Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Pandering to the commonweal.


The similarities here are just a bit creepy. First, we have the Canadian wankersphere, getting little woodies over the fact that one of their heroes, Mark Steyn, had an opinion piece in today's Globe and Mail although there doesn't appear to be even a single reference to that piece from their web site, even to list it as a print-only article. And it's not at all clear whether this is a one-off piece, or the first of a regular series.

At the same time, in a weird bit of synchronicity, we have this:

'Wash Post' Launches Conservative Blog, Provokes a 'Firestorm'

During the recent controversy surrounding Dan Froomkin's blog at The Washington Post, editors not only decided to clearly label his column "opinion" but also to make an effort to hire a conservative blogger to balance his alleged liberal slant.

Today, the Post launched the result: A new blog called "Red America," created by Ben Domenech, co-founder of RedState, a popular community blog.

It immediately set off what Post political reporter Tom Edsall called a "firestorm" in his online chat today.

A former contributing editor to National Review Online, Domenech later became what he calls "the youngest political appointee of President George W. Bush." After a stint as chief speechwriter for Texas Senator John Cornyn, he became a book editor at Regnery Publishing, where he worked with Michelle Malkin and others.

Now, one can sort of understand the Globe/Steyn decision. Given a new CPC government, it seems like a reaonable marketing move to give extra space to a right-wing contributor.

But that doesn't explain the Post's thought that, in the midst of tanking GOP popularity down south, what they really needed was to lean even further to the right. What the hell are these folks thinking? And I use the word "thinking" in its loosest sense.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well I can confirm that Steyn has an op ed piece in today's Globe. It appears it's about how invading Iraq was the right thing to do -at least that's what I gather from the title, which is as far as I got. I don't actually have the intestinal fortitude to read Steyn's drivel -if I did I'd be a subscriber to the National Post.

Apparently differentiating itself from the competition isn't exactly a high priority at the Globe.

Simon said...

I read the whole thing. It's ugly, ugly stuff.

I can't decide whether my favourite part is when Steyn claims that the invasion & occupation has SAVED 100,000 Iraqi lives, or when he claims that, for him, it was "never" about the WMDs.

Cue the right wing wanker talking point that the entire WMD rationale was irrelevant. In all seriousness, what is wrong with these people??

Anonymous said...

*Shudder* Mark Steyn makes me sick. What was fun, however, was tearing apart his "Demography" peice in my Critical and Logical thinking class at my (onoes! Liberal Biased!) University.

I love that the whole righty-blogger thing blew up in the WaPo's collective face though.