Wednesday, October 31, 2012

What Can You Say?

The theme this week and for the foreseeable future is Canada's putrid political culture. Today's morning heave came from the homepage of the Toronto Star. If you don't know already, the Toronto Star is joining the Globe & Mail by going behind a paywall. I have no intention of reading this stupid article (not even for the shits n' giggles that are no doubt inside) because to do so would be a waste of time. But it's an opinion piece by Rosie DiManno, justifying the move, entitled: "DiManno: Star introduces digital subscription because it costs big bucks to put out a decent paper." The teaser on the Star's homepage goes on ... "As readers slag the Star for putting a price on its website, remember that quality writing and reporting are not free."

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Personally, I think there's lots of damn fine journalists and opinion writers in Canada's newspapers. But there's also a lot of partisan hackery. FWIW the Globe & Mail has more useless fossils and imbeciles cluttering up its editorial pages than does the Star. And it's gotten to the point where I simply don't feel like shelling out money to subsidize Jeffrey Simpson, Marcus Gee, Margaret Wente or Rosie DiManno.

Think about that for a second newspaper owners. It ain't that I'm an internet reader who refuses to pay for dead-tree versions of newspapers because I expect everything to be free. I used to subscribe to newspapers in the past and I would again, were it not for the fact that you have so many shitty writers and such disgusting politics.

For Rosie DiManno in particular to pontificate about how good, quality material doesn't come cheap, is the height of irony. And, no, ... it's not that I disagree with her (which is my right as a person and a consumer making choices about where to spend my money). It's that this is a writer who thinks that our occupation of Afghanistan, where we bombed villages to smithereens, worked alongside hunter-killer squads and rapists and torturers, to enforce the rule of a warlord government of thieves and pedophiles, was worthwhile because the Canadian Forces had learned to fight again. (!)

And that blather of insanity wasn't an isolated brain-fart. DiManno routinely spews out noxious idiocy. She's actually the main reason I dropped my subscription. When you people are counting your subscribers in the thousands, the fact that you deliberately alienate thousands of progressive Canadians like me ought to make you reconsider your loyalty to this incoherent, ranting fool.

2 comments:

Owen Gray said...

It's all rather depressing, thwap.

thwap said...

Ain't that the truth?