At least Watson is honest enough to inform us where he stands, when he writes, “Whether or not you think the government should be reinforcing Canadians’ magazines purchases–and this page thinks it shouldn’t be–the idea is at least to reinforce actual cash-on-the-barrel-head purchases, not to supplant readers’ tastes entirely. Subsidies are proportional to consumer purchases.” 

It’s interesting how Watson fails to mention that newspapers are HST exempt, but that magazines are not, which means magazine purchases contribute to the government coffers, while newspapers get a free ride…talk about a subsidy, hello.

While I think both covers are quite effective at their mission, I’ll leave it to you to decide whether Watson is correct when asking the rhetorical tongue-in-cheek question: “With the scale advantages American girlie magazines enjoy (and “guys-ey” magazines too apparently), aren’t we patriotically obliged to help protect local production against unfair foreign competition?”

Pehaps Mr. Watson answers his own question with a question in closing, “How long before we start hearing from Quebec about how moralistic English Canadians are and uptight about sex?” Judging by the New York Times Best Sellers List, with Fifty Shades of Grey topping the charts, I’d say that most Americans, and Canadians, are not as uptight as Mr. Watson would like you to believe.

And since the National Post chose not to publish the cover of the Gay publication (could it be his readers are too uptight to handle it? the Post is homophobic? Sexist? or perhaps simply “space challenged”?, as opposed to hypocritical?), for the sake of gender equality, and as a public service, here are the covers.  To each his/her own.