Word comes of an offer from the
CIC to settle the Macleans/Steyn human rights complaint. The press release is
here, and
Warren has some speculation as to what's in the offer. It will be interesting to see whether Macleans takes the deal or decides to fight on.
Kay suggests that, for purely commercial reasons, Macleans will choose the latter course as this issue has served to give them credibility among Conservative readers.
I'm not so sure. As I say, outside the blogosphere, I don't think this issue has any profile at all. If it has had an effect on Macleans' circulation, I imagine this can be measured in dozens of copies. In any case, taking Macleans down the same diasastrous path as the National Post, which has managed to make itself the national newspaper for about
2/3rds of the nation, is surely a dangerous strategy.
11 comments:
as this issue has served to give them credibility among Conservative readers.
Well, I guess it has to find credibility somewhere...too bad it's not possible on the basis of journalistic good practice alone to keep Mark Steyn on the Wingnut Welfare rolls.
Most sensible people starting hating Mark Steyn long before he got on the Islamophobia/America-Under-Siege/Wither the Manly Anglosphere? bandwagon to resurrect his sagging fortunes, so I guess MacLean's should thank the HRC for providing an excuse to manufacture some kind of virtue for the sad old presstitute.
"In any case, taking Macleans down the same diasastrous path as the National Post, which has managed to make itself the national newspaper for about 2/3rds of the nation, is surely a dangerous strategy."
As opposed to their affirmative action strategy, which is pure genius. Genius, as in sending boy-hating grrrrrl blogger Kady O'Malley to cover the CHRC hearing and in the process producing the single worst piece of journalism in recent memory.
For every subscription the CHRC gong show has gained Maclean's, I assure you Kady O'Malley generates two cancellations. Her writing was so bad that a number of feminist bloggers criticized her, which is very unusual for The Sisterhood.
The magazine is as red as it gets. Wells is red, Coyne is red, the females are all red, even the ostensibly conservative columnists are crypto-red. They embarrassed themselves during the Conrad trial by acting as his PR firm.
The magazine is stupid - talking down to stupid. And it is as Liberal as it gets. Two good reasons why Canadians hate it.
Wells is red, Coyne is red, the females are all red, even the ostensibly conservative columnists are crypto-red.
Yeesh. I can imagine what this lunatic thinks isn't red.
The National Review is about the only thing I can refer to in polite company, and it's a racist rag, as well as being stupid.
"The National Review"
Founded by CIA agent Bill Buckley as a vehicle for crypto-Trotskyists such as Bill Krystol to infiltrate the conservative movement? No thanks. It is a neo-con, which is to say extremely left wing, publication, and as such not appropriate for adults.
Didja see Steve Sailer re-discovered a letter to the editor of TNR he sent as a precocious 13 year old in 1973? Pretty cool to see he was a wonk from the get go.
Anyway, there are two men on the planet to whom I defer: Steve Sailer and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. You want to know what a conservative is? Take a look at those two men, those are real conservatives right there.
Interesting to hear that Coyne, et. al. are "red"...
The fact of the matter is that ostensibly "consservative" publications have been money losers and/or their circulation much smaller than those with a more balanced or left-leaning editorial approach. It would be difficult to understand Macleans deliberately taking a hard-right turn just to satisfy the likes of "fakename".
You want to know what a conservative is? Take a look at those two men, those are real conservatives right there.
Ok, so you don't really know what conservative means. Why don't you just admit that and instead of bibbling away like cocaine addict?
Other than "just plain stupid," no one else seems to know what it means either so it's not like you'd be a lonely voice or anything.
You probably can't define conservatism without invoking a marxist, an ideological socialist or a dissident from those two, so it's obvious that there is no definition from first principles.
Go back to the real definition: cautious, temperate, respect for traditions and institutions, culturally chauvinistic (with a deep understanding and appreciation for the culture's highest achievements)...you know, that kind of thing.
Misogyny is profoundly unconservative, by the way.
I've found the satirical press in this country to be sufficient to my needs, no matter which party is in power :-) Re-incorporating every two weeks and retaining proper, well connected legal counsel goes a long way in producing a superior product.
Regardless one's POV, if you can't see that Ms. O'Malley's stuff on the Khadr hearings today was the kind of bloggodomoriffic stuff that actually means something, well......
.
The biggest losers in this whole issue has been the various HRCs.
Time to give TiGuy the lesson in conservatism he so desperately craves:
The Next Conservatism
By rejecting ideology and embracing “retroculture,” the Right can recover itself and perhaps reverse America’s decline.
by Paul M. Weyrich and William S. Lind
...
Real conservatism rejects all ideologies, recognizing them as armed cant. In their place, it offers a way of life built upon customs, traditions, and habits—themselves the products of the experiences of many generations. Because people are capable of learning over time, when they may do so in a specific, continuous cultural setting, the conservative way of life comes to reflect the prudential virtues: modesty, the dignity of labor, conservation and saving, the importance of family and community, personal duties and obligations, and caution in innovation.
...
Cultural Marxists have largely captured the powers of the state and use those powers to force their ideology through government policies from affirmative action to public-school curricula to the imposition of feminism on America’s Armed Forces. This points to the third thing the next conservatism must do: restore the American Republic by stripping the state of culturally Marxist ideology in all its dimensions.
A Republic devoted to liberty imposes no ideology on its citizens. The government has no business mandating diversity of races or sexes in hiring or school admissions, or forcing the armed services to make women into fighter pilots and ship captains, or “celebrating” homosexuality in the workplace, or any of the other myriad of actions the state now takes to impose political correctness.
...
In summary, then, the next conservatism as we envision it is cultural conservatism, with an agenda both cultural and political, and activity both within and beyond the political process.
...
What sort of specifics might the next conservative agenda include? Clearly some elements carry over from the current conservative agenda. The next conservatism still opposes abortion and supports traditional marriage. It seeks further cuts in marginal tax rates, though it insists on spending cuts as well, and a balanced federal budget. It wants a strong national defense, including missile defense.
It demands effective control of our borders, elimination of illegal immigration, a reduction in legal immigration, and effective acculturation of recent immigrants. English should become America’s official language, the only language in which any government business may be conducted.
But the next conservatism also looks to new situations.
Its agenda should include the abandonment of a Wilsonian foreign policy, which is promoted by neoconservatives and neoliberals alike, and a return to a policy based on America’s concrete interests. Following the disaster of the war in Iraq, the American people may again be open to a non-interventionist foreign policy, as advocated more than half a century ago by Sen. Robert A. Taft. The next conservatism should explain that a realistic foreign policy is not isolationism, which is a bogeyman invented by globalists. America was never Japan under the Bakufu. Rather, through most of our history we related to the rest of the world, actively and successfully, through the private means of trade and ideas rather than by playing the game of Great Power. The Founders warned that we could either preserve liberty at home or seek Great Power status but not both. The next conservatism prefers liberty to the trappings of empire.
http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_02_12/index1.html
I stopped reading at "Paul M. Weyrich." What did I tell you about going beyond "just plain stupid?"
Just because someone labels a complex set of social realities (that have always existed, Mr. Conservative), laws, policies and initiatives "cultural Marxism," doesn't make that person smart. In fact, it makes him or her sound irrational. And anyone associated with Dominionism has nothing to offer about the perils of ideology.
He can be forgiven because he's a brainless (and no doubt bourbon-addled) Yankee Doodle, but that's as far as I'm willing to go.
I doubt any sensible conservative associates true conservatism with American Republicanism and Paul Weyrich's armed ideological cant.
Post a Comment