Terence Corcoran, writing in the National Post, delivers a rather scathing view of a documentary called The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream. He even goes so far as to title his article "Praise God and pass the propaganda." And I don't believe this can be blamed on an anonymous headline writer since it's also the closing sentence.
I had a little trouble taking his critique all that seriously once I got to the first sentence in the fifth paragraph:
Now I haven't seen The End of Suburbia yet...
And that, dear readers, is why I won't bother quoting any more of Corcoran's article. He's quite happy to completely rip to shreds a film he hasn't even seen yet, relying only on other people's reviews along with an army of straw men he raises along the way. Then he accuses others of peddling propaganda.
There's our national newspaper at work. Must be that pesky liberal media bias.
That's pretty shameless.
I don't really expect much more of the National Post anymore. To publish an editorial written as a diatribe about a movie you've never seen is a standard of about the level of FoxNews, Newsmax, and the Onion (in no particular order).
But at least The Onion is funny intentionally.
You're right, of course: if you're not going to watch a movie, you can't really pretend to review it. I'm a bona-fide mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Conservative, and I cancelled my subscription to the Post months ago. It's just rarely worth the money.
But your snarky comment about Liberal media bias is off the mark. I mentioned to Declan awhile back that the Post is precisely one voice in the cacaphony of the Canadian media. And with columnists like Kinsella, Copps, and Hargrove, not to mention the Liberal Asper ownership, it's not even a consistently conservative voice.
The vast majority of our press remains leftist in its orientation, and the perpetually-money-losing, third-most-popular newspaper in Toronto doesn't change that.
1. Capital L Liberal isn't necessarily liberal.
2. While Izzy Asper was certainly a Liberal, I'm not sure the same applies to his sons who are now running the show.
3. I've written previously, and I stand by it, that the real institutional bias in media isn't a matter of partisan ideology, it's about money and power.
4. Lighten up. It was meant to be funny. ;-)
Sorry, numb spot in my funny bone. One of the reasons I started blogging, in fact. My wife says it keeps me from screaming at the TV and newspaper as much.
Thanks for reminding me not to be too much of a stick-in-the-mud though. :)
No problem. And least you weren't throwing things at the TV. I know someone who wears fuzzy slippers around the house for exactly that reason.
Gee, I thought it was only me.
Anyway, going back to the columnist, I just wanted to say that its always much easier to write a scathing critique of something you haven't seen, but have only seen other scathing critiques of. Witness all the "reviews" of Farenheit 911, and Passion of the Christ last spring from people who were proudly ignorant - who, in fact, seemed to feel their critique was better because they hadn't tainted the purity of their view by actually seeing the movie.