mediocrity 101

Right-wing rag The Weekly Standard has a predictable Canada-bashing piece that rehashes lots of tired and under-substantiated claims about long waits for health care services and a couple FRESH, under-substantiated claims like how doggone greedy Canadians are. The accounts of Canadian health care continue to fascinate me. Here's an issue where the right and left in the U.S. find totally and utterly opposite findings. Not skewed a bit differently. Not spun in various directions. Opposite.

The Weekly Standard piece is unbelievably weak (it strives for a gonzo-renegade agit-prop style--"hey, I'll claim that Canadians are all greedy!"--and that's a style that conservatives don't know how to do). But I've read other conservative accounts that do garner both data and anecdote that suggests problems with health care services north of the border. And, of course, peruse any issue of The Progressive or Nation and you'll find loads of articles about just how accessible are prescription drugs and medical services. Issues like this make the teaching of rhetoric so interesting--helping students to see how opposing ideologues can come to radically different conclusions about the same question. Good reason to be in this business.

For my part, my wife's myriad relatives in Canada ALL give rave reviews to the Canadian health care system. Many of them are senior citizens and they all have access to various prescription drugs, timely procedures, etc. They react in horror to stories about uninsured Americans and think that we're pulling their legs about the situation here in the "land of the free."

Anyway, that was a big tangent for the interesting part of the Weekly Standard piece. Here's where they blow their credibility. The writer is analyzing the music industry and, without irony, makes reference to "Canadian rocker Bryan Adams." Err, "rocker"? Really friend? The quote from the man who wrote the lyric "Have you ever really, really, really, really, really, really loved a woman?" goes a little something like this: "[the regulatory policy] encourages mediocrity." I can picture the reporter running around the newsroom with his "Ditto Head" button and Matt Drudge fedora on yelling, "Somebody get me an expert on mediocrity," and the scrappy young employee, full of pluck, the ink still wet on his journalism degree from Bob Jones U, tapping him on the shoulder: "Boss, I got Bryan Adams on the line for you."