Last Thursday a CBC crew undertook a dramatic chase-down of Gerry Ritz in an airport. The shaky camera footage and the out-of-breath questions suggested a scandal of government-toppling magnitude. Viewers unaware of the details could be forgiven for thinking Ritz was some international criminal finally caught on camera by the Fifth Estate, rather than someone who had used ill-advised gallows humour in a private exchange during a tense crisis.
The Ritz scandal was just the latest installment in an ongoing series. The previous weeks’ scandal began: “Oops again! Stephen Harper pulls his communications director after another false step,” accompanied by a helpful graphic – “Oops again” – and video footage of the *Elections Canada raid* from last April. After a brief bit about gas prices, it was back to business: over the graphic “Derailed,” Mansbridge alarmed: “The mistakes and apologies are piling up! Is the Conservative campaign in trouble?”
Recently the NDP, now that they’re emerging as a threat to the Liberals, has been getting that same treatment. Last Thursday the NDP dropped a candidate after a video surfaced of him taking illegal drugs; it’s the sort of thing that merits a mention, but The National saw fit to air, as top news, a lengthy “worst-of” compilation from the tape. So we saw Dana Larsen taking LSD on a beach, and smoking a joint in a car; it went on and on. The word “NDP” was repeated so gratuitously as to render the report a piece of of Liberal-strategy campaigning, a “think again” warning-piece directed at anyone who’d been considering switching from the Liberals to the NDP.
The CBC’s scandal-mongering is highly suspect for two reasons. First, the scandals are too frequently based on events that happened long before they are presented as breaking scandals. Gerry Ritz’s remarks were made two weeks before the “scandal” broke; the Dana Larsen video was eight years old when it was aired at length in the midst of an election campaign; the Tom Lukiwski tape became a scandal fully seventeen years after a tipsy Lukiwski jokingly made the remarks at a private party. Second, such scandals are often not the result of investigation on the part of CBC journalists, but rather the end result of dirt about non-Liberals being handed over, by individuals who remain unnamed, to producers and/or reporters who then run with it.
Greg Weston:
“With the media leak coming more than two weeks after the fact, and timed to do the maximum political damage to the minister, the PM and the Conservative campaign, there is one obvious question: Who shot Gerry Ritz and why?
“A high-ranking Conservative familiar with what happened on the conference call says no one really has any doubts the leak came from a disgruntled bureaucrat.
“A Tory insider points to previous damaging leaks about the Conservatives’ environmental plans, and cuts to cultural programs as similar push-back from ‘some people who don’t necessarily agree with us.'”
For too long the LPC has had their own public-relations juggernaut, massively funded by Canadian taxpayers, with which to campaign against the other parties. It’s time to stop forcing Canadians who don’t wish to support the Liberals to pay for it.
I watched an election special on CBC Newsworld on Friday evening. The topic was about gaffes and stumbles along the campaign trail and the CBC’s Suhana Marchand took calls on the matter. One caller, named “Larry”, got on and brought up the comments by Brent Fullard, the Liberal candidate in Oshawa running against Flaherty, who made comments comparing the rise of Harper to that of Hitler. As soon as this caller brought it up, Marchand snapped and said, “Oh, I don’t want to go there!” The caller also noted how it, as well as the Oka comment made by a liberal candidate, got little media play. Again, Marchand dismissed the claim and switched gears back to Ritz’ comments.
Stephen Harper said he expected this would be a dirty campaign and that was be more than just an educated guess. It was going on before the election all throughout the entire duration of the last parliament.
The Liberals and their friends in the Media across all it’s disciplines and government bureaucracy are out trolling for dirt to feed their game of Gotcha Politics. They have nothing else to run on in the sad mess they’ve put themselves in.
Any bureaucrat who would stoop to that level should be ashamed yes, but that less than upstanding individual should be sought out and fired. It won’t happen of course, protection is all around him/her in “The LPC Network” which is a perfect descriptive of fact. It’s the reason Harper is fighting this election with one hand behind his back and still doing well.
Dirt slinging has a tendency to fly back like a boomerang, Canadians aren’t that stupid, even though some politicians have said so and think so.
