U.S. media give Trudeau rock-star treatment

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/07/2017 (3278 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Like Britney Spears, Beavis and Butt-Head and Dr. Hook before him, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can now say he’s been on the cover of the Rolling Stone.

The latest issue of the U.S. publication, the cover of which was unveiled on Wednesday, features our jacketless PM, shirt sleeves rolled up, hair artfully tousled, giving his best “blue steel.” A rather flirtatious headline reads: “Why can’t he be our president?”

It’s a small wonder that the accompanying profile, written by Stephen Rodrick, doesn’t come with a Tiger Beat-style pullout poster destined for the interior of a junior high locker. The piece is cringingly fawning, with such gushing proclamations as “for Trudeau, listening is seducing” and “his dark hair is a colour found in nature.” Mr. Rodrick stops short of calling him dreamy, but just barely.

The flimsy superficiality of the piece is underscored by the fact the initial version posted on Rolling Stone’s website was riddled with errors, including references to Canada’s ruling “Liberty” party and our PM-protecting “Royal Canadian Mountain Police.”

Expanding on the thesis proposed by the headline, Mr. Rodrick begins his nearly 7,000-word opus listing the ways in which Mr. Trudeau is the opposite of U.S. President Donald Trump. Trudeau is a feminist! His kids aren’t suspected of colluding with Russia! He speaks in full sentences! He high-fives the press corps! His socks have moose on them! His hair is… brown!

Mr. Rodrick wonders out loud if he’s in Narnia. Canada, meanwhile, would be forgiven for wondering if it’s 2015. In many ways, this story is a couple of years too late, filled with the kind of rah-rah “sunny ways” optimism that lit up Mr. Trudeau’s campaign trail. But the clouds have rolled in. The bloom is off the rose. And many Canadians are officially tired of high-profile international press salivating over a leader who has disappointed them by his failure to keep the very campaign promises that got him elected. Electoral reform, anyone?

Of course, it’s not hard to understand where the United States, as a nation, is coming from. In these dark and troubled times, Mr. Trudeau is a beacon — or “the North Star,” as Rolling Stone puts it. And he looks particularly shiny when held up against America’s current leader, whose recklessness is, at this point, exhaustively documented. Mr. Trump is an easy foil, a cartoon villain to Mr. Trudeau’s Disney prince. But while global politics in 2017 may sound like something out of a political thriller, the real world isn’t so black and white. Mr. Trudeau is not Mr. Trump, it’s true, but he still needs to be held accountable.

Covering powerful world leaders with the same breathlessness reserved for celebrities doesn’t allow for much probing below the surface, and presenting a romanticized version of Canada — a fairytale utopia with “some problems” — doesn’t serve readers in either country. Any reference to Mr. Trudeau’s shortcomings in the Rolling Stone piece is couched in qualifiers or glossed over. The fact that his eco-friendly rhetoric doesn’t square up with his support of pipelines, for one example, is addressed but waved off as being nothing more than a personality contradiction. Mr. Trudeau’s critics, many of whom feel he prizes style (socks, selfies) over substance (policy), are treated like outlier voices in the Canadian wilderness.

Canadians read Rolling Stone, too, of course; our media are saturated with U.S. voices and U.S. concerns. No one needs more high-profile puff pieces extolling the virtues of our charming, brown-haired PM. After all, giddily celebrating “at least he’s not Trump” sets the bar rather low, doesn’t it?