A Doozy of an Editorial Section

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Feb 2014

 

My hometown newspaper sure had a doozy of an editorial section in Saturday’s edition.  Where to begin?

 

A. V. was taken in by the artist, Gabriel Parniak.  Painters are not kind to title readers.  The content and meaning of a painting is found in the painting, not in the caption or title given to it.  This is true of any work of art: the meaning of any work of art is found in the work itself; and in the case of non-verbal art media that meaning is not verbalizable.  The meaning of a painting cannot be put into words, any more than the meaning of a piece of music can be put into words.

 

By giving a deliberately provocative and highly ambiguous title to a painting of a coffee cup, artist Gabriel Parkiak sucks title-readers like Mr. V. into idle speculation about his meaning in the painting.  The secondary meaning of the painting is the joke pulled by the artist in the ambiguous title.

 

The “Squandering science to honour ideology” editorial, excerpted from the St. John’s Telegram, is another case of Arts majors pretending to know more about science than real scientists do.  If you substitute “National Defense” for “science” and “soldiers” for “scientists” you get the argument that the government doesn’t care about National Defense because it is getting rid of soldiers, which it is.  Well, in neither case does the conclusion follow from the premises.  As for the ideological basis for getting rid of scientists, or soldiers, apparently budget reasons or changing government requirements never entered the minds of the editors of the Telegram.  The editors must believe they have the inside track to the minds of government ministers.  The editors are hiding behind the dodge that they are merely quoting a report from an obviously self-interested group; but they wouldn’t have published the editorial if they didn’t believe the cause worth advocating.

 

D. P. proved once again that not only has she the mind of a vicious adolescent, but so do all her friends.  If I were Ms. Horwath, I’d look to hire a body-guard.

Finally, the LRT editorial by the Spectator’s own editor-in-chief, “LRT is about much more than transit.”  It repeats all the non-demonstratable and non-disprovable arguments in favor of the LRT.  Apparently, the overt purpose of the thing, the obvious need to move people, is not advanced as an argument in favor of it.

 

I’ve seen the ‘sun and moon’ and then ‘the stars’ argument made before in the service of many other causes.  That style of argument, i.e the benefits of the secondary effects or the unintended consequences of the thing, is the tip-off that there is something wrong with the basic sales pitch of the thing itself.  When the bill comes due, I wonder if Mr. B. will still be working at the newspaper.

 

Like I said, a doozy of editorial section.

 

Just keeping the mental knife sharpened.....

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