I can’t find any clips from the show, but from the CBC’s webpage on the show that aired, it’s pretty telling how they’re trying to suppress Liberal gaffes in the campaign…
“With reports of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s Listeriosis comments, Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon’s aide’s remarks to an Algonquin constituent, and the resignation of the NDP’s Dana Larsen (for a less, ahem, ‘pot-ty’ mouthed behaviour), the voters have surely had a week to question the good sense of some of our politicians, or the company they keep. We took a look back at the week that was (and that some wish wasn’t).”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/yourturn/2008/09/friday_september_19_1.html
Again, no mention in the CBC’s narrative of Fullard’s comments and the Quebec Liberal candidate who made disparaging comments about natives. So, yeah, they’re trying to mitigate damage to the LPC.
Awfully glad I’m not watching. Realistically, the CBC will never be shut down — too much in the warp and woof of Canadian culture. And it’s funding won’t be dropped much, except perhaps for some short-term political retribution. And there’s probably no chance of making the CBC beg for dough like the US public channels.
BUT, maybe it would be possible to change the CBC mandate to take it OUT of the news and current affairs business altogether; restrict it to cultural matters including our national sport.
Surely the case can be made that a “government broadcaster” — if we must have one — should be kept out of news biz.
Dion’s comment about the media making the greenshift a major part of his platform is not a gaffe ? The cbc knows that a Harper majority will be disastrous for their cushy jobs and they have dropped all pretense of balanced and fair reporting.It will only get worse. I would bet that Dion will have a list of the debate questions a few days before the event. He will not be seen as he ‘prepares’ for it.
Anon, when a Liberal says something that would be a five-alarm scandal for a Conservative to say, it’s just a case of good people making honest mistakes. When a Conservative says it, it’s evidence of his backwards, un-Canadian, American-style true self escaping, and the CBC needs to warn Canadians as a public service.
(BTW, sorry for the temporarily disappearing post, for those who noticed. Think of it as a Luddite special, Sunday Edition.)
“the end result of dirt about non-Liberals being handed over, by individuals who remain unnamed,” (ibid).
The ‘rats in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) are prime suspects.
…-
“An account (with photos) of the now infamous chicken and egg raid here.”
“Carmichael first gained regional and national attention last March, when his poultry and egg operation near Shanly, in the northeast corner of this Grenville County township was the target of a raid by the CFIA and the Egg Farmers of Ontario (EFO), trying to confiscate his chickens. But that was interrupted by the Ontario Landowners.
Carmichael’s egg grading station had been registered since January 17, 1995, but the CFIA had ongoing complaints over the operation.
On May 11, 2006, the CFIA found fault with the temperature of Carmichael’s egg cooler, but he would not allow the inspectors to examine the eggs on his truck. On May 16, Dr. Bashir Manji, then director of the CFIA’s Agri-Food Dividion suspended his operating license. Carmichael was sent a letter explaining the suspension would be lifted when inspectors could show he had complied with the regulations. A failure to do so could result in cancellation of the license. No time line was set, although a date of May 24 was established for the cancellation hearing.”
http://justbetweenusgirls.blogspot.com/2006/05/battle-of-carmichaels-farm_01.html
…-
“Carmichael wins federal court decision against CFIA
By Catherine Thompson – AgriNews Staff Writer
SHANLY – Shawn Carmichael has won a judicial review of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) decision on July 17, 2006 to cancel the registration of his Cardinal-Edswardsburgh Township egg grading station.
On April 19, Judge Maurice Lagacé announced his judgment from the April 11 hearing in Federal Court that set aside the cancellation of the egg station license and referred the matter to the CFIA for a new hearing and decision before a different director.
At the hearing, lawyer Judith Wilcox had represented Carmichael and the CFIA was represented by Alexander Gay. After the announcement, Carmichael said “there were 20 occurrences where we felt natural justice had not been carried out. It showed the CFIA was biased towards us and did not carry out their own rules and regulations.”
Since his troubles began Carmichael has lost his livelihood and now that the Federal Court has vindicated him, he is rethinking the $500,000 claim against the CFIA he had put on the back burner pending the results of the hearing.
