Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

Hey Look

by Paul Wells on Friday, June 19, 2009 10:40am - 41 Comments

New Wells column, from the current issue, in which I pay Mark Steyn’s column from last week the compliment of a close reading.

Tags: self-promotion, this oughta be fun

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‘It has to be either Brian or Thomas’

Anon

"That’s why we like these rip-roaring cover stories: we hope that you’ll pick us up and read the calmer stuff inside too. "

That's not the problem. I cancelled my sub because you put Steyn on the cover.

http://intensedebate.com/people/jandrewpotter andrew potter

But your conscience was clean subscribing to a magazine that has him on the inside every week.

Curious piece of moral self-bargaining.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Nich Nich

Perhaps if there were more Potter and Wells covers, anon would still be a subscriber.

Giving Steyn top billing to indulge in the victimhood of the right at the hands of the left was lame when it started. Macleans has more thought-provoking contributors and sells itself short when it highlights polarization and hyperbole over actual content.

CAPS

Speaking of highlighting polarisation and hyperbole, what's with this week's cover?

http://intensedebate.com/people/avr avr

That's not the problem. I cancelled my sub because you put Steyn on the cover.

I cancelled my subscription for the period that Steyn didn't appear at all.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

I'm pretty sure that it makes good business sense for Maclean's to keep publishing Steyn. He's a popular guy, and he must have brought in a lot of new subscriptions when he returned to this magazine.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

Britney Spears being unavailable and, alas, unable to respect a deadline.

Jenn

Ah-hah! THAT's why they keep Amiel around! The spacey, no-point view!

Anon

That must have been a trial. Two weeks without someone vilifying brown people. How ever did you cope?

Chris

I bought my first subscription to Macleans a few months ago. The reasons are 3:
1) Steyn
2) Potter (which should be weekly)
3) Wells/Coyne/etc

If I wanted every person hashing out the exact same viewpoint, I'd buy the Star.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

You, Chris, are a rare bird in these parts. A very large portion of the commenters on our blogs wants to be agreed with. Whichever way they lean, they prize being agreed with most highly.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Lord_Bob Lord Bob

Great comment, Mr. Wells. I agree entirely.

Scott M.

You're absolutely right, Mr Bob.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

You couldn't be more right, Scott M.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

When you're right, you're right, and you're right.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

I think it's just the same six people who claim that they cancel their subscriptions over and over again.

Scott M.

Having been an Ottawa Citizen subscriber, I can say that sometimes you have to cancel your subscriptions over and over (and over!) again before they stop delivering it.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Brammer Brammer

LOL

Have you ever had the pleasure of being an ex-National Post subscriber?

A car dealer gave me a free subscription with my lease. I immediately cancelled it, but the "we have a special offer for you as an ex-subscriber" calls persisted for years.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

Perhaps Maclean's could have an on-again, off-again subscription plan for these people, so that they could cancel their subscription without suffering financially. I mean, six or seven new subscriptions per year — that'll run ya.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Lord_Bob Lord Bob

I think I had dreams during the more awkward moments of my young adulthood in which Mark Steyn and Paul Wells engaged in a magnificently-written war of words in the pages of a national news magazine. Then Chantal Hebert and Barbara Kay and a big vat of whipped cream got involved and things just got weird.

It was a nice column, and the nod towards the sensationalist front page seemed like a – dare I say it? – almost Steynian turn of thought. In truth, though I am as big a Steyn fan as exists on the planet, I was quite impressed by the way you managed to derail his argument in half the words it took Steyn to make it. And while I think Steyn has a valid point regarding the use of fascism as the nearest available analogue for Euroscepticism, etc., I think the people who won the debate between these two columns were us, the Canadian reading public, who now have something to think about.

