On that whole Nycole Turmel thing ...

While we're on the subject of journalistic ethics, let me just cite pogge and thwap. They've already said it better than I can.

From pogge:

Every year or two I find a reason to point to Declan's post on the Media Failure Two-Step. (And actually I could find a reason much more often than that.) To review, the Two-Step looks like this:

Step 1) Cause something (bad) to happen through your reporting.

Step 2) Report on this (bad) thing from the perspective of an innocent bystander.

And then you just repeat indefinitely.

Our latest example? With the Globe and Mail leading the charge, since yesterday many in the media have been having a great old time implying that a Quebec politician who has previously been involved with the BQ is somehow unfit for her position as an interim leader for the NDP. That in turn would imply that about half the voters of Quebec are illegitimate participants in the democratic process until they somehow redeem themselves to the satisfaction of the Globe's editorial board. And in case it isn't obvious, deserting the BQ in droves to vote for the NDP isn't sufficient for the purpose.

And from thwap:

Whether the NDP has tossed a rope down to allow the Liberal Party of Canada to clamber back up out of the grave is something I'm not prepared to speculate upon, nor is it something I'm inclined to speculate upon.

I'll let the voters decide. And I can't predict that.

It does show that the Liberals are looking to knock the NDP off from its perch as the second party in Canada. For the issues of economic and foreign policy, I hope they fail. I hope, for reasons of foreign and economic policy, that the NDP hews closer to the principles of former BQ voters in Quebec. Because given the failure of mainstream (read: harpercon and Liberal) economic and foreign policies, the NDP might just find that adhering to Quebeckers values will resonate with more and more people in English Canada.

It's just this sort of stupidity from the Village that's brought us to the point we're at now. I'm not carrying water for anyone, but if the NDP chooses not to play this game by these rules, then I say good on them. The reaction from the political and media establishment will, of course, be furious – and predictable. That's up to them. Whether we allow it to matter is up to us.

Related posts:

• Opposing the #HarperRegime: thinking strategically over the next four years
• Woodward and Bernstein are dead
• Working against a permanent Conservative majority
• Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold

Suzanne Trepanier on what Harper's boys did to Remy Beauregard

  

Via Jymn and Dr. Dawg.

I haven't given this story as much attention as I should, but Jymn and the Dawgmeister have. As has Paul Wells at Maclean's.

Police budgets, and how a phony narrative gets manufactured

Earlier this week, the Star ran an essay in which the best mayor Toronto's had in the last half-century argues that there's plenty of wasteful spending in the police budget, and that if the Ford regime is serious about trimming fat and stopping the gravy train, there's lots of room to cut there.

Remy Beauregard's legacy

I'm not going to go through the whole sordid story here. Much as I'd like to, I haven't been giving it the attention it deserves, but Paul Wells has been doing a fantastic job on it.

You'd think they'd know this

... but apparently, people with lots of money have ways of getting back at people who publish repulsive smears about them.



OK, be honest with me. Am I overdoing it with the schadenfreude?

Could someone please change Ezra's diaper?

Honestly, he's starting to smell. Dear Lord, who told this little pisher that kacking into cyberspace is the same thing as a contribution to intellectual discourse?  ("Hey, look at me, I'm a Stockaholic!  Look at me! Look at me!")

Another smear job, another steaming pile of crap, lies and hysterical accusations. And for kicks, he ties Margaret Atwood to Al-Jazeera with a lurid story about some dirty Muslim terrorist who smashed a 4-year-old kid's head with a rock. Just in case it isn't clear that this is a Clash of Civilizations^TM, and the brown folks with the funny names are eeeeeevul.

But that's just setting the table. The main point, it seems, is to carry on with the lies, the anguished posturing as aggrieved victim, and whine about censorship and suppression. Margaret Atwood is demanding that Sun TV be banned, he says.

Of course, there's no evidence for that, and of course, that's not what she said. And again, he's displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of both freedom of expression and censorship. But then that's par for the course, isn't it. The rest of the piece is just more of the same: left-wing mainstream media consensus, the only opinions allowed on TV are anti-American, anti-Christian big-government mush, yargle bargle blegh, drool.

Yawn.

He's like a kid who never mastered toilet training, craps his pants regularly and then demands that someone change him. I suppose we can't hold him responsible for someone else's bad parenting, but he can't have it both ways by demanding to be treated like an adult either.

Update: Tip of the yarmulka to Sabina and thwap.

Don't hold your breath, Margaret

From Margaret Atwood on Twitter:

Well, I'm sure they'd love to, but in between calling for the mass murder of Tamil refugees and smearing George Soros as a Nazi, I doubt they have room.