“I feel we have the grounds now.” he told The AgriNews.”
http://www.agrinewsinteractive.com/archives/article-8407.htm
It is interesting how the CBC doesn’t have the same standard for itself as it does for the people it reports on. Heather Mallick’s slagging of Sarah Palin is way over the line – and this was information she chose to put out there.
Dion promises to increase funding to the arts and bashes the Conservatives for not liking the CBC.
This is part of a CBC news story.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/story/2008/09/20/dion-green.html
The CBC is in a conflict of interest position, the liberals just bought a bunch of advertising with our tax dollars.
“Surely the case can be made that a “government broadcaster” — if we must have one — should be kept out of news biz.” Me No Dhimmi. That won’t help. Most other MSM broadcasters are in the Liberal camp. It’s just good corporate insurance is my guess. CTV, Global, and even our local radio stations trounce the CPC and Harper with vicous disregard. The Cristy Clark show on CKNW, the Chorus network, Friday was just a joke. The trashing of the NDP (and CPC) on Global is so obvious you would have to be Rip Van Winkle to miss it. And the Green Party is also taking a licking.
Anything goes when the precious Libs are in trouble. Does anybody care what someone did 8 to 10 years ago in his foolish college days? I guess the issues just don’t matter unless their Liberal.
You’d think by now the CBC would have noticed that we are on to their little game…instead, they’ve ramped it up so blatantly they have no journalistic integrity left.
If they had cleaned up their act, maybe there wouldn’t be so many Conservatives screaming for them to be defunded. Now the screaming is getting louder. We need a majority.
restrict it to cultural matters including our national sport.
Yeah but those latte-sipping leftist limp-wrists couldn’t even get that one right, as evidenced to the fact that the rights to the HNIC theme song are now controlled by CTV/TSN!
CBC has been a boar’s nest of leftists since it’s inception along with the communist infested National Film Board.
Along with a federal civil service that has a culture of Liberalism ingrained and their hatered for conservatives and Harper is palpable.
“Gotcha” is the CBC watchword, fair and balanced reporting is an American FOX cable network concept and doesn’t apply in Canada.
In defence of the cbc,a gaffe does not become major unless it is publicized.Take Garth’s little misleading of the cpac crew and the lies afterwards,for an example. No coverage,no gaffe.
From Stan’s (1:00 pm) link:
“Dion also said the Conservatives would attack the CBC, citing a question the party posed in a letter as part of the Conservatives’ fundraising campaign. The letter was released by the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, a lobby group.
“The group said the letter asked: ‘The CBC costs taxpayers over $1.1 billion per year. Do you think this is a good use of taxpayers’ dollars or a bad use of taxpayers’ dollars?’
“Dion said the fact the Conservatives posed such a question indicated they had ‘something in mind.'”
(Emph. mine)
Aye-ep, the nerve of those Conservatives, asking the toothless proles — aka non-Liberals — how they feel about giving thousands of millions of dollars to the CBC?
Have a little humanity people!
Consider that, for the many misguided minions if the CBC life just got very uncertain.
A C-C-C-Conservative PM with a majority? From the West? Alberta? Calgary? National Citizen’s Coalition?
Less Government? Lower Taxes?
All their nightmares come true.
Try to understand how scary it is for them.
After you chuckle.
EBD: Thank-you for posting about the obvious biased ‘scandal mongering’ by the media in this nation.
Sane citizens, who love this country, must ask the begging question: ‘what is in it for them’? What is the media involvement in egregious, criminal activities like Adscam, if any? If the msm are not intertwined with the Puffins/Dippers on a very personal/economic level; why do they care so much about the outcome of elections?
I have never understood the freaky hatred the media has for President Bush and I recoiled, in horror, when I read that spewing of hatred and vitriol that Heather ‘whats her name’ put to paper in a mini mind attempt to attack Governor Palin. Heather Mallick works for the CBC, she is a pubic servant, by the virtue of being paid by taxpayers: she writes for all the people of Canada. Do Canadians think that it is O.K. to attack a Governor of a foreign country, though condescending, mean, sanctimonious smearing of the Governor’s family? Governor Palin is very popular here in the North, we value the long standing friendship we Yukoners have with the Great state of Alaska. How are we to react when a freaky public servant takes it upon herself to attempt to slander our good friends, their families and our families via the Governors family from our side of the border?
