journal
Permanent vacation
Right, I’ve had enough. The headlines that warning of some sort of impending Gay!Invasion!; the deliberate factual skewing calculated to disparage liberals (small and big “l”); the minor idiocies like editorials claiming that a paltry $1200 per year is somehow a better option than an expensive national daycare plan, the small-minded readers who write in with their complaints about how the east doesn’t understand the west, yet after the election make pronouncements about Toronto that prove the converse is true as well (I’m speaking collectively), and Shinan Govani.
That’s right, Martin, using the last few brain cells I could muster, I put the National Post on permanent vacation. (I didn’t cancel the subscription outright in the hopes that this would prevent telemarketers from trying to sell me a subscription.) To those of you who persist in reading that newspaper, and even write in to defend a liberal or eastern point of view, I salute you and your stomach lining.
It was an interesting experiment — getting the other national newspaper during the election campaign. I came out of it unscathed, politically speaking, but given that I was raised by a right-wing Albertan I don’t think I gained any new insight into the mind of the typical Conservative Post reader. Except, possibly, that they like to look at pictures of Michael Jackson.
6 Responses to “Permanent vacation”
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1mamacate said on January 26th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Sometimes I watch US TV “news” in an effort to see what the great swath of America is being fed. But when I was subjected to “Private Contractors Outpace Army Corps of Engineers in Katrina Cleanup!” (could it be that the government kept the more difficult jobs? Or that the regulations the government is observing might have something to do with protecting health, safety, and property? NAH! It’s that Dick Cheney’s friends at Halliburton are Much Smarter! And work harder! That’s it!), immediately followed up by the story, and I sh*t you not, “White People Denied Voting Rights in Mississippi,” which I can’t even quote from because, although I did listen long enough to it to get their premise (”Black people–get this–RUN THE TOWN! GASP. Therefore, White people MUST be disenfranchised! Right? Right?”), most of it (and it went on and on and on) was drowned out by the screaming.
I think your mental health will be the better for it. I no longer get all my news from NPR and Jon Stewart. Because now there’s also Stephen Colbert. When we were on vacation in the Adirondacks and got CTV news, it was dreamy. Good Katrina coverage. At least you have alternatives short of Comedy Central.
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2Kristi said on January 26th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
CTV airs The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, back to back starting at midnight. :)
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3Steph said on January 27th, 2006 at 10:27 am
Glad to hear you’ve stopped getting that paper. It sucks.
My answer to telemarketers hawking right wing rags: I’m not interested, I don’t like your crappy newspaper.
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4j. said on January 27th, 2006 at 10:31 am
I had a high school history teacher who claimed that he shut down all newspaper sales calls with a gruff “Don’t want it. Can’t read.”
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5martin m said on January 27th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
good for you!
my mother has the best responce to telemarketeers selling printed media (national post is not news) is: “I’m illiterate”
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6JoVE said on January 27th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Congrats. And Cate should try CBC, because I find the CTV news headlines repulsive. That probably accounts for why my main source of news in the Guardian Weekly. Not much Canadian coverage but good quality news in just the right amount with good analysis.
