Macleans has been getting a lot of hits the past week for its 99 Ways The Government Wastes Your Money series of posts, which is about what you’d expect from Macleans, a magazine that for the most part started downhill in the late 90s and never looked back, instead deciding to celebrate itself for championing free speech by publishing Mark Steyn’s vaguely racist twaddle instead of, and this is just a thought, publishing a counter to it.1
But, even by the standard of “look at all the ways government wastes your money” articles, this one is really amazingly slapdash. First off, it’s just a laundry list of governmental spending at all levels: municipal, provincial, federal, et cetera. This makes it sort of meaningless, because the article isn’t a complaint about how a specific government wastes money. It’s a general complaint. It’s like writing “99 Reasons We Hate Cloudy Days And Not Looking at Puppies.” It’s generic and doesn’t actually describe any specific solution. It’s just free-form bitching. When Jim Demint writes Here Is 350 Instances Of Government Spending That I Hate, Vol. 6, he at least makes sure to stick to the federal government, because then he can actually use his findings – intellectually bankrupt as they may be – to make something resembling a point.
Worse, it’s free-form bitching that’s all over the place. The article conflates government spending that is wasteful (giving a high-paid management official an enormous pension, for example) and government spending that is malfeasant (the Tories spending government funds to advertise their policy initiatives in the run-up to the most recent election) and government spending on subsidies, economic stimulus and infrastructure that the writers even admit might have purpose, but hey it’s a recession and we all need to tighten our belts and yadda yadda yadda (spending money to build a footbridge in rural Quebec). This is ridiculously sloppy. It’s getting offended at the government spending money not because the writers object to the government spending in any particular way (wastefully, borderline illegally, to promote policies with which they disagree, whatever) but because whatever, it’s gubmint spendin’ and gubmint is baaaaaaad.
But worst of all, it’s free-form bitching without context. We ran a budget deficit of about $33 billion in Canada in fiscal 2010-2011. The spending Macleans is bitching about adds up to maybe a couple of hundred million dollars, using the most generous math and the largest figures for each item. But it`s worth remembdering that the Tories`GST cut is probably responsible for at least $10 billion of that deficit. If runaway government spending existed – and that is a premise Macleans has most certainly not proven – it is to some extent a manufactured problem. Not acknowledging this is bad journalism. But these days, unfortunately, one expects little more from a cover story in Macleans.
- Seriously, the constant backpatting by Andrew Coyne during the whole Steyn thing was kind of nausea-inducing. [↩]
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7 users responded in this post
My favourite recent Macleans garbage was an article complaining that Canadian universities were becoming too “Asian”. in other words students were interested in you know getting an education as opposed to drunk and sleeping with anything that moves.
I must respond to the previous commenter. Maclean’s has a distinct taste for the over-the-top cover headline, but the “Too Asian?” story holds up. The quote in question comes from a white student who thinks competing with the eager Asians at big schools is just too much for her. The story’s pretty evenhanded:
http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2010/11/10/too-asian/
Yeah, that seems to be a common misconception about that article. People think that the problem it was raising was that some universities are too Asian, when in fact the problem it was raising was that people think some universities are too Asian, and are avoiding them as a result. In my opinion that’s a valid concern, as it fuels the stereotypes associated with that race and by extension resentment against the group as a whole (rather than encouraging others to catch up academically, as they should).
Concerning the piece on government waste, I found it particularly interesting how they viewed funding to the arts as a waste of money. I personally don’t mind paying a bit more in tax dollars if it means that new municipal buildings will have a mural or some other work of art on it. Government should work to make our cities more beautiful and enable the flourishing of local culture, and policies like that are a good way of doing so.
What on Earth was the word “vaguely” doing in that article ?
Everything Coyne does is nausea-inducing. I used to like Macleans long ago (they made good doctors’ office reading, at least), but they’ve become awful.
Incidentally, I totally winced the first time I read the “Too Asian” article, because I have a friend named Alexandra who went to Havergal and then Western. Fortunately it isn’t her, because she has no brothers and isn’t a racist jackass.
Garfield:
When the article highlights the problem of over competitive students and connects it with the influx of Asian students. Yeah that’s racist. Considering they’re not criticising any white students who work hard and don’t socialise much. I managed to get a 3.8 GPA in my undergrad. I rarely went to the bar. Don’t think I even went skiing. However I’m not considered worrying, I’m of northern European descent. No white students are going to be uncomfortable and going to a “university” with me there.
Mitchell Hundred:
Except the article isn’t pointing out “hey these white kids are racist” instead it’s trying to give the whole thing some sort of intellectual appeal. Referencing the conference in the US for instance. Including by saying the diversity is important but more needs to be done to integrate them into the culture sounds a lot like “please stop being scary to us”.