The brain challenged Mallick has compromised Yukoners. She has not apologized to us or the people of Alaska.
The msm has yet to learn that the door swings both ways. They have been sitting on nice, comfy Liberano furs for so many years that they have no integrity – and neither do many of the civil servants.
Most people, who have ever actually done anything in their lives or have made any decisions under stress understand the gallows humour of Mr. Ritz. Most of the media don’t understand that most Canadians do not have nice comfy furs to sit on; we live in a real world where bad things happen. The media are smearing all of us via Gerry Ritz – they have earned our contempt and they have it – most of my friends don’t believe anything that the media says anymore.
The question is ‘why are we paying these fools who risk our nation’s relations with the Governor of Alaska who is running for Vice President?’ Why are we paying, TWICE, for the Puffin propaganda in this election?
BTW, EBD I want to congratulate and thank-you for your posts here at SDA. I have read your posts over the years and my admiration and respect for your astute opinions and observations has only grown more positive with the passage of time.
CBC is running with the Liberals in this election campaign more than ever before. The Liberals and their network are trolling for stories in the bowels of the Public service looking for squealers to feed the Gotcha game. They’ve had it going since the Harper Conservatives took power. It’s not working for the desperate fools, Canadians are not that stupid outside of Toronto if we can believe the polls.
We can’t give CPAC a whole lot of praise, they’re just as biased . If anyone needs any proof tune in to the Dale Goldhawk call-in show on Sunday evenings for an example.
Watching Heather Mallick’s piece become a point of contention for O’Reilly the other night was downright embarrassing, but David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen induced more damage by trying to reason that such putrid garbage spewed would bring about positive debate. It seems there is not end in sight of idiot journalists. The piece was a disgrace and there was not one defendable sentence in it. To even suggest it could promote dialogue is laughable.
What’s missing in the commentary following Mallick’s anti-woman hissy fit is that it wasn’t just Americans who were enraged by her. A lot of Canadians were, too. I haven’t seen a Canadian media outfit represent this fact. More skewering of the truth.
Gunney99 at September 21, 2008 1:01 PM
Oh, I completely agree with everything you say here, except to remind you that we are coerced into funding the government broadcaster.
I should also add that the licencing power of the CRTC is an issue too. How bold could you be if you knew that your business could be shut down if you express the wrong views. Recall that Quebec radio talk-show host.
SO, we have a influential government broadcaster and a make-or-break government licensing body. A compound disaster.
The problem is that we live in a society that is weened on soundbites. No matter what we may know about the CBC, people DO watch it and eventually will come around to the Liberal’s way of thinking. I’ve always maintained that anyone who discounts the Liberal as being weak has a thing or two to learn about them. Remember that during the Sponsorship Scandal there were Liberal Ministers that were tied to the Mafia. Not that they all Libs are bad but it goes to show how low they can go and the connections they can and will use. If the Conservatives come through this election unscathed and with a majority it will show how astute Canadians really are. If the Conservatives are successfully torpedoed, that to will illustrate the collective IQ of the Canadian populace.
By the way, I got a flyer from the Conservative Party asking me to fill in a questionaire and donate money. One of the questions is, “”The CBC costs Canadian Taxpayers over 1.1 Billion per year. Do you think this is:
1.A good use of taxpayer dollars.
2.A bad use of taxpayer dollars.
Do you suppose the Libs and the CBC noticed that? Perhaps they are trying to sink the CPC to save their oily hides?
Whooo-hooo!
Thanks for this post, EBD. Kate’s posted a lot of play-by-play CBCrap but it’s good to see the pattern up front.
I’ve been “monitoring” the CBC for over 30 years and they seem to grow more entitled by the year. I guess that’s what happens when the doh-re-me just keeps rolling in, no matter what drivel they BRAWWWWDCAST. Add to that, the fact that the CBC Ombudsman is a former CBC employee, and you’ve definitely got a stacked deck.
