On Intellectual Gymnastics, Globe and Mail Style

The Globe and Mail's lead Monday editorial is the worst and most intellectually dishonest editorial that I have read in years.

As a subscriber to The Globe and Mail since 1999, I have often been in positions where I am forced to defend my newspaper of choice to my free-market and conservative colleagues. While I am much more predisposed towards the editorial positions and opinion pieces appearing in Canada's other national newspaper, the Post, I have always been impressed by the intelligent level of discourse and breadth of news that the Globe provides, even if I don't always concur with their editorial perspectives.

Today's editorial was an endorsement of John Kerry's run for the U.S. Presidency. While I am supporting his opponent, I acknowledge many shortcomings in the incumbent President's administration and will accept sound, rational, and principled arguments against his re-election.

However, this editorial succeeds in not only eliminating every last vestige and memory of when the Globe used to be a conservative newspaper, it also succeeds in endorsing a candidate who, as it points out, has serious character flaws (if you dislike them both why endorse anyone?) and is not even a centrist, let alone a conservative.

Some lowlights:

-- The Globe opposes Bush's tax cuts

-- Taking a page out of the handbook of American lefties, The Globe describes Bush's tax cuts as being unfair and "disproportionately benefitting the wealthiest in U.S. society"

-- The Globe opposes Bush's opposition to partial-birth abortion, a practice that even many ardent pro-choice advocates oppose

-- The Globe favours strengthening gun control

-- The Globe admonishes Bush for "taking his eye off" Osama Bin Laden and "fixating on" Saddam Hussein (this is rich, coming from the same newspaper which ENDORSED the War in Iraq)

-- Despite calling Kerry "the ultimate politician, and that is not a compliment", they endorse his "tolerant" social views, while acknowledging that Kerry is anti-gay marriage

-- The Globe expresses concerns about Kerry's "wishy-washiness...when it comes to the war on terror", but argues that "he possesses the requisite intelligence to climb the learning curve quickly"

And, the piece de resistance: Kerry's magical powers of "logic and persuasion", coupled with the fact that he is "intelligent, eloquent, and experienced in the ways of Washington" (despite ridiculing him for being the 'ulitimate politician'), make him qualified to be president. Oh, and of course, the Globe also states the obvious: Kerry would "drop his meandering, pandering ways in the heat of the Oval Office".

WOW.

I'm speechless, though if they awarded a Pulitzer for the single most contradictory and hypocritical editorial of the decade, this piece of journalistic trash would win uncontested.