Last Feb. 14, Canada’s venerable newsmagazine got a new boss. Kenneth Whyte took over from editor-in-chief Anthony Wilson-Smith, who resigned for personnel reasons, and also took on the role of publisher.
Upon being appointed, Whyte pledged to build upon his predecessor’s editorial reforms and make Maclean’s “more relevant and more talked about.” “People still need context, they still need background, they still need insight and relevant commentary,” he told the CBC.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? But consider the source. Whyte’s most recent editing gig was as editor-in-chief of the National Post, Canada’s answer to Hitler’s Der Stürmer.Whyte got in on the ground floor with Putz founder Conrad Black, but not long after Black sold out to Israel Asper’s CanWest media empire Whyte and numerous other Putzniks were sacked in a management purge.
Seems ol’ Izzy thought that shuffling the deck chairs on his sinking flagship would finally make the Putz profitable, but it still haemorrhages money today. Perhaps it never occurred to him or his gormless spawn that Whyte wasn’t to blame for the paper’s pathetic performance. To appeal to the proper audience, all the Great Zionist had to do before he died was make the Putz less abrasive and more absorbent.
After spinning his wheels playing professor at McGill University, Whyte took over at Maclean’s and proceeded to piss off readers and staff. Seems that Whyte’s plan to “build on” Wilson-Smith’s reforms entailed turning Maclean’s into a weekly version of the Putz.
Among Whyte’s appointments have been: Tony Keller, founding editor of National Post Business (1999 to 2004), who becomes managing editor–”special projects, and Putz associate editor Dianna Symonds, who becomes managing editor.
Former Putz financial writer Steve Maich was already at Maclean’s when Whyte arrived. As Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias noted, Maich got up the nose of Leonard Asper after writing an unfortunately accurate piece about Conrad Black’s legal problems. Maich jumped to Maclean’s the following year, and according to Zerbisias, the Maich/Asper acrimony isn’t over.
Inasmuch as Whyte and the Aspers don’t much like each other, they share one unfortunate trait. They propagandize for Israel, and it is this facet of Whyte’s editorship that has reduced Maclean’s to Mucklean’s.
The Jan. 23 cover featuring Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fails every standard of ethical journalism. It was inflammatory, inaccurate and unprofessional–”pretty much the kind of treatment I’d expect from the Putz.
In December, I showed that Ahmadinejad’s statements about Israel and the Nazi holocaust, although impolitic, are essentially accurate, yet, I understand why they would not sit well with staunch zionists, who must constantly insulate their core beliefs against inconvenient truths. However, I cannot understand why Mucklean’s would sink to this level. (For the record, Whyte refused to respond to numerous requests for an interview)
Under a picture of Ahmadinejad the cover headline in big (fittingly) yellow letters said:
"THE SCARIEST MAN ON EARTH
He hates Jews. He thinks he has a divine aura. And now he wants nuclear weapons. Meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the lunatic president of Iran."
In the “scariest man on Earth” sweepstakes George W. Bush has no rival, unless you consider U.S. Reichschancellor Dick Cheney. Unlike Bush, Ahmadinejad has not launched fraudulent, unprovoked wars; displaced or murdered millions of civilians in the Middle East and South Asia; coerced the UN into underwriting aggression; or operated secret torture jails in Eastern Europe. You get the point.
Believing oneself to have a divine aura is certainly eccentric, but compared to Bush’s “God told me to attack Iraq” claim, it’s harmless and certainly no cause for alarm.
The implication that Iran wants nuclear weapons is tendentious and inflammatory. Iran has every right to operate a civilian nuclear power industry, but Israel will not allow any state to challenge its regional nuclear monopoly; hence, the scaremongering propaganda about a nuclear Iran.
Also, the idea that Iran poses a threat to Israel is ludicrous, because any nuclear attack would kill more Palestinians than zionists. Since Israel already has nuclear missiles, and has asserted that it may attack Iran unilaterally, the real warmongering loons in the Middle East are … you guessed it.
Most importantly, Ahmadinejad does not hate Jews. He has never said so. In fact, Iran is highly hospitable to Jews. To assert that Israel is a “disgraceful stain” that should be wiped off the face of the Earth does not in anyway indicate animus against Jews. The BIG LIE of “anti-zionism equals anti Semitism” [sic] is a staple of zionist disinformation, and Whyte seems to endorse it.
In the absence of any proof that Ahmadenijad is “scary,” the Mucklean’s cover must be considered libelous and designed to incite fear and hatred toward Iran.
The pro-zionist spin that seems to be part of the Whyte regime at Mucklean’s, is also reflected in a gratuitous propaganda attack on Steven Spielberg for his movie Munich. For some strange reason, the magazine featured an interview on this subject with Judea Pearl, father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl.
In “Spielberg simply doesn’t know Israel. He knows Hollywood,” Pearl takes Spielberg to task for allegedly blurring the lines between terrorism and anti-terrorism and between murder and justice, but Pearl is not competent to discuss the subject, and his opinions are worthless.
His son was killed by a Muslim, so the odds of him being able to discuss the film intelligently is virtually nil. Just as I would not expect the parent of a soldier who died in World War II to say much good about a film that portrayed Germans as real people, I would not interview Pearl on the subject of anti-Jewish terrorism.
In fact Pearl offered nothing but typical zionist denial. He castigated Spielberg for his conflicted portrayal of the Israeli assassins and for failing to depict the Arab hostage-takers as stereotypical anti-terrorists. For Pearl, “terrorist” applies to Arabs but can never apply to Jews.
I have to wonder if character assassination and simplistic moral absolutism are what Whyte had in mind when he spoke of providing readers with context, background, insight and relevant commentary.