What keeps me from despair is to see where the CPC and PMSH are in the polls DESPITE the CBC and the rest of the Canadian MSM’s being shameless shills and cheerleaders for the Librano Party of Canada. Most Canadians are smarter than to allow the blatant propagandizing of our MSM “overlords” to make up our minds for us. Most Canadians are smart enough to have stopped reading our major dailies and to have turned off the TV. The smartest Canadians (!) have turned to the blogs for their news.
As others have pointed out, the pro-Librano propagandizing on the part of the CBC and other media is beginning to work against the LPC (in addition to the utter embarrassment of Dee-Yawn’s campaign).
I wouldn’t be surprised if the CPC is polling ABOVE the figures we now see. Remember the last election? The polls consistently showed the CPC further down in popularity than they ended up being on election night. The actual poll is how well the parties do on October 14.
If the CPC does get a majority–and the CBC-types are **itting bricks at the thought–I hope they clip the CBC’s wings real good. It’s time for this federally funded agency to be accountable to those of us who fund it.
The piece was a disgrace and there was not one defendable sentence in it. To even suggest it could promote dialogue is laughable.Posted by: Nicole at September 21, 2008 1:57 PM
I am of the belief that people, a good majority of them, are reasonable and mature. Sometimes reactive and emotional, but reasonable. They know a rat when they see one. It takes time, but people will form an opinion that is ultimately result in the ‘wisdom of the masses’.
Having read Mallick for many years – and giving up on her after a particularly brutal G&M piece some 3 years ago – her fringe views and personal commentary are becoming more explicit. Probably one of the reasons the Pail dropped her.
But more, I am happy to see this piece widely known, and Mallick’s supporters coalesce as the radical leftist fringe. People in general sense this: that she is truly an embittered and angry person, driven by (her) un-reconcilable failure of the left wing to capture the broad consensus of the public. I suspect, her stock has dropped in most quarters, excepting the extremists.
Good to see. She wears it well.
b baby.
Pass it on.
I’ve called for it before, I’ll call for it again: remove the billion dollar annual taxpayer subsidy from the CBC. Let the network sink or swim like its private counterparts. In an age of hundreds of channels, a taxpayer funded channel simply doesn’t make sense anymore.
The fact it is also a verifiable mouthpiece for the Liberano party should make this a no-brainer for a conservative majority. Do it early in the mandate, so when the next election rolls around, the average joe on the street will see his life didn’t explode when the CBC was cut back (or failed!). And, for the people impacted by the cutback, they’d never be CPC voters anyways.
wallyj…your last sentence strikes fear in my heart.This is not unbelievable,the puppet masters have to figure out how to make Dion acceptable to the electorate,no small task.While I was entertaining the notion that the questions that will be posed to the leaders during the debate would be Liberal friendly,I never even considered your theory.
The CBC has been under the gun for some time now. But now that bloggers are gaining such a foothold, the CBC isn’t only under the gun, it’s under the microscope. The publically funded broadcaster is smelling it’s own blood and fears the Corp may soon become a corpse.
I like some aspects of the CBC – a few of their shows but they could be produced by and for any network that does not get corporate welfare from the taxpayers.
I was really upset when I found out that CBC’s new fall lineup includes a whole raft of American programs which could have also been bid for by any network. So, we are now subsidizing American TV programs with taxpayer dollars.
The other aspect of the CBC that absolutely rankles me is their “holier than thou” elitist attitude. Wouldn’t it be a hoot to do a series of programs about the personal and private lives of such hoity toits as Peter Mansbridge, and what’s his name with the braaaaaawcast.
How do you think they would stand up to the kind of muck raking about conservatives they seem to enjoy ? Smacking and pursing their entitled lips to tut tut and destroy fellow Canadians with taxpayer dollars.
Doesd it not seem obscene somehow?
“it’s” (sic) sorry about that.
For some good cbc commentary,read Norman Specter’s piece in G&M,,’The big loser after two weeks?CBC’
And more on the useless,biased cbc,Blatchford’s Fri.column is gold.See,msm,we are noticing..and so nice for some honest journalists to help point out your bias!
