Slumming It at the Rodeo: The Cultural Roots of Canada's Right-Wing Revolution

Eric P. Mintz is an associate professor of political science at Sir
Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

In this entertaining look at right-wing populism in Canada, Gordon Laird
portrays Preston Manning, Mike Harris, and Ralph Klein as
“cost-cutting cowboys.” Just as commercialization has transformed
authentic cowboy culture into manufactured “new country music,” so
too contemporary populism has lost its roots and turned into a defence
of the business elite and the forces of corporate globalization. In both
music and politics, a “folksy” image is used to sell “top down
commercialism” to alienated consumers and voters.

Although Laird presents a number of interesting observations and a good
discussion of aboriginal policy, this book does not provide a systematic
and comprehensive analysis of the “right- wing revolution.” The
cultural critique of contemporary populism is unabashedly from a
liberal–leftist intellectual perspective, but the discussion of
creating a genuine democratic alternative to “McPopulism” is
limited.