The National Post is Political Propaganda, not Journalism

In an irate column Feb. 2, National Post columnist Barbara Kay denounces a letter to the editor penned by Penni Stewart, president of the Canadian Association of University Students, and Katherine Giroux-Bougard, national chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students that justly pointed out the idiocy of a Jan. 26 Post editorial that rejoiced in the demise of “Womens’s Studies programs” (sic). Kay clutches at her pearls and attempts to defend the unsigned editorial, which she very likely penned, and sets out, as usual, to prove that feminists and other liberals are bad. But the column actually vindicates the letter to the editor, because almost every sentence in it confirms that Barbara Kay’s column, and indeed the entire National Post are nothing more than conservative hackery on newsprint, not objective journalism.
She begins with a curious statement about no one at the Post or anywhere else believes that equality between men and women is a “radical idea” and that the authors of the letter have implied that only Women’s studies holds that value, a straw statement of remarkable disingenuousness. Nobody on this blog or anywhere else in their right mind would ignore the fact that vast swathes of the conservative religious community and other assorted douchebags very much consider women to be second-class humans who should be subservient to men, and I, who have often publicly railed against and been lectured about such oppresive sexism, take exception to the implication that even Post readers would be stupid enough to accept such patent nonsense at face value. All columnists at the Post, indeed the entire publication, reeks of this kind of conservative advocacy. Actually, all right-wing-funded institutions, their radio shows, their magazines and their churches believe in more than just inequality, they believe in specifically villifying feminism.
And if there is any nook or cranny in Kay’s writings or the National Post that is not used as a rhetorical platform for attacking progressive forces in society, I would welcome the enlightenment and be the first to give credit where credit is due. On the other hand, I can certainly show Ms. Kay many instances of her hackery and crimes against reason, such as her tendency to wallow in false equivelancies, which completely undercut any point she might try to make in her attempts to spin the facts. It isn’t facts that Kay and the Post are championing, though, it is pounding home conservative talking points. In other words, Barbara Kay and the National Post are merely the media arm of the neoconservative movement, which is nothing more today than a lobby group for wealthy interests, not at all a movement interested in true social, fiscal or environmental conservatism.
Political activism and recruitment to activism should not be the responsibility of newspapers to promote. It is rather “ironic” that Kay tries to argue that the problem with Women’s studies programs is that they are radical and “faith-based” by pointing to an irrelevant to the matter at hand but otherwise valid complaint from the Canadian Association of University Teachers that a university should not be allowed to apply a religious test for employment as it is a violation of academic freedom. She appropriates a line from the complaint that “A university is meant as a place to explore ideas, not to create disciples of Christ.”
How is the conservative bastion of the National Post any different? Writers may not have to sign actual Conservative Party of Canada membership cards, but anyone apply to write at the National Post had better believe in the ideology of neoconservatism, or they can take a hike. The hiring committees grill applicants with a view to exposing their ideological loyalties. Anyone deviating from the politically correct adamantine Rand-imbued party line will not be welcome. Indeed, I am confident that a student in a women’s studies program would be given far greater latitude to challenge the tenets of feminism with impunity than a National Post writer defying the lassiez-faire crypto-fascist doctrines of neoconservatism.*
I am sure, for example, that women’s studies programs do not include on their reading lists any writers who advocate the extermination and religious conversion of liberals and Muslims. Yet conservative publications across North America give pride of place to the odious Anne Coulter, whose mainstream media career died a couple of years ago (and whom we on the left love to drag out to show the batshit craziness of the right). Coulter loathed liberals and vaunted her loathing in her columns, going so far as to advocate blowing up the New York Times and bombing all Muslim nations, an extremist viewpoint that eventually got her booted off CNN. She preached a gospel that incited hatred for liberals who “putridly” sully the landscape of what could be an ideal world if not for their prescence. Coulter is an extreme extreme example of the lack of sense characterizing the conservative movement, but tolerance for her views and others like her that are embraced by the conservative movement point to the unhealthiness at the root of conservatism and its activist arm in the media.
If rich, white, corporatist theocrats want to advance the idea of returning Canada to the 1890s or have the nation run entirely for profit by the private sector, they are free to do so through the political process: Let them join our present parties – the Conservative Party of Canada is entirely at their disposal and there isn’t a ambition the extreme right espouses that is not mirrored in CPC policy- and work to make those changes as all citizens are free to do, or start their own Fascist Party if they think they can get enough people to support them. Which will never happen, since most Canadians understand that neoconservatism is not about freedom, but about giving money and power to the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.
The National Post is losing money because they are losing readers. The revolution is over. Rationality and compassion won. What is good about conservatism can be written about in other publications. What’s bad is unworthy of a publication of its own. Barbara Kay and The National Post are superfluous in every respect and calling it a necessary balance to the so-called liberal mainstream media won’t disguise that reality. Goodbye, salut, farewell, shalom. Don’t slam the door on the way out.


(* I have no proof that this is true. This is central to my point)

Cross-posted from The Woodshed where we hope it is well understood that imitation is the sincerest form of mockery.

Palin is the anti-feminist feminist. Barbara Kay (Updated)

And Barbara Kay is as dishonest as Sarah Palin.

Palin's mockery tickled Obama's worrisome polyps of swollen self-regard (the "styrofoam pillars"), his history of words over action ("two memoirs, but no major bills"), his curious pattern of risk avoidance (unlike community organizers, mayors have "actual responsibilities") and his tendency to solipsism(presidential journeys are not "voyages of personal discovery").

Kay might want to become a reading pundit as well as a writing pundit. The Associated Press dissected Palin's speech quite nicely and called it (politely) a litany of exaggerations and "whoppers". The truth is that the Republicans stood on the stage of their convention and lied.

