The Georgia Straight's not-so-hidden agenda

Criticizing the Georgia Straight for a lack of objectivity is about as futile and senseless as complaining about the lack of pro-Nazi coverage in the mainstream media.

Vancouver's local entertainment and alternative-news weekly is entitled to publish anti-establishment rants all they like. But the latest tirade against the Conservative Party in general and Prime Minister Stephen Harper annoyed me - not for its perspective, but the tired circular logic used to prop up its stale thesis.

Donald Gutstein's "Harperstein" article takes up the corrupt Liberals' tainted slogan of a Conservative "hidden agenda" with relish. The writer slams the conservative Fraser Institute think tank as a "fake" for doing research to find proof to support its conclusions, instead of the other way around - and then promptly commits the exact same intellectual crime when he goes after Harper's throat.

Gutstein cherry-picks unrelated facts that seem to show a link between Fraser Institute policy and Harper's own views to imply that our elected leader is in the hypnotic thrall of rich, ivy-league educated evil morons. These same establishment types are intent on turning Canada into a US puppet where our workers labor at third world wages while married homosexuals are cattle-prodded back into the closet.

The lack of actual evidence for such diabolical scheming is no problem for mind-readers like Guststein, though. Where Harper has not attempted to sell the country lock-stock to American interests, turn Canada into a police state or outlaw abortion, he claims that the Conservatives obviously would - if only they had a majority government. Evidently, Gutstein is fed his propaganda by Paul Martin's old speechwriters.

He concludes with these questions:

"Has Harper really changed his spots, or is he still committed to implementing the full Fraser Institute agenda? Have his handlers simply altered his image to make him more attractive to middle-of-the-road voters? Or did his loss in 2004 and his bare minority victory in 2006 convince him that he needs to be more moderate in his views? Only time and majority government will tell."

The problem is, Gutstein's "Harperstein" article was supposed to answer these questions, not repeat old aspersions. If he doesn't have the answers, then the preceding 2,400 words of the article might as well be printed on toilet paper.

tags: Stephen Harper, Conservative Party, Conservative policy, Fraser Institute, Harperstein, left wing bias, social conservatism, hidden agenda