Et tu, Malcolm Gladwell?

Matthew Pioro — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:18:42 +0000

I fear the following observations will sound as if they are coming from an insecure backpacker with a maple leaf on his luggage. But really, The New Yorker has been picking on Canucks as of late. Last week’s issue featured a profile of Naomi Klein by Larissa MacFarquhar, who portrays the Toronto-based activist as a naive lefty Sisyphus. Canadian officers in Afghanistan don’t realize the post-colonial nitroglycerin they’re mixing in the form of Hazara police units based around Kandahar, according to Graeme Wood. Well, Wood does say it’s NATO that doesn’t realize that playing different ethnicities off each other could lead to problems down the road, but the Canadian Forces are in a lead role. On the issue of Klein, any close reader of The Shock Doctrine knows she is by no means above criticism. But these two articles make one a little protective. I can criticize a family member, but you, you might want to tone that down a bit.

But then we come to the words of Elmira, Ont.’s favourite son and US college football fan: “…and the last [of five quarterbacks drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1999] was so awful that after failing out of the N.F.L. he ended up failing out of the Canadian Football League as well.” Whoa, three-down-football burn! Now, I’m pretty sure that Gladwell has watched more football than me, but I know the Bills/Dolphins game I saw from a Rogers Centre box was way more boring than any of the Ottawa Rough Riders games I used to see from the cheap seats at Lansdowne Park. The level of play was about the same in all cases.

Take that, bro.

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Et tu, Malcolm Gladwell?