Then Kay, in an effort to paint the Republicans as the party of equality and enlightenment, tries to portray Palin as some kind of ground-breaking anti-feminist.

But win or lose the election, Sarah Palin has already altered the cultural landscape of America, possibly of the Western world. In years to come, social archeologists will mark her speech as the official beginning of an end to the gender wars, and, one hopes, a return to trust and collaboration between the sexes.

You haven't gone far enough back, baby. Social archeologists will wonder why Kay didn't bother to do a little research and why her column completely missed the accomplishments of Nellie Tayloe Ross and Miriam A. Ferguson, both of whom were Democratic governors of Wyoming and Texas respectively before Sarah Palin's parents were even born.

Because Palin proved you don't need the Sisterhood to pierce the glass ceiling. In her single calculated comment about women, she said, "This is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity."

Really?! Does Palin believe she picked herself for the position on the McCain ticket? The "Sisterhood" to which Kay refers has a longer history than she's willing to admit, as evidenced by her failure to acknowledge the existence of others who have gone before Palin. And perhaps Kay can explain the reason political parties and corporations are overwhelmingly populated by males at the upper levels.

Got that? It wasn't Gloria Steinem that put me on this podium. It was my made-in-small-town-America traditional social values combined with old-fashioned patriotism and Alaska-instilled pioneerism.

Aha! Now Kay decides to name the enemy while giving Palin a nice homey stroke. But then Palin put herself in that frame. What she wasn't counting on was, (since the Republicans didn't do it), a severe vetting by the media. What they're finding isn't what Kay is trying to present.

Ideologybased behaviour of any kind is irrelevant to Palin, and millions of other small-town women -- and always was. Love of family, community, country -- not conspiracy theories -- is what guides their political compass.

Right. She's a real sweetheart. So much so that a judge had to tell her to shut her cakehole.

Having issued forth with the name Gloria Steinem, who Kay apparently doesn't get, her next target is perhaps more familiar and Kay does herself in nicely.

Betty Friedan, author of The Feminist Mystique*, the 1963 book that kicked off the modern feminist movement, was no Adam Smith or Karl Marx. She was a political nobody, a bored, disgruntled housewife who mistook her own tiny world of white, urban, middle-class, university-educated peers as representative of all American women.

In fact, Friedan's true acolytes always were, and remain, "dormitory feminists," a small, but noisily aggrieved iceberg calved from the real female masses Palin so brilliantly champions.

What were Friedan's credentials for changing the world? Friedan studied psychology at Smith College, dabbled in journalism, flirted with communism(it shows in feminism's Marxist stripes), mothered three children and gave domestically violent tit for tat to her husband in a failed marriage before writing her famous book. Some resume.

So, we get it. Kay thinks Friedan is unqualified to "change the world", then goes on to mock Friedan's qualifications by... get ready for this... criticizing her middle-class existence. Not to mention that Kay now identifies feminism with Marxism, without so much as real reference. But that comes with punditry, doesn't it?

Then Kay cuts herself off at the knees. She simply guts her own argument. (Emphasis mine)

And yet she emerged from her utter political obscurity and academic amateurism as the matriarch of an enormously consequential movement. Following the book's landslide success -- one of its direct offshoots was the disruption of the Miss America pageant Mr. Kay details in his column-- Friedan became the guiding force for the National Women's Political Caucus and the National Abortion Rights Action Council (NARAL). Her reign had more impact on American life than the work of any 50 vice-presidents combined.

Landslide success. Now why the fuck do you suppose that happened? Do you think Friedan struck a nerve? Kay didn't like the quality of research, disapproved of Friedan's lifestyle and mocked her motherhood, yet this woman wrote a book which started, in Kay's own words, an enormously consequential movement. In fact, Kay cuts Palin down to 1/50th of Friedan's stature by stating that Friedan has done more than 50 vice-presidents combined. Do you suppose it's because women didn't care about the research but saw themselves in the lines of Friedan's book? Or was it just a good way to spend the extra grocery money? Friedan tore the plastic wrap off an old movement - she didn't start it. The life she was describing was a constructed creation of the last half of the 20th Century and she exposed it for what it was.

Palin, who Kay is obviously trying to hold up in a side-by-side comparison with Friedan, has done nothing similar.

So feminists, enough with the hypocrisy. Show some respect for Sarah Palin, who is far more credentialed to advance America's interests than Friedan was for yours.

Really? Nice try but Kay is short by a country mile. If Palin's only detractors were feminists, (and she means men-hating, hairy feminists), she might have a point. But Palin's critics come from a wide cross-section of society and have nothing to do with either movement or non-movement feminists. Kay is lashing out at a strawman because women are making it clear that they understand what Palin is not.

Palin is not representative of feminists because she is not representative of humanists.

Palin did not shatter the glass ceiling through any action of her own. Someone pushed her through it. And it was done in true Republican fashion.

Befitting the GOP history of running crooks, B movie actors, born-again business failures and draft-deferment specialists, the Republicans have stuck to their old formula. Now they have a religious fundamentalist, runner-up beauty pageant princess, under investigation for abuse of authority.

Yeah. She fits perfectly.

*By the way, Barbara.... If you insist on trashing the authors of books which have become classics you might want to at least provide some evidence that you actually read them, or perhaps even looked at the cover. The title of Betty Friedan's 1963 now-classic book is The Feminine Mystique - not, as you labeled it, The Feminist Mystique. Really. It's been on the shelf for 45 years... still available... title hasn't changed... you've never read it, have you?

Ha! Sadly, No! gives Barbara the "fly" treatment.

Note: I've corrected my spelling errors. Let's see if Barbara does the same.