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?

A Sun reader speaks

Res ipsa loquitur. Link here, but god knows whether it'll be there for long, hence the screen cap.

I'm glad the NRA's meddling in our politics. Guys like this should be able to pack heat if they want to.

Supporting the troops, my ass

Quick shot this morning (h/t pogge):

So Peter MacKay's paused his droopy-dog-photo-op shtick long enough to accuse Iggy of undermining morale by asking questions about the F-35 boondoggle. (God, I hate that word, but in this case ... )

Two words: Pat Stogran.

Shut up, Droopy.

Where's my flight suit? 

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.

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.

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?