Hey! Kory! Come back here!

You can't go yet. We're not done with you.

But seriously, though ... several bloggers have joined in the karmic pile-on already, so I'll forbear for now. But I can't help noting how consistently some of the biggest names at Sun Media have been stepping in pile after pile of their own shit recently.

There's Kory and his Snuffelupagus-impersonating "source." And there's David Akin and his spotty grasp of history. In fairness, David deserves credit for having owned up and fixed his "embarrassing mistake," but it does say something about Sun Media that it stayed online for a week without anyone else noticing or doing anything about it. Even with some mean-spirited bastard pointing it out repeatedly. (Really, David? "Twit?" That hurts.)

However, David's mea culpa slags BigCityLib, who flagged the error before I did, for indulging in a "cheap gotcha." Dear me, I'm clutching my pearls and looking around for the fainting couch. Heaven forfend that Sun Media would ever stoop to "cheap gotchas."

Yes, that's another cheap shot, but if Sun Media's going to cut across the blue line with its head down, it's going to have to expect to get lined up.



But while we're on the subject of Sun Media, let's revisit the Ian Davey controversy for a minute. We've all read about it, so no need to rehash, but as Dr. Dawg has argued, Davey really wasn't so far off the mark if he was suggesting that Sun Media puts out papers for morons. As the good Doctor writes:

The Sun specializes in vulgar, uninformed comment intended to inflame prejudice and damp down reflection. And there's a constituency for that. Davey didn't express himself well, but that's precisely what he was getting at, and--let me go out on a limb here--it's what a lot of us believe, even if we sometimes forbear to say it out loud.

Dawg's already made the argument better than I can, and I'd urge you to go read it in full, but it ties into what I've been saying about the deliberate cultivation of ignorance and stupidity. And I guess the deeper I get into this argument, the harder I'm finding it to disagree with thwap about the utility of calling people on their stupidity.

Citizenship and civic engagement go hand in hand. You're not fulfilling your obligations as a citizen if you can't be bothered to think critically. That means looking at things through something more thoughtful and challenging than a smudgy lens of right-wing clichés (h/t Dawg again). And if you're too lazy and / or stupid to try, well, you might get some momentary satisfaction out of being pandered to by the Suns and Rob Fords of the world. But you've forfeited any right to be taken seriously or treated with respect.

So I'm a snooty condescending elitist? Sue me.

Dear, oh dear, oh dear

Screen cap from Saturday September 11, 5:16 p.m. ET.

Well, now.

That would be at least four days that no one's bothered to correct David Akin's paragraph confusing Joe Clark with Robert Stanfield. As even a cursory internet search reveals, it was Mr. Stanfield whose Progressive Conservatives lost the 1974 federal election to Pierre Trudeau's Liberals. Joe Clark's first federal campaign as Tory Leader was in 1979.

Yes, that would be the National Bureau Chief for Sun Media.  The point man, one would think, in ensuring the credibility of Fox Noise North's political coverage.

Yeah, well.  Who cares about facts, accuracy and history anyway?

(H/t BigCityLib.)

Update: Link here. Five days.

Update: Six days. Anyone up for a pool?

Censorship? You keep using that word ...

The online petition to keep Fox News North from infecting our national discourse is striking a nerve. Predictably, the flying monkeys of the right are whining about "censorship."

Here we go again. One of the most predictable things about the radical right is the incessant obsession with stripping words of their meanings. In their through-the-looking-glass world, words can mean anything. They can be stripped of their connotations and used with no regard for context, for history or even coherence. Case in point: among our southern friends, the disciples of Karl Rove have been so successful in turning the word "liberal" into an epithet that the entire national conversation has been hijacked. (Tip of the hat to my pal Sabina for the first link; I have a little trouble believing that the second one is genuine because the spelling and grammar are almost perfect.)

This is why it's more important than ever to ensure that terms don't get redefined. I've written previously about the need to maintain control over narratives, but it's even more fundamental to make sure that when we use terms like "freedom of speech," "civil liberties" and "censorship," we're not allowing our opponents to impose their own instrumental meanings. If we're not vigilant about that, we've lost the debate before it even begins.



So, back to first principles. Let's talk about censorship for a minute. Censorship is defined by Wikipedia as "the suppression of speech or other communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body."

With great respect to my conservative friends, nobody's arguing that Sun Media and Kory Teneycke shouldn't be allowed to set up their so-called "populist" news channel, even if the premise upon which they're basing it is contrived bullshit. What I object to is the idea of the PMO strong-arming the CRTC into making sure it gets a Category 1 licence, which would require cable carriers to include it as part of their basic TV packages. Ensuring that regulatory bodies maintain an impartial arms-length separation from the government of the day and enabling them to withstand transitory political pressure is not censorship, dear friends.

It's indicative of how debased public conversation can become, however, that principled devotion to the idea of an impartial public service can be smeared with inflammatory labels like censorship. Let's be clear: "censorship" is every bit as loaded a term as "racism." Accusations of censorship or hate speech are rhetorical and emotional cudgels which have the effect of shutting down debate. And by extension, claiming that someone else is accusing of you such things allows you to claim victim status. Either way, you've moved the debate away from issues of principle and policy and reframed it in far more volatile and easily manipulated emotional terms.

Margaret Atwood's entry into the discussion has prompted exactly this sort of response. Sun Media's Ottawa bureau chief has accused her of backing an anti-free-speech movement.

Over at Let Freedom Rain, Jymn Parrett writes about the weird entitlement thing right-wingers have when it comes to the media.  They really believe that the media have an obligation to parrot their own sense of grievance and outrage, he argues, and it drives them bonkers when that doesn't happen. As he puts it:

Sharron Angle so perfectly encapsulated this entitlement syndrome when she famously told a newsperson that she thinks the role of the media is to reflect her positions as she recites them. Palin and Dr. Laura also have publicly expressed this idea, confusing their rights with that of the first amendment.

Note to conservatives - the media is not here to read your minds and print your thoughts. You've been spoiled for too long listening to dittoheads on the radio waves and the dunderheads at Fox News. We are not all Murdoch. And that royally pisses off the right.

It seems intuitively obvious, but when you're dealing with people who view the world through a warped ideological lens, nothing is obvious. People like Sarah Palin, Michael Savage and Laura Schlessinger have been quick to claim the mantle of victimhood and cry censorship when people call them on their hatred and stupidity, but it needs to be emphasized, and repeated as often as necessary: disagreeing with someone and holding her accountable for her irresponsible and hateful rhetoric is not censorship. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you're immune from criticism. Words have consequences.

In Politics and the English Language (1946), George Orwell argued that

... one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.

Once again, vigilance is key. If we allow them to define the words, we're letting them frame the issues and define the terms of the debate. We can't let them do that.