We deserve truth in reporting from our Publicly owned CBC. In fact we deserve truth from all networks who report news. Skewed news, especially in an election period is tinkering with our democratic rights.
Opinions and news are so mixed together we can’t tell fact from spin. This is from far too many twits and talking heads in our media outlets, and the journalists in print media, we have to do our own investigations. Thank God for the blogoshere!
Christie Blatchford wrote a superb column, A bit of private black humour has the sanctimonious seeing red about the Ritz issue. First, she describes a few examples of the ridiculous uber-sensitivities she’s recently encountered, and continues —
“And now, or should I say still, this Gerry Ritz business, which for the third consecutive day was yesterday dominating the election news in print and on the airwaves.
“(Lest you doubt me, Thursday’s broadcast of The National, and this was Day 2, remember, devoted five minutes and 10 seconds, an eternity in television, and no fewer than three reporters to its coverage — chief political correspondent Keith Boag, on the so-called main story, Susan Ormiston reporting on the reports from blogland and Laurie Graham interviewing those whose relatives died in the listeriosis outbreak.)
“The whole thing – Mr. Ritz’s black humour and the attention it continues to receive – is the epitome of the insufferable, sanctimonious orthodoxy which now reigns in the land, and which makes me rue for my country far more than any looming world financial fiasco.”
She’s just getting started — read the whole thing.
All employees of the CBC should be fired and the assets sold with the proceeds to be put toward the national debt. Th one billion or so a year that the CBC has been getting should be put towards further funding of the armed forces for Arctic sovereignty capital purchases.
Time to shut these idiots down. I can handle bias in a private broadcaster, but in a public network it is completely inexcusable.
George Strombowhatever did a comedy bit on Ritz and the listeriosis thing on the Hour.
Should George resign?
It’s no different than their outrage over Lewkiske and Brad Wall doing an accent.
The Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minute does all sorts of accents and stereotypes, that’s a big part of their show.
Mike from Canmore, Joe Crow, the cab driver on RCAF, there are plenty of examples.
But that’s different.
I noted some time ago, when the Krista Erickson scandal emerged (a CBC reporter feeding irrelevant ‘gotcha’ questions to a Liberal MP during a Commons enquiry), that while for a long time it had been said the CBC was the mouthpiece of the Liberal Party, it now seemed as if the Liberal Party had become the mouthpiece of the CBC.
The Ritz affair is now a Liberal TV ad running on CTV…
EBD, Christie Blatchford is the indisputable, no nonsense,tell it like it is journalist in the business. She’s sure right on the mark in her column.
The media are keeping this going long past it’s best before date. It’s just the latest grub for their Liberals gotcha game, the ONLY game the Liberals have, fed from a Liberal squealer, disgruntled bureaucrat or whatever the hell IT was. It’s a very low form of politics and it’s fitting it’s coming from the Liberal camp. It’s also proving they’re not fit to govern a two-holed privy. They’ve reduced themselves to Guttersnipes.
I’m surprised the G&M still employs Christie,it flies in the face of everything else that comes from that fish paper wrap.
I just saw it, Skip. If > that ad doesn’t turn people off of the Liberals I’ll eat my hat.
Prurient, disingenuous, shameless, appropriating — it’s just not going to work for them. They’re putting on gaudy display the very quality that has turned people off the Liberals. Can you imagine anyone who didn’t intend to vote Liberal changing their mind because of that ad?
Just…remarkably desperate. Last time I checked, a political ad isn’t supposed to make viewers feel disgust for the party that approved it.
No doubt the CBC is pro-Liberal and isn’t afraid to show it blatantly.
They want the Liberals to see that they are willing to bend over backwards for them, secure in the knowledge that, no matter how many folks they turn off with their hit pieces on Liberal rivals, there’s, at least under the Liberals, always the tax dollars coming in to keep them going.
Of course, the CBC is also shooting itself in the foot, gambling that the Conservatives wouldn’t ever dare axe them, no matter what, failing to realize that many Canadians really, really want to get rid of that Liberal propaganda spewer so as to end the waste of over a billion dollars a year in confiscated taxes and will reward the Conservatives by continuing to support them in elections.
