Joe Oliver's Blowjob

Joe Oliver got a freebie from Claudia Cattaneo in the pages of the Financial Post.

In an extraordinary puff piece, 'A Battle of Canada's Future: How Joe Oliver has become Canada's energy pitchman,' Cattaneo praises ol' Joe for firmly standing up to those whom Joe finds are "inimical to Canadian national interests."  It's a truly amazing piece of garbage journalism.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi discussed the current penchant for Cattaneo's sort of blowjob journalism in an article about Paula Broadwell's "slobberific" Petraeus biography, "All In".

Then it hit me – it was an interesting book, after all! Because if you read All In carefully, the book's tone will remind you of pretty much any other authorized bio of any major figure in business or politics (particularly in business), and it will most particularly remind you of almost any Time or Newsweek famous-statesperson profile.


Which means: it's impossible to tell the difference between the tone of a reporter who we now know was literally sucking the dick of her subject and the tone of just about any other modern American reporter who is given access to a powerful person for a biography or feature-length profile.

Decades ago, when people like Sy Hersh were the go-to-profilers of influential people, journalists reflexively distrusted power, and any reporter, male or female, who wrote a blowjob profile (that's what we call them) of a politician or tycoon was looked down upon as a hack and a traitor. But these days, you can't tell the difference between your average profile of a Senator or CEO or a four-star general and an ESPN feature about a day in the life of Lebron James. We're supposed to make heroes out of sports stars, but what's everyone else's excuse? At least Broadwell did it for love. Well, maybe it wasn't even that . .



Notice:  Nothing in this post should be construed to suggest that Ms. Cattaneo has ever had any actual physical contact with Joe Oliver, of any nature whatsoever, either in the preparation of her odious article or at any other time.