http://www.intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

What's with this Established Fact that Steyn writes magnificently? Wells writes magnificently, because he has a great range of prose voices. Steyn has only one: a sort of smirking "Woudja believe it?" filled with gratuitous adjectives. I find it actually hard to read his paragraphs (which can, by the way, be assembled in any order — try it). To say that Wells "debated" Steyn is like saying that a CFL linebacker "tackled" a hollow-chested 13-year-old asthmatic. In terms of prose, in terms of clear thinking, in terms of post-pubescence, the difference is stark. Moreover, Wells can do anything; Steyn can only do one thing, which is to consistently express xenophobia. At least Margaret Wente has a husband.
http://www.intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

What's with this Established Fact that Steyn writes magnificently? Wells writes magnificently, because he has a great range of prose voices. Steyn has only one: a sort of smirking "Woudja believe it?" filled with gratuitous adjectives. I find it actually hard to read his paragraphs (which can, by the way, be assembled in any order — try it). To say that Wells "debated" Steyn is like saying that a CFL linebacker "tackled" a hollow-chested 13-year-old asthmatic. In terms of prose, in terms of clear thinking, in terms of post-pubescence, the difference is stark. Moreover, Wells can do anything; Steyn can only do one thing, which is to rage at a sort of strawman leftist who hasn't existed in 10 years.

Orson Bean

Fascinating — you managed to sound like Steyn while attacking Steyn.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

Unfortunately Steyn Flu is infectious.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Lord_Bob Lord Bob

You're right when you say that Steyn has one voice and a rather limited selection of topics (I would throw in "old Broadway musicals" along with "capital-L Leftists"). But it works for him. Taste in prose is intensely personal, but I always find Steyn to be engaging, if nothing else, even when he's at his very worst and mailing it in on deadline by writing the same article about European demographics a hundred times. There's something to be said for raw entertainment value.

With that said, I also find Steyn at his best to be amazingly thought-provoking. His unabashed "smirking 'Woudja believe it?'", as you quite accurately put it, works wonders when he finds a new sacred cow to slaughter and plunges into some underreported topic with his customary zeal. It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but it happens often enough to make his Maclean's stuff a must-read for me.

I don't want to get into a whole "waah, Wells is better than Steyn!/Steyn is better than Wells!" kinda thing. Truth be told, Andrew Coyne is the best columnist in the country anyway and who's better than who doesn't matter. Mark Steyn could never, ever be Paul Wells, but Paul Wells could never, ever be Mark Steyn, and I'm glad we have them both.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

I agree with Lord Bob! Mostly!

http://intensedebate.com/people/Lord_Bob Lord Bob

I should have known that Coyne line would get your goat!

http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

If you find Steyn amazingly thought-provoking, you need to get out more, or rather get in, into that wonderful library of literature that our ancestors bequeathed to us and which definitely provides more food for thought than Steyn Rant #173 (or #174 — tastes differ).

"Who's better than who doesn't matter"? Come, come, sirrah, this isn't Nihilism 101.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Lord_Bob Lord Bob

Oh, I agree with every word of that first paragraph. It is, to my knowledge, impossible to be too well read and there's nothing new under the sun, so doubtless every one of Steyn's decent, original arguments are a rehash of somebody.

That said, even if he didn't originate his best ideas (and very few pundits came up with what they famously came up with), popularizing them and making them accessible counts to his credit too. There's a lot more huckleberries like me in this world, after all.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

I can't disagree that popularising ideas is a good thing. And even if those ideas are, in this particular case, cheap and monotonous, if it helps keep Maclean's afloat it's worth it.

Bill Simpson

Not always strawmen…but the world would be a duller place without Steyn so I am happy to put up with his sillier columns.

Best of all, he has provoked Mr Wells to publicly smack him for his sloppy research.

Good stuff.

Dee

So, let me get this straight. Wells writes a Macleans column denouncing another Macleans column by Steyn. Clearly a magazine disappearing up its' own backside.

I just save time by not reading Steyn at all since he's a hopelessly inaccurate sensationalist. And like others, the presence of Steyn's dubious screeds (and Barbara Amiel's pap, for another example) in Macleans has convinced me to buy other publications.

