Man of the House?

The doorbell rang last night just before dinner. Our visitor was a teenage kid, trying to get me to subscribe to the Toronto Sun. I said no (more on that below) and he left, but I just had to laugh at the first thing he asked me: "Are you the man of the house?" I said yes, but thinking back, I'm not quite sure what he meant. Did he perhaps think that I lived with my parents, and he should be talking to them? Maybe he was standing at such an angle that he couldn't see the gray in my hair. In reality, I should have just said "I don't know — hold on, let me ask my wife."

About a year ago, I did get the Sunday Sun for a few months, thanks to a similar offer — something like $12 for 20 weeks. It's such crap. The sports section is good, but I don't like the way the paper reports the actual news. I currently get the Hamilton Spectator every day, and one of the things I enjoy reading is the letters to the editor section (I've even had a letter published). With the Sun, each letter has an editor's comment after it, and they're usually snarky unless you agree with them; this just seems childish to me.

The thing that bugs me the most is that the paper is so anti-Liberal, it's not even funny. Shortly before the last election, they ran a front-page headline that read something like "100 Reasons Not To Vote Liberal". It's not that I'm pro-Liberal so I disagree with their position (I have no particular political leanings at all, actually), but what bothers me is the fact that the paper has a position. When I read the news, I want just the news. It want it presented to me in an honest unbiased way, so that I can read the facts and make up my own mind. Maybe that's naïve, but when reading the Sun, I have no confidence that what I'm reading doesn't have their own little (or not-so-little) spin on it. How do I know that some facts that might present the Liberals in a positive light aren't missing, or distorted, or spun somehow to make it look more negative?

There's also the fact that it's a Toronto paper, and the Toronto papers all hate Hamilton. I'll stick with the Spec, thanks.