{"id":4772,"date":"2010-07-29T17:16:22","date_gmt":"2010-07-29T21:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=4772"},"modified":"2010-07-29T20:50:41","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T00:50:41","slug":"qotd-you-cant-beat-the-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/07\/29\/qotd-you-cant-beat-the-media\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: You can’t beat the media"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Stephen Harper is feeling some of that effect from the millions he put into \u201cinfrastructure\u201d projects as part of Canada\u2019s own stimulus plan. You will recall that Ottawa solicited proposals from local governments before handing over the money. Inevitably, a goodly number turned out to be . . . shall we say . . . not entirely crucial, leading to articles like this<\/a>, pointing out that — oh dear — taxpayers were financing bocce courts via deficit spending. Not to mention sending money to rich people in good neighbourhoods!<\/em> Even funding for the arts — which Harper was previously criticized for providing too little of — was thrown back in his face as a cheap attempt to correct his earlier gaffe. (If he hadn\u2019t corrected the gaffe, of course, it could have been portrayed as a \u201ccontinuing snub.\u201d Don\u2019t try to beat the media folks, you can\u2019t win.)<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the lesson here? Politicians should ignore the experts and do what makes people happy, even if it\u2019s unlikely to have much long-term benefit? Politicians should never expect the public to appreciate their efforts unless there\u2019s some kind of individual payoff? Politicians should stay out of the economy, because no one is ever satisfied anyway?<\/p>\n

Pick any one of those. Just don\u2019t run for president or prime minister if you want to be popular.<\/p>\n

Kelly McParland, “Obama could save America and lose the election”, National Post<\/em><\/a>, 2010-07-29<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Harper is feeling some of that effect from the millions he put into \u201cinfrastructure\u201d projects as part of Canada\u2019s own stimulus plan. You will recall that Ottawa solicited proposals from local governments before handing over the money. Inevitably, a goodly number turned out to be . . . shall we say . . . […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":[6,84,28,53,41],"tags":[71,213,258,379,101],"class_list":["post-4772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-debt","tag-newspapers","tag-stephenharper","tag-stimulus","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1eY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772","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=4772"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4781,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions\/4781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}