appearance that affirmed he hopes to be tweeting for the long haul, despite the Esquire profile that implied he was running out of time. Moreover, the waves of Ebert affection have extended to writers revealing how encouraging he was of their journalism aspirations, whether a reply he wrote to an inquisitive letter from the teenage girl who grew up to be Slate film critic Dana Stevens, or personal encouragement of University of Illinois Will Leitch — who later wrote a webzine story ridiculing Ebert, and this week expressed over 2,500 words of regret. So, there’s another legacy being left here, with advice for anyone who’s managed to sustain a career in media: don’t be a paranoid jerk to those who express a genuine interest in doing the kind of things you do. Ebert’s encouragement can also be glimpsed in the list of just 53 people he follows on Twitter out of nearly 100,000 now following him: movie-obsessed Toronto bloggers Jenna Rocca, and Grace Wang. The latter’s site, Etheriel Musings, was highlighted by Ebert last September: “You sense no angst or hesitation in her prose,” he wrote. “It sparkles like conversation.” Subsequently, he posted a short story from Wang, and gave her a guest post to impart thoughts about The Hurt Locker. Rocca left a comment on the post about Ebert’s favourite blogs, encouraging him to check hers out, and he did. “I don’t think you understand how amazing you are. Or maybe you do and I’m just a silly fangirl,” she fawned on Ebert’s blog in January. His reply: “Anyone who can put together a blog like yours is far, far beyond silly fangirldom.”

The biggest star to appear at the Stage West Dinner Theatre since “Doc” from The Love Boat starred in Viagra Falls last fall is the actress who played the first of The Facts of Life girls to lose her virginity. Per the review of Glorious! in The Mississauga News: “I have no idea if Mindy Cohn can really sing — her bio doesn’t indicate any musicals — but when it comes to singing badly, she’s terrific.” Not that the actress formerly known as Natalie — now typecast as Velma in recent Scooby-Doo cartoons — is ungrateful to play the role of delusional socialite Florence Foster Jenkins: “I’ll go anywhere for a good part, hence I’m now in a hotel in beautiful Mississauga,” Cohn confessed to the National Post last month. “It’s a bit frustrating because in New York, people go anywhere to see a play, but in Toronto, not as many residents come up this way.” So, she went down to The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulous. Mostly, he wanted to know what Cohn thought of former co-star George Clooney. Quite politely, she told Strombo to stuff it, forcing him to rephrase: “At the time … can you … can, I’m sure you had a lot of people who weren’t famous at the time, and you don’t have to throw them under the bus, but I’m just curious — can you sense when somebody’s got something, an ability to transcend, and you say, ‘That person’s going to go on …’?” Still, in the end, Cohn had his number: “You smell really good,” she blurted out. Strombo fended her off by explaining he slept on his office couch that morning. But, just like Mrs. Garrett would have wanted, she remained utterly undeterred: “I am trying to get a date out of this, you know that, right?”

Sharon Dunn, hired at age 22 in 1976 to anchor the nightly news at CBC in Halifax, got an assigment from Maclean’s last week to wonder where the female anchors are: “Wendy Mesley, come on down”. And while Katie Couric stopped being considered a laughing stock on the CBS Evening News, her Canadian critic is unkind: “She resembles a deer in the headlights, looking a bit propped-up, like a puppet on a string, unsure of what her next move will be.” Dunn is more generous toward the new occupant of the ABC World News desk, Diane Sawyer. The point she wants to make is that Peter Mansbridge can become some kind of national feminist hero — like when Knowlton Nash gave his gig to CBS-courted Mansbridge in 1988 — by stepping aside in favour of his ex-wife of 20 years ago: “Crusty old judges and mean-spirited spinsters all like Mesley. A modern day Mary Tyler Moore — warm and human, making the occasional flub, as she tilts her head one way, then the other with that disarming grin, anchor Mesley keeps gaining fans,” Dunn writes. “Let’s face it, there’s just something about Wendy that makes you want to watch her — she’s interesting, and she has that mass appeal that can move mountains.” Yet, after last October’s premiere of the revamped standing format of The National, when Mesley was widely ridiculed for a report where she donned an H1N1 survival suit in public, her recurring reports have apparently eased up on the stunts — and you never hear a word about them. Funnily, the argument from Dunn reinforces that CTV’s stalwart Lloyd Robertson — at age 76, nearly 15 years older than Mansbridge — is not considerably overdue for retirement.

There was once a time when Ann Coulter was regarded as an incendiary commentator with clout: like when she said on Fox News in November 2004 that Canada is “lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.” But since that polemic seems played out south of the border, she might as well pick up a few cheques for spouting off here, with her March appearances in London, Ottawa and Calgary — a Toronto-area visit, however, will be limited to appearing for an hour with Michael Coren on CTS-TV. Human rights commission punching bag Ezra Levant will be introducing Coulter at each stop, although loyal readers of his blog are not entirely thrilled with the association, regarding her as a venomous relic of the George W. Bush years; Levant tries countering this by posting a YouTube of her speech from last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., with a reminder that you can join him, and her, at a private VIP reception before the talks — which are free for students at each university campus courtesy of two sympathetic think tanks, the International Free Press Society and the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. Five years ago, when she was on the cover of TIME magazine and discussed how she once had a Muslim boyfriend, it seemed Coulter stood half a chance of transitioning from a radical-right ranter to a fortysomething single woman willing to relate how her political philosophy was shaped by personal pathologies — then another lanky blonde, Elizabeth Gilbert, swooped down to serve that crowd with the book Eat, Pray Love. But instead, her legacy in this land remains shaped by a 2005 interview on CBC’s The Fifth Estate, where host Bob McKeown disabused her belief that Canada should have been fighting in Iraq because they helped in Vietnam. Her parting words: “Well, I’ll get back to you on that.”