{"id":37640,"date":"2017-03-11T04:00:16","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T09:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37640"},"modified":"2017-11-02T11:59:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-02T15:59:39","slug":"writing-a-good-populism-story-in-canada-is-thus-all-about-reaching-the-canada-is-just-better-conclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/03\/11\/writing-a-good-populism-story-in-canada-is-thus-all-about-reaching-the-canada-is-just-better-conclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Writing a good populism story in Canada is thus all about reaching the Canada Is Just Better conclusion&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jjmccullough.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/08\/write-populism-canada\/\" target=\"_blank\">J.J. McCullough<\/a> provides a valuable public service by compiling a checklist for Canadian media types when writing about populism:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Greetings Canadian journalists!<\/p>\n<p>As you know, there\u2019s currently a thing called \u201cpopulism\u201d happening all around the world. This is a fad in which poor people elect little Hitlers to power. I mean, it\u2019s so far only actually happened in the context of Donald Trump (boo!) getting elected in the U.S., but there\u2019s also that Brexit vote thing in the U.K., and that counts too for some reason. I know the iron rule of journalism is that you need <em>three<\/em> examples before you can claim a trend, so in a pinch just refer vaguely to \u201crecent events in Europe\u201d and that should cover it.<\/p>\n<p>So anyway, having established that the world is in the midst of a populist tidal wave, the important question to ask is why it hasn\u2019t hit Canada. The obvious answer, of course, is that Canada is just <em>better<\/em> than everywhere else, but you\u2019re not allowed to say that openly if you\u2019re a serious journalist. That\u2019s for columnists like Doug Saunders or John Ibbitson or John Ivision (those are two different guys, right?).<\/p>\n<p>Writing a good populism story in Canada is thus all about reaching the Canada Is Just Better conclusion without making it overtly obvious that\u2019s where you\u2019re heading. Or at least not obvious in the first paragraph. The way you do this is by noting that while Canada has some populist-like things happening, they are all really stupid and dumb and unpopular and meaningless and should be ignored. Because Canada Is Just Better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>H\/T to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smalldeadanimals.com\/2017\/03\/your-moral-and-409.html\" target=\"_blank\">Kate at <em>Small Dead Animals<\/em><\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>J.J. McCullough provides a valuable public service by compiling a checklist for Canadian media types when writing about populism: Greetings Canadian journalists! As you know, there\u2019s currently a thing called \u201cpopulism\u201d happening all around the world. This is a fad in which poor people elect little Hitlers to power. I mean, it\u2019s so far only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,57,28],"tags":[213,463,1171,134],"class_list":["post-37640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-humour","category-media","tag-newspapers","tag-parody","tag-populism","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9N6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37641,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37640\/revisions\/37641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}