Saturday Morning Links

Assorted material for your weekend reading.

- Paul Wells puts his observations about Stephen Harper's inexplicable warnings about Canada's eventual disappearance into column form. But I have to wonder whether Harper is really just taking the logical next step in non-specific right-wing messaging: rather than limiting his scope to a war on, say, "terror" to justify a perpetual focus on the security state rather than social priorities, doesn't it make some sense to simply declare pre-emptive and permanent war on that which we might someday see fit (or be convinced) to fear?

- Chris Selley dares Sun Media to be honest about following a gutter press model:

I’d vastly prefer if the irrepressibly malevolent energy behind this style of journalism was directed at unearthing scandals that matter, instead of which bottle-fed twit on the England starting 11 cheated with another one’s wife. But at least it has the courage of its lack of convictions. There was something very out of character about the Sun printing the Duchess’s behind -and the accompanying article and explanations (“bathing suits show off more”) suggest it knows it.

Running a tabloid is an inherently contradictory exercise. You have to sell prurience and abhor it at the same time. And the Canadian Sun papers abhor it too much, I think, to peddle it convincingly. The Sun used to have a page-three girl in a bathing suit. Now she’s way back behind the sports section. The Daily Star’s page-three girl is still on page three, and she usually topless -and even the Daily Star didn’t use as revealing a shot of the Duchess as the Sun did.

Embrace the trash or don’t, I say. If you want to win like Rupert Murdoch, turn off the brain, aim for the gutter and put the pedal down.

- But then, Rick Salutin points out that Canada already doesn't have much to crow about from a media perspective:

Can we declare a moratorium on Canadian Schadenfreude over Rupert Murdoch and his British tabs? They deserve what they're getting and more. But it tends to conceal the mote in our own eye.

What mote is that? Jonathan Schell in the The Nation (and reprinted in the Star) says the Murdoch papers "replaced" the noble aims of journalism with "titillation and gossip." Try not to think of Canadian coverage of the royal tour last week when you read that, I dare you. It was all T&G all the time. The CBC was the worst and it lacks even the excuse of needing to maximize profits for shareholders. Now, with the royals departed, it's still hard to find much on CBC news.

What about the Murdochian impulse to control politics along a right-wing axis? Well, the National Post was clearly created in 1998 to push Canadian journalism rightward and has had smashing success. In last May's election, every daily in Canada, except the Star and the smallish Le Devoir, endorsed Stephen Harper. Even in the last U.K. election you didn't get such uniformity.

I repeat: In a pissing contest, the Murdoch tabs win. They piss farthest and foulest. But we're only talking quantity at that point.

- Finally, the widespread exposure of the American Legislative Exchange Council is well worth watching in tracing the spread of regressive legislation throughout the U.S. But the example of corporate-written bills being delivered to legislators for immediate passage also looks to be one to keep in mind in assessing the actions of right-wing governments in Canada.