Toronto Star explores the life of a 19-year-old woman, for some reason
This morning’s Toronto Star has a huge front-page exclusive: Pierre Trudeau was a bit of a ladies’ man. No, we haven’t travelled back in time to 1971. And yes, the former prime minister had a daughter out of wedlock. The Star apparently did a Google search and found out where she’s going to school, investigated, then published its findings under the headline “Pierre Trudeau’s daughter, Sarah, lives under the radar.” Not anymore, eh, Star?
A brief sample of the kind of news that can be found only in the pages of Canada’s largest daily:
To passersby she’s just another sophomore at one of the world’s most prestigious business schools. To those who know her on campus, she’s not Canadian royalty but the sporty outgoing sorority girl who carries her weight in a backpack filled with economics text books.
By day she hustles around campus in a duffle coat, tuned into her iPhone as she lugs that backpack from class to class.
By night she helps organize parties and fundraising events for her sorority. In her spare time she tends to the books for the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s soccer club. And on occasion she finds time for the odd tennis match.
Teenagers have iPhones? Stop the presses.
No, really, stop the presses. This entire article reads like a regrettable mistake. Not serial-killer-on-the-front-page regrettable, but from beginning to end it’s clear the only reason this girl’s face is being put in the paper is that she’s Trudeau’s daughter—as if that made it self-explanatory.
Anyone can be forgiven for wishing for the era when our politicians were charismatic, exciting and impossible to ignore (these days, top reporters talk about how important apathy is to contemporary politics), but blowing a private person’s life all over the front page for little apparent reason isn’t going to bring those days back, folks.
• Pierre Trudeau’s daughter, Sarah, lives under the radar [Toronto Star]
slow news day? :) fun post.
Thank you. I was aghast at the ridiculousness of the Star’s story.
“To those who know her on campus, she’s not Canadian royalty but the sporty outgoing sorority girl who carries her weight in a backpack filled with economics text books”. Guess what- she’s not Canadian royalty to anyone as far as I know. Just because she’s Trudeau’s daughter, we’re supposed to see her as some sort of princess? Are Justin and Sacha the princes? “If not for her lineage, she would be just another student here. But hers is the untold story of the only daughter of the Northern Magus…” News flash: there is no untold story. She IS just another student there.
Moreover, as a university student myself, I can attest to the fact that pretty much every student hustles “around campus in a duffle coat, tuned into” an iPhone as they lug a “backpack from class to class”. I just did that five minutes ago on my way back from class as a matter of fact, amidst thousands of other students on campus doing the exact same thing; perhaps I should alert the Star.
Worst of all, did the Star actually send someone to stalk this poor girl on campus? The writer watches her working the ticket booth, gazes on with a predatory eye as “boys greet her with a hug while her sorority sisters beckon her to the dance floor”, notes that “she is among the last to leave the party”, and that “less than eight hours later she is back on campus, lugging her books from class to class”. It sounds to me like Sarah should have called campus security and/or needs to file a restraining order; what was the writer doing, crouching in the bushes outside her dorm, waiting up all night for her to head out to class again? And what is his obsession with her hauling books around campus? I guess the writer has never attended university or he’d know that university students rarely carry books to class.
Aghast, were you? I would add pompous windbag to that, if I weren’t so aghast at your aghastness.