Maclean’s magazine’s latest cover: 
Cheap marketing move? Or serious journalism?
Here’s a hint: It’s a cheap-ass marketing move. See, I added “ass” for accuracy purposes. And here’s another hint: from a consumer’s standpoint, it’s a bit of an insult to my intelligence and indeed to serious journalism itself.
Then again, most of the liberal-luvin’ media is an insult to all of our intelligence, and to serious journalism itself. But they don’t care. All pretense of serious news journalism and its inherent objectivity went out the window years ago.
The Maclean’s brain trust, which is apparently dominated by aging liberals longing for the past (which means pre-Harper), and by 30 to 40-year-old Toronto marketers, know only too well how most people outside of Toronto and Quebec and some urban centers don’t take seriously the notion of Justin Trudeau as the leader of the increasingly progressive-left Liberal Party, much less as the prime minister of our country. So that’s a trollish statement to make on the cover. The fact that they felt the need to add “NO, SERIOUSLY!” in bold red, hints at that lack of seriousness. But you know, whatever. This is how “grassroots” movements start.
And this is apparently why Maclean’s is there. To take non-starters, and start ’em up. Without them and the fabulous information services of the rest of the liberal-left Canadian news media — people like Justin Trudeau (and the NDP, and much of the increasingly progressive, leftist acculturation in this country) would simply be a non-starter, and we’d be back to the actual progress enabled by small government, lower taxes, capitalism, a free, free-market economy, and our usual conservative lives. And that won’t help them! They’re in the information business, see? Carefully selected information, carefully presented, to be sure, but information nonetheless. That’s partly how they justify getting government handouts for their weekly publication, I guess.
Moreover, they know how any talk of any Trudeau strikes a discordant tone in the hated west and suburbia and the ridiculous rural bits. Yummy, they say to that.
And therefore this week they chose to plaster this extreme close-up — and a carefully-chosen, wonderful one it is — of Justin Trudeau’s ever so handsome mug on their magazine cover (see above right). I wonder. Maybe they’re hoping more than the usual 40 people will notice Maclean’s at the checkout line at Safeway as organic groceries are placed into their hemp eco-bags, and boost their sales! Well let’s break the suspense: of course people will notice. Hemp bags, having to buy groceries with your own money, unlike health care which “the government” pays for; and a ha-yuge close-up of a new, fresh young Trudeau… quasi journalism and sales and liberal-left advocacy mission accomplished!
And they know how liberals and leftists across the land, in juxtaposition, love and admire (let me see if I can find some of the right nouns here) the brilliance — nay the genius — and of course what’s even more important, the warm and wonderful feelings and the emotions — the romanticism — (all of which is what it takes to “run a country,” am I right liberals?) of the wonderful, dreamy Pierre Trudeau years. Yes those wonderful years of government-growing, and the massive built-up of state-welfare programs and entitlements a-plenty in every pot — and for that matter, pot itself; the left-wing Utopia-building and growth of the progressive state. And growth of national debt which, by the way, not that it matters one whit to them, we are still burdened with today, and will be for the foreseeable future.
(A debt which, I note, thanks to a “Conservative” government so spendthrift today, is still growing. You’d think that sentence was an accidental non sequitur but due possibly to years of progressivism advanced by, oh, say, nearly all of the media, much of the country has cottoned onto the positive vibes of entitlement spending and various welfare, born and boosted during the memorable, progressive Trudeau years, but continued apace in all the years that have followed).
And those folks will not just notice this week’s Maclean’s, but will also buy the magazine.
No matter what consumers choose to do about the specter of Justin Trudeau’s extreme close-up mug glaring at them in the checkout line, even us marketing dumb-dumbs can suppose the proverbial bug will be nicely placed in the ear of romantic liberals the land over — people who have been carefully cultivated and nurtured and yes, “informed,” by a liberal media, and by a well-trained academia division, who seem to be teaching not just journalism students but also our young children to adopt a culture of progressivism.
And just try to remove that bug! Forget about it. Liberals have been sure to make it hard to irradiate this sort of bug, by banning pesticides, and by, for example, meddling in the erstwhile free market by making it a law that the state-owned, systemically left-wing, socialism-reliant CBC be mandatory on every cable and satellite providers’ basic services, while not doing the same for conservative-tolerant Sun News Network, and by treating the license application of Fox News Channel more harshly than AL-Jazeera, and by preventing Ann Coulter from even speaking in this country. Not that I’m suggesting this Trudeau/liberal, progressive-left advocacy thing at Maclean’s is just more of that kind of piling on by liberals. Nope.
Maclean’s knows Justin evolved (well half evolved, anyway) from his creator, Pierre the hated/loved, and is an even more yummy progressive and liberal-leftist than even his father was. So stick him on the cover. Pump it up. Then watch it work. That’s progressivism at work, by its useful idiots.
And of course this is another great time to reflect on my YouTube video which I made back in 2007.Â
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbXAUVRXkGg
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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