Now, speaking of protecting Liberals, I have irrefutable proof that the entire MSM has protected the Liberals from scandal whilst picking the tiniest of nits and using them to bash the Tories.
C’mon… Where’s the Outrage?
http://thecanadiansentinel.blogspot.com/2008/09/cmon-wheres-outrage.html
The Gerry Ritz tongue-in-cheek dark-humor crack about Wayne Easter? Some Tory flunky saying folks shouldn’t be going around drunk? Certainly careless remarks chalked up to the common brainfart which everyone has, but hardly anything much compared to a Liberal candidate saying the army should’ve massacred the Mohawks at Oka, just blown ’em all away at will.
Am I the only one who noticed that?
The National Post has a story about Garth’s blog having a ‘Deathwatch’ for his opponent Lisa Rait. This has since been taken down. I won’t hold my breath waiting for the cbc to report on it.
The entire MSM, save perhaps for some, mostly in the French-Quebec MSM, is guilty of bashing the Tories while protecting the Liberals from far, far, FAR worse:
http://thecanadiansentinel.blogspot.com/2008/09/cmon-wheres-outrage.html
As far as I still have a problem with biased producers and other individuals in the CBC, it should be noted it was the Canadian Press that broke this story. The Canadian Press has a history of bias against the Conservatives imho.
And there’s no question there are bureaucrats who openly despise the Conservatives and Harper, and feel entirely justified when they use any tactics to attack. Take it from someone who knows. On the positive side, it’s far less common in Alberta (go figure), and it seems a majority of those who would be on a seek-and-destroy mission are retiring.
The crowning irony? Those relatives of victims the media digs up, who have been deeply hurt by these comments, would never have heard them if it wasn’t for the media and a self-righteous bureaucrat. Then there’s the Liberals, who are doing everything they can to stretch this out, milking it all the way.
Now what’s the greater sin:
a little black humour in what was supposed to be a private conversation? I doubt there’s any adult on the planet who hasn’t used that kind of humour.
or, making a private conversation public in order to score political points, causing, exacerbating, and exploiting pain felt by victim’s families, and doing everything possible to ensure it hurts as much as possible, for as long as possible, in order to get as much mileage out of it as possible.
Shameful behaviour, but on the part of the media, bureaucrat, and Liberal Party, not Mr Ritz.
…h.ryan, it’s quite possibly Christie Blatchford who’s keeping them out of the take-out fish markets and bird cage bottoms. They know they need to have some semblance of common sense to balance things out, even if only slightly, to keep themselves afloat.
“What’s the greater sin?”
I agree, Jimbo. When it gets down to brass tacks, most Canadians are a lot more decent than they are political. If asked to choose which of these two is more sickening: a) someone in a very stressful situation using black humour in private, or b)this …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ0T4Hfbi18&eurl=http://canadaconservative.blogspot.com/2008/09/liberals-are-first-to-go-negative.html
…I think option B would be the pick nine times out of ten.
I have never seen a worse Canadian political ad. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. The Liberals are either in the final stages of a fatal panic, or they’re completely shameless, or they’re tone deaf to irony. Pick one.
And what’s more disturbing is that in every hotel,on every floor,every lobby,from coast to coast,the G&M is readily available for free.Even in the major hotels in Alberta.
What I forgot to mention was if you want a Post,you’ll have to pay for it.
From Christie Blatchford’s article, referenced by EBD:
“So, we all know that this is how, in private and among those we trust, many of us talk, and that it betrays nothing of our core beliefs. But the orthodoxy now dictates that if and when someone – politician, TV personality, movie star, baseball player, anyone – indulges, even in private but it somehow makes it into the public domain, he is fair game. We all rally ’round to condemn, cluck our lips, and shake our heads, denying what we know is our shared weakness, indeed our shared humanity.
Welcome to Canada, where being inappropriate is the new worst sin.
I remain yours in full foul black humour, peanuts in hand, and stinking of perfume, etc.”
Bravo!