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Cheap Seats: A Shiller for Miller?
Torontoist woke up with a start. Where was Mr. Cheap Seats (aka former Globe columnist David MacFarlane) and what was he doing with all his pent up journalistic energy? Oh right, being a cool dad, and playing in an oldster rock band, as self-chronicled in GQ. But that was ages ago. Where was he now? And thwack, the latest issue of Toronto Life fell loudly onto Torontoist’s porch. On it, a grinning MayDay Miller, article courtesy of Cheap Seats.
Torontoist isn’t one to shy away from sweet sweet mayoral love, but as we read page after glowing page of McFarlane’s Millershiller we began to feel a little dizzy. Aren’t features supposed to be deeply thoughtful, nuanced, good, bad, hey-what-about-this, kind of things? Doesn’t it undermine MDM’s mayorship to write only of subway fawners and the Mayor’s heady days of prep school atheleticism?
Did Cheap Seats study the script of School Ties to come up with the scholarship boy made good storyline? To wit:
It was as if, for all his successes as a schoolboy—successes that might easily have added up to unbridled vanity—he kept the image of the second-string goalie with the wobbly ankles close at hand, in order not to lose track of who he was.
Oh Mayor Wobbly Ankles. Oh Cheap Seats. And Cheapest shots. McFarlane might have talked about the Mayor’s unfulfilled first year goals, about council wrangling, and TPD haranguing, and the rise in stabbing. Okay, perhaps the last one was a recent development. But Torontoist, as a body concerned about the body of the mayor’s hair, expects a bit more depth from a feature in the city’s magazine of record. Not that we weren’t taken with the rugby photos.
Related: Miller love transcends print media.
Also related: Only club members can criticize other club members.
Also also related related: Advertising – Toronto Life has the most invasive flash ads. The Globe and Mail advertises on Toronto Life, and Maisonneuve advertises on Stereogum. Thank goodness it’s Friday.