Jenn

At least Steyn is readable, until you know better. By which I mean one can follow the words to get to the point–and then gasp in horror, or rage, rant and throw things. Lots of columnists have only one voice, I think, although I can't think of any other than Steyn who consistently uses that one voice on only one topic.

But I really, really want an explanation for why Barbara Amiel is still published here. Aren't a lot of columnists looking for work? Now would be a good time to get one for that slot.

http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com bigcitylib

"…in which I pay Mark Steyn’s column from last week the compliment of a close reading."

I would rather be fed to starving pigs.

In any case, when did they allow you guys to start criticizing the Free Speechiest one?
http://intensedebate.com/people/M_A_N M_A_N

This goes beyong politics to writing style.

Like Bill Maher, Bill O'Reilly and a couple of million bloggers, Steyn has become predictable, and predictable is boring.

Boring writing is bad reading, regardless of political stripe.

Orson Bean

I'm with you on that. To me, one of the signs of a truly above-average columnist is that I can start reading their column and not be able to predict with absolute metaphysical certainty what they're going to end up saying. These days, unfortunately, I can look at the headline or first sentence of just about any column from Mark Steyn, Lawrence Martin, Jeffrey Simpson, Jim Stanford, Heather Mallick, Rick Salutin etc. etc., and I know what's coming.

Not so in the case of Wells, Coyne, Chantal Hebert and Doug Saunders. I find it a shame in the case of Simpson (and he's not as egregious as some of the others listed) — he used to be one of the top journos in the country, but that was 20 years ago. Some time in the last 10 or 15 he sort of jumped the shark.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

Orson, I think you're too hard on Simpson, but I agree with the rest of your "predictable" list and your "above average" list.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Jack_Mitchell Jack Mitchell

I agree. Simpson has it all: lively (though adult) style, does his own research, independent-minded, usually topical. You could pretty much write the obituary of the Globe if they lost him (though perhaps a new wind is blowing).

Orson Bean

Maybe a clarification of my beef with Simpson is in order. I just find that a lot of the time these days, he's essentially doing a re-write or re-hash of something that he's been going on about repeatedly before. To take one example, he's written a zillion columns over the last while about the fact that he thinks a carbon tax is a swell idea, that if we don't get on board the fight against climate change, we're doomed etc. It's not that I disagree with his ideas, I just find that he seems a bit short on both ideas and originality these days. In the old days, I recall that his focus was more on Canadian politics, particularly at the federal level, and he was very strong on constitutional, federal-provincial matters and the like. The stuff he did around the time of Meech Lake and Charlottetown was absolutely first-rate. He was one of the very first political journalists to (correctly) point out the changes that the advent of the Charter of Rights & Freedoms were making in our political life. I just think that, in Alistair Cooke's inimitable words, Simpson is a bit of spent rocket these days.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SophiaGeffros SophiaGeffros

I freely admit that I got home on Friday, metaphorically jumped once in glee upon the realization that I received my magazine on Friday instead of Tuesday, opened it immediately to the page with the Wells photo (as one does) and metaphorically jumped twice upon the realization that it was a well-written response to the rather sensationalist column of the week past. Then again, the only cover story I can think of in recent history that wasn't designed to scare you was the Obama one. Nearby, I have "Is Democracy Dying", "The Most Dangerous Cities in Canada", "Pakistan goes to Hell", and "Inside a Powder Keg". One of my earliest Maclean's-related memories is of a cover story of Jack Layton "Who is this Man- and why is he running the country?" posed suspiciously like Stalin.
Ah, Maclean's: frightening children since roughly 2004.
http://www.TennisVagabond.com Big Dave S

A great article, Paul. Like Dee, I could just save time by not reading Steyn, but one doesn't have to read Steyn to know what he will say, how he will say it, etc.
So I could just skip the painful part and enjoy your "return to common sense from wheresoever thou comest."
I came from the cottage,
thanks.