Spectator

Posts with category ‘American Election’


How Mark Steyn got Canada on the cover of the New York Times

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Whenever our home and native land gets a mention in the mighty New York Times, we feel that concomitant frisson of recognition. For a moment, we’re a little closer to the centre of things. Today we made the front page above the fold, and not in a way that was especially flattering. The subject, in part, is the discrimination complaint before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal involving a piece Mark Steyn wrote for Maclean’s. I’ve written before about this sorry situation and expressed my opinion that the sooner we put paid to this sort of frivolous prosecution, the better. While Times legal reporter Adam Liptak takes seriously the Supreme Court’s efforts to balance speech rights with other societal concerns, he appears to imply that the situation in B.C. is the bridge too far. His argument, after the jump.

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New York’s newspaper war shifts its battleground from Manhattan to Myanmar

In keeping a weather eye on the ongoing newspaper war over New York, today’s front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are instructive. The Journal, given its earlier deadlines, led with the Myanmar cyclone and, for cover art, used a map to illustrate the extent of the damage. The Times split its headlines between last night’s primaries and the cyclone, giving more coverage to the former and devoting its art to Obama and Clinton. Initially, it bothered me that the Times would give more prime real estate to a parochial political story. Then I got into their coverage and my head turned round.

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Rays of sanity in an otherwise crazy campaign

A few days ago, in response to my post on the Clinton-Obama debate in Philadelphia, the following note from Princeton politics professor Peter Meyers was forwarded to me. It read in part:

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Hillary Clinton: one part Susan B. Anthony, one part Carly Simon and one part Joe McCarthy

In the aftermath of what was, by just about anybody’s estimation, a rout of Barack Obama in Wednesday night’s primary debate, Hillary Clinton moved to the horsey hills of Philadelphia college country to conduct a town hall in front of an adoring crowd at Haverford College (the oldest college of Quaker origin in the United States—who knew?). Hillary kicked back in front of a mostly female audience, sharing a stage with her mother and daughter and, for the better part of 90 minutes, conducted a sisterly love-in whose subtext was “Sisters, we certainly kicked some ass last night.”

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Dispatches from the surreal calamity of last night’s Democratic leadership debate

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Last night, in a massive Philadelphia museum devoted to the American Constitution, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hammered away at each other—gladiators in the great Democratic political contest. The debate itself, part of the run-up to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, took place in a smallish TV theatre and was moderated by ABC correspondents Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Outside that small room, though, in a massive cathedral of spin, looking out 30-foot-high windows at Independence Hall, a thousand journos banged away at laptops, murmured into microphones and adjusted their ties and blouses before the camera. This horde represented an array of newspapers, Web sites, blogs, and radio and TV stations bearing a Dadaesque constellation of acronyms from throughout the world—ABC, NBC, CBS, WLS, WLAY, WABC, WDKA, WSYR, BBC, CNN, C-SPAN—most of which were repeated out along 6th Street, where satellite trucks stretched into the distance like a futuristic trailer park and news helicopters floated above. It was American madness pure and thick, and I wandered through it, as Leonard Cohen would say, like a lost Canadian.

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The Rezko affair resurfaces after testimony about Obama and Auchi

You may remember that, five weeks ago, I wondered out loud why one of Rupert Murdoch’s lead investigative reporters, The Times of London’s James Bone, was sniffing around the Chicago corruption trial of Obama fundraiser Tony Rezko. Moreover, I linked Rezko to the Iraqi-born British billionaire/Bond villain Nadhmi Auchi. Murdoch had, at one time, thrown in his lot with Hillary Clinton and I put two and two together. Now, you may also remember that hard on the heels of that post came not one but two missives from Bone asserting that, in linking his reporting to Murdoch’s political interests, your loyal correspondent was full of shit.

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Mark Penn’s sleaze machine links Clinton to Canada

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Yesterday’s coverage of Hillary Clinton tossing her chief strategist, Mark Penn, includes—shock of shocks—a Canadian angle. Penn, acting in his role as CEO of global flacks Burson-Marsteller, was jettisoned for personally servicing a contract with the Colombian government that would help grease the wheels for a pending free trade deal with the States (a deal that Hillary, in an effort to suck up to working-class voters, has repudiated vociferously). Turns out that Burson-Marsteller is the same outfit that contracted with a Canadian company, Spin Master (yes, that’s really their name), to do damage control over a toy they were distributing.

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The myna bird call of Barbara Amiel

Barbara Amiel’s latest pensée in the pages of Maclean’s—besides perfunctory references to her new dog and the shortcomings of Barack Obama—contains a sentence that reminded me of something I’d read before. Now, usually when my memory is jogged like this, it means Amiel is repeating something penned earlier by her own good self, since doctrinal and rhetorical inconsistency aren’t among Lady Black’s more evident sins. Not this time, however. The recollection bothered me enough that I followed my nose—and voila!

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American election predictions from Conrad Black

The Globe reported on its Web site yesterday that Lord Black of Crossharbour has sent a Dear Paul letter to Paul Waldie (the Globe’s lead Conrad reporter), assuring him that, despite his current condition, he continues to assert his stalwart, undying commitment to being, well, himself.

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Conrad Black ignored by the OSC, embraced by the New York Sun

Sure it’s well worn, but to my mind it forever bears repetition: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Karl Marx certainly knew a thing or two about capitalism’s foibles didn’t he? Just ask Conrad Black. There he sits in a tropical hoosegow, and still the poor guy has to fend off the Ontario Securities Commission, which, having deferred to just about every American regulatory body save the Nevada State Gaming Commission, has postponed—yet again—a hearing into the malfeasances of Hollinger Inc et al.

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Clinton, Obama, McCain star in Sheila Heti’s presidential dream team

I’m in New Jersey at the moment, preparing to gorge myself on a revealing slice of the American political pie. Before I get started, though, I thought I’d try a Canadian appetizer—a phenomenon affecting in a minor key the political scene down here. I speak of Sheila Heti, the whimsical Toronto novelist and all-around cultural entrepreneur whose blogs I Dream of Barack, I Dream of Hillary and I Dream of McCain have generated a mountain of press down here. Heti transcribes, more or less verbatim, the nocturnal imaginings of her readers and turns them into blog posts describing dreams of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain. These dreams are not of the political variety—or at least not as “politics” is conventionally understood. To wit:

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John Ibbitson flaunts knowledge of NAFTA, human condition

In this the most compelling political season in recent American history, the powers that be at The Globe and Mail have as their man in Washington (and further afield) the hard-working and, for the most part, balanced John Ibbitson. He is the quintessential “Globe man”: fiscally conservative and progressive on social issues. Another quality he shares with the Globe is rampaging self-importance. Wednesday, Ibbitson chastised The New York Times’ lead political columnist, David Brooks, for failing to grasp the central importance of Barack Obama’s campaign. Details, such as they are, after the jump.

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