Friday, October 27, 2006

"Cutting-Edge" Drivel

I really do think that the time has come for the Globe and Mail to dispense with Margaret Wente.
Over the years, she has developed her stereotypical SUV-driving latte-drinking persona ("the person people love to hate") presumably as a means of appearing "contentious" or "cutting-edge", and I can see the promotional attraction of that for a newspaper, despite the drivel she actually writes.
But when that "cutting-edge" persona clearly runs out of things to say and becomes repetitive, surely her value is lost, and she just becomes shallow and tedious. How many more of her "thought-provoking" columns on how pointless it is for Canada to pursue Kyoto targets because we are so insignificant in the eyes of the world do we really need? In addition to presenting a bad role model and a defeatist attitude, it is a spurious argument anyway, and one not worthy of the Globe even the first couple of times she pitched it.
You could argue that the fact that I am writing about her at all proves her worth, but I think that everyone really knows that "any publicity is good publicity" was always an unsound doctrine, especially for a newspaper or a politician.
In the absence of a better Canadian national paper, Ms Wente's fatuousness is unlikely to make me cancel my subscription, it just seems a bit of a waste of a column.

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