Perhaps the mainstream media outlets should register as an authorized third-party advertiser in this election too.
Seriously, how soon we forget. Tim Powers (one of my favourite Conservative pundits) has an excellent post about this whole Ritz/Lannigan fiasco:
Glad to have you back, Rob. I was getting lonely. For the purposes of balance - and I know that matters to you - you might want to remind readers that the Liberal Party lost two candidates last week because of anti-aboriginal comments. Funny how quickly people forget.
Sadly, it was only a few weeks before the election when your senior health critic, Robert Thibault, was insulting the elderly and women. While Thibault did apologize, managed to keep his critic's spot.
And of course, who can forget your candidate in Whitby, Brent Fullard? Astoundingly, he kept his spot in that riding after making Nazi-like references about the Prime Minister.
Then your friends in the Green Party had to release a candidate last week for anti-Semitic remarks.
None of these comments are acceptable. So I'd guard against anybody getting to sanctimonious. None of this reflects well on any party; we all should be sorry we are having to say sorry.
Of course by people he means the media, they forget because they wish to make the controversy bigger then it is, and to show the Liberals in a more positive light. Thanks to these and other gaffes the Conservatives are losing ground in Ontario and Quebec. The media is influencing the election.
When a Liberal candidate gets caught not being forthcoming to CPAC or CBC I hear next to nothing in the mainstream media.
Liberal, Green, or NDP candidates get nailed for inappropriate comments there is barely a splash in the mainstream media. Perhaps understandable for the Greens, but for the grits or dippers? Puhlease.
Thibault makes ageist and sexist remarks and his is not forced to resign his critic post and his candidacy. Liberal and MSM double standards? Yes!
Elizabath May calls our soldiers "christian crusaders" and compares the government to Nazis, were there widespread calls in the media and Liberal ranks for her resignation? No!
Jean Chretien made multiple "jokes" about the use of pepper spray at the APEC summit. "For me, pepper, I put it on my plate.", and that the protesters should be happy it was pepper spray and not baseball bats. Yes I know these are old, but Stephane Dion wasn't calling for Chretien to resign then.
This is not to say what Ritz said was right, personally, I think he should resign. Not for his "cold cuts" crack, but for his comment regarding Mr Easter. That is completely unacceptable, someone's family member died, and you are wishing it was an opponent. However, the cold cut crack isn't very offensive.
Really, is this so bad?
Mr. Ritz joked during the call that the crisis was causing the government a death of a thousand cuts "or should I say the death of a thousand cold cuts."
It is a colloquialism. A saying, gallows humour maybe, tasteless yes. Something to be fired over no. Something to lose an election over? Hell no! He was not referring to people's deaths, not at all. Would we be having this conversation if he had said "the straw that broke the camels back"? I doubt it.
What Darlene Lannigan said also wasn't eloquent, but referring to past behavior from a protester group when agreeing to meeting them should not be construed as "racist".
“If you behave and you're sober and there's no problems and if you don't do a sit down and whatever, I don't care,” said Mr. Cannon's assistant Darlene Lannigan to Mr. Matchewan. She then added: “One of them showed up the other day and was drinking.”
“Are you calling me an alcoholic?” replied Mr. Matchewan.
“I'm not calling you an alcoholic. No. It was just to say that you're in a federal office. If you're coming in to negotiate, I expect, there's [decorum] that has to be respected,” said Ms. Lannigan.
Or maybe as Garth Turner would say, let's leave gutter politics and get back to talking about real issues. Oh wait, that is only valid to get Liberals out of hot water.
13 comments:
You can be sure that the media and the opposition have made note of the effect negative Tory stories have on he polls.
We can look forward to 17 year old tapes, comments from anyone, anywhere connected to the Conservative party that in any way slag anybody. Hell - even Tories slagging Tories made headline news. I soon expect them to drag Brenda Martin out of the woodwork to bring a few tears to the situation.
IF the Tories win this election - it will be in spite of the media.
Unfortunately it appears Liz May may have been right about Canadians.
As usual the fix is in. Liberal media will do anything and everything to stop a Conservative majority. And people wonder why Harper doesn't like to talk to the media. So not only do the Conservatives have to beat the opposition parties they have to beat the media. They'll have to be smarter in the remaining days of the campaign and somehow use the left-wing media bias to their advantage.
If you didn't catch CBCs At Issue last night, Andrew Coyne, Chantel Hebert and polster Greg Allen all said Ritz should NOT be fired.
That everyone does the gallows joke thing in a crisis.
Chantell went further to say if they fired Ritz the leaks would increase as some civil servants would be motivated to get other Ministers fired.
CTV is pushing the Ritz thing hard, not CBC.
The Liberals would rather talk about Ritz, take the focus off their platform.
We're in a global financial crisis and Libs are in a bidding war with the Dippers.
Libs are fighting for 2nd place.
wilson the Liberals are surging in the key Ontario ridings and apparently now Quebec as well. It will interesting to see how it plays out. I don't think they are falling to third any time in the near future.
Conservatives in Quebec, Cons in first, Bloc in second, Libs in THIRD:
''The gains were apparent in yesterday's Leger Marketing poll of the province: Conservatives 34%, Bloc Quebecois 32%, Liberals 20%, NDP 9%. In the poll of 1,000 Quebecers, taken between Sept. 12 and 16, the Liberals have fallen to third place in the Montreal region,
***the Bloc has fallen out of first place for the first time since the 1993 election,
***and the Conservatives have moved into first place for the first time since the free trade campaign of 1988.''
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=805383
Doesn't matter that much. I doubt it'll move many votes. It may make some of the support less sticky for a bit.
Wait for the debates.
This is the campaign where the debate will decide.
We could lose big, we could win big. It's still ours to win.
Oh come on, the media in Canada, as a group, has lost considerable power. Especially in the last few years. The last election, in my opinion, was their last chance to swing an election one way or the other. Today, they no longer have the power.
Look at the numbers. Subscribers are down at papers and magazines, viewership is down for TV news. The only media that is still popular is talk radio, and who dominates that?
PMSH just answered questions (masterfully), only a few questions on Ritz,
amazing heh Craig Oliver!
Serious questions on the economy, Bank of Canada, the income splitting just announced and Putin's bid in our North.
Have the media resigned to covering the issues and given up on the gotcha's??
Lizzy is a good communicator, but her carbon tax scheme is even more elaborate than Dion's.
(tho she may be able to give an instructive 30 minute lecture in 2 minutes)
And in these economic times, looking to Europe's carbon tax economy will not be a winning example.
wilson, interesting. My data was a mere 12 hours old.
I might have been thinking of the Strategic Council polls for 45 closest ridings.
Subscribers are down for papers/mags, but for the evening news?
Alberta Girl, I guess we need to help the Tory researchers dig up old qoutes against the grits.
Like some of them I found in this post.
wilson, I am surprised CTV is pushing the issue so hard, I always thought CTV was more balanced then CBC.
At least that was my thoughts last election time :)
Perhaps CBC's partiality is the 7th sign of the coming apocalypse :)
If conservatives have the sense to start going through the minutae of liberal thought out there, we will have enough ammo to down the entire fleet. (real conservative)
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