Why I Don't Pay For Newspapers

So, the Globe & Mail paid lots of young 'uns to hand out special US election editions of their paper. (Paid for with help from the fine people at Nissan!) So, right from the start I'm thinking that one reason I don't buy the Globe is because they don't have the sense to know that this is one of the most farcical, stupid, bullshit elections the world has ever seen. (It's on a par with the goddamned Rob Ford vs. George Smitherman festival of futility.) But let's go through it, shall we, and see why it's indicative of the reasons why I don't bother to shell-out my hard-earned clams for any of Canada's mainstream newspapers.

It begins with the President of Nissan Canada gettting the first word. The inside cover is an advertisement! Some ghost-written public relations crapola I'm not even going to bother to read.

The real fun begins with "The view from up North" by Editor-in-Chief John Stackhouse, which is evidently some sort of self-serving self-promotion that I also have no interest in.

Page five is more navel-gazing, as three Globe correspondents in the field answering questions about their stories from Globe's Foreign Editor Craig Offman:

"Adam, how is Mitt Romney spending the last days of his campaign?"

I'm not interested.

"Patrick, what's Obama planning in Ohio?"

Who cares?

Seriously. Who gives a flying fuck? Barack Obama is a fraud. A Wall Street shill. A war criminal and a betrayer. Mitt Romney is a flake. A moron. He made his fortune throwing people out of work as a vulture capitalist who now stomps around the country blaming Obama for not giving people jobs. He calls 47% of his fellow citizens as dependent losers. Why such a specific number? Because evidently 47% of US Americans are too poor to pay taxes. Romney didn't pay taxes for over ten years himself, but whatever.

Then we get a big, two-page spread, featuring image of the two contenders facing-off in front of their parties' respective colours. "Big Picture: America faces its future."

America's choice on Tuesday is not just betwen one man whose struggle with the economy disappointed so many and another man who has shed so many political skins. As Affan Chowdhry and John Ibbitson observe, this is an election about two starkly different Americas, either one of which could transform the country and the world.

 I don't know who Affan Chowdhry is. (He must have arrived after I'd given up on the Globe.) But John Ibbitson is a stupid hack. (By that I mean he's a stupid man who also happens to be a shameless political hack. Dude has a man-crush on tottering tower of shit stephen harper.)

"Two starkly different Americas" 'eh? Let's see; When Obama took over from bush II, Wall Street criminals had sunk the economy, the US was mired in two conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the country had disgraced itself by embracing torture as an interrogation tactic. Now, ... uh, ... well isn't it self-evident that very little has changed? Obama got the troops out of Iraq according to  bush II's schedule, after evidence of US war crimes lost him any chance of realizing his goal of keeping them there longer. (The Maliki government would have allowed them to stay, but without legal immunity.)

John Ibbitson might genuinely believe that the differences between these two servants of the financial sector are "stark" but that's why I said he was a stupid man.

There's another two-page spread called "The deciding votes" and it's about the various demographic groups who the two fraudsters are seeking to woo, with all sorts of handy graphics to help you figure out why a member of one of these groups might be conned into voting one way or the other.

Then, for some reason, there's a photo-spread about Williston North Dakota. They struck oil there and a lot of people went to look for jobs in the otherwise depressed US economy. Go figure, these folks like the carbon economy and don't like Obama, who is less delusional than Mitt Romney about global warming. Truck driver Paul Whitcomb doesn't like tree-huggers:

He's leaning Republican, and has a warning for environmentalists who may come to Williston: "People will probably want to tie you to one of the trees you wanna hug."

Ha-ha-ha! What a kidder! Of course, maybe us regular folks should talk that away about these oil industry parasites. Maybe we'd get more of a hearing for our views if people knew how upset we are about how they're putting civilization at risk for their own pecuniary self-interest. (I know, I know. Some environmentalists do talk that way already. Only when they say it, it's not received with a chuckle about the common sense of the salt of the earth. When a greenie talks like that, he or she is condemned for being an unhinged, eco-radical: evidence of the fanatical and authoritarian zeal at the heart of everyone whose concern for the planet goes beyond lip-service.

Page 14 is all about "The swing states." In US-American politics, some states (and their electoral college votes) have a habit of vacillating back-and-forth between the two bullshit parties. As such, the candidates spend extra time and devotion wooing these ... I can't be bothered to write about it anymore.

Page 16 has a feature on "Hispanic Voters: In a state of flux." Obama has deported way more Latinos than even bush II did. But he also cynically halted the deportation of young "illegals" right before the election, with the proviso that they tell the authorities who and where they are so that they can be threatened with deportation all the easier afterwards. As such, Latino voters have a hard time choosing between which piece-of-shit to vote for. Since it's pretty much a wash as to which of them is worse, they often make their choices based on their ignorant, misinformed views on other topics. Take, for example, "Javier Barajas, 54, owner of Lindo Michoacan restaurant. 'The biggest mistake the President made was to give all the money to the banks and the insurance companies.'" [Hey! Not bad Mr. Barajas!] ... Mr. Barajas, who believes too many social programs dull ambition, thinks Mr. Romney would be a superior manager of the eoconomy, and motivate people to become more entrepreneurial." [BLAT!!! Oh! I'm sorry Mr. Barajas. But we have some lovely parting gifts for you!]

Seriously! I wonder if Mr. Barajas ever sits up at night pondering why Latin America isn't an economic paradise, what with the paucity of social programs and the subsequent explosion of entrepreneurial energies?

Page 18 has "EXPATS: Two stark options for one great problem." Basically, the Globe and Mail "hit upon an idea" ... they'd ask some Canadian ex-pats who they liked and why. But I didn't feel like reading about what some strangers on the street in Anytown USA thought. (Although it's not like I cared what John Ibbitson had to think either!)

Uh-oh! Another face-off! "The Case for Barack Obama" vs. "The case for Mitt Romney." The former is argued by Michael Ignatieff, the latter by Paul Wolfowitz. Two shit-heads who thought invading Iraq for its non-existent WMDs was a good idea. What diversity! And, while I normally don't trash people for being wrong once, you'd have to admit that a "mistake" (OOOPS!) that ended up killing over one-million people while devastating the lives of ten million more (OOOPS!) is kinda unforgiveable, y'know?

Argh! I'm getting tired! We're almost done though. The Report on Business has a section on the economic significance of the election for Canada which was done well I suppose. Then there's a story about the impact of the debates which I skimmed because I think the whole process was a sham. Then there's a "Partisan's guide to following the action" wherein leftists are told they can watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC or Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on the Comedy Network. I suppose I could stomach those voices if I (for some inexplicable reason) decided to break down and watch the pointless pageantry of it all.

The middle is represented by airheads Diane Sawyer (who must have really gifted cosmetic surgeons and make-up people) and Anderson Cooper (whose physique keeps him from looking really funny looking).

If you're a psychotic idiot with a lot of sexual hang-ups and/or racist tendencies, you can apparently watch slimeball Karl Rove and airhead (and former MuchMusic VJ!) John Roberts on FOX, or wingnut welfare recipient Ezra Levant on the I Forget It's Name News Network. ('All the other channels are in the tank for the Obama campaign,' [I Forget] personality Ezra Levant declares in a promotional ...") Yeah, whatever.

And now you know why I don't pay for newspapers anymore.