In the video above, editorial cartoonist Terry Mosher (Aislin) goes behind the scenes as he draws five cartoons of the federal party leaders as sports-themed bobbleheads (you can see the cartoons on the Viewpoints page).
Meanwhile, CBC interviews Red Fisher, who has been covering the Canadiens since the dawn of time.
One day I hope to be able to meet them, and be referred to as something beyond “that kid over there.” But that’s years away.
I was busy dealing with real news tonight, so I completely missed the broohaha over this incident with Stéphane Dion and ATV News.
For those who haven’t heard of it, you’re lucky to have limited exposure to the echo chamber of political gossip reporting. Here’s the deal: ATV (an Atlantic TV network owned by CTV and rebranded CTV Atlantic) had Stéphane Dion on for an on-camera but pre-taped interview. Host Steve Murphy asked Dion a question about what he’d do about the economy if he was prime minister today, and Dion started answering before realizing he didn’t quite understand the question. It was an awkward exchange with a few false starts.
Dion asked if they could re-start the interview, and Murphy agreed. Murphy also, according to CTV, “indicated” that the bad part of the interview would not be aired.
Except later, after the interview, people at the network huddled and decided to go back on their word and air the outtakes, deeming them to have some news value.
Thanks to Stephen Harper’s decision to devote a whole press conference to this “gaffe,” it’s been analyzed from all angles:
I don’t have much to add, so I’ll keep it brief:
Conclusion: Steve Murphy and his cohorts at ATV are douches, and Stéphane Dion a human francophone who can be annoyingly professorial at times. And it’s just a matter of time before someone unearths an interview outtake of Stephen Harper that makes him look bad.
Now can we get back to the issues?
UPDATE (Oct. 24): J-Source looks back on this story with some interesting background on what happened at ATV and CTV News offices.
I’m sorry, apparently I forgot during last night’s debate to be offended that John McCain used the words “that one” and pointed to Barack Obama when pointing out something about Obama’s senate record. Apparently it’s a codephrase that everyone but me knows about and is inherently racist.
Remember all those white racists in Alabama chanting “that one” and pointing to MLK? He was clearly trying to appeal to the racist electorate.
Now we need to make this into the issue of the election, because it’s so much more important than those boring things like the economy, tax policy, the environment or foreign policy.
Well, early June is about to get a whole lot quieter and less skanky in Montreal.
Politicians are on super-pander mode echoing the thoughts of their constituents.
Well it only took about 13 years, but they finally found O.J. guilty.
La Presse has the scoop this morning on what Julie Couillard is going to say in her book due out on Monday. Essentially, she says Maxime Bernier is an arrogant, womanizing SOB who badmouths his party leader and his constituents behind their backs and whose primary concern is himself.
I’m trying to contain my shock. I mean, a politician who’s self-obsessed and hides his true feelings from the public? What is this world coming to?
Of course, I’m willing to trust these claims about as much as I am Bernier’s denials. The fact that she’s releasing such a book in the first place (and has moved the publication date back a week to have more of an impact before the election) shows quite a bit about her character.
But if we assume that what she says in the book is true, does that make Bernier a horrible person? Concluding that sovereignty is inevitable and saying your prime minister is too fat are clearly offenses worthy of expulsion, and badmouthing your own constituents is usually political suicide. But I find it hard to imagine any politician not doing these things on a regular basis.
Do we really think that Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae aren’t trash-talking Stéphane Dion in private? Or that Gilles Duceppe thinks he can win 75 seats in this election? Or that Jack Layton doesn’t think Alberta Conservatives are stupid? Or that John McCain and Barack Obama are really as religious as they let on?
There were a couple of scenes in the West Wing’s last two seasons in which presidential candidates said that voters are asking to be lied to when they put their politicians up to such unrealistic standards.
So, in the end, should the most successful politicians simply be those who are better at concealing their private thoughts and keeping their lies going?
I think that’s a scarier thought than a minister leaving confidential papers at the home of a biker chick.
Those of you who had Sept. 23 as the day when “erection” would be used in an election story and not be a typo, pat yourselves on the back:
But that statement was contradicted by a retreat participant, who said the New Democrat had a partial erection in front of the young girls.
So let’s discuss: How much of an erection is it appropriate for an MP to have in front of young girls? What qualifies as a “partial erection”? What if you just have to pee?
Who cares about issues when we can talk about penises?
(Though seriously, stories like this make me wonder: If the choice in a no-hope riding is between some unknown party loyalist and nobody at all, perhaps it’s best to go the latter route?)
Stephanie Myles, who’s in Roberval covering the Canadiens’ preseason exhibition game against the Sabres tonight, has an article in today’s paper about the Hockeyville-winning city, as well as a picture-laden blog post at Habs Inside/Out.
On the heels of a report from La Presse that the Conservative candidate in Papineau (who, let’s face it, is going to lose anyway) doesn’t speak French very well, Angry French Guy calls around to some local campaign offices to see how they respond in Canada’s official languages.
Admittedly, it’s not the candidates but just random people who answer the phones, but you’d think the campaigns would make sure that front-line workers were bilingual.
Bored? Blood pressure too low? Check out this thread on my blog that’s still getting comments on its first anniversary.
Last week, we got our first true glimpse into the über-secret world of Akoha (formerly Project Ojibwe, aka Austin Hill’s new project), after they presented the project at TechCrunch50.
I find myself feeling for Akoha something similar to what I felt about Standout Jobs when it launched in public beta: disappointed.
Not heartbroken. Not “wtf this is crap,” but more a feeling of “a team of computer programmers spent months in super-secret hiding for this?”
Added to that was the fact that both did a lot of talking about supporting the local community, but when it came to actually launching, they both took off for the other side of the border.
Based on the presentation, the comic on the website and Roberto Rocha’s article, Akoha is some sort of game where you buy cards and have to do what the cards say. And then you go online and tell everyone you did what the cards say. And then you feel good.
Mark MacLeod points out some of the issues Akoha will have to deal with, like marketing, user retention and monetization. I’ll also add authentication: How do we know that someone’s claim to have done something is true?
But the biggest problem, I think, will be keeping a critical mass that goes beyond the fad. People will be interested, at first, but without that Facebook-like regular activity and new information, I can see people using Akoha less and less until the playing cards start collecting dust at the back of the closet.
But then, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. TechCrunch liked it, as did Scoble. So maybe it is the next big thing.
One year ago, a fire up in a far-away cabin near a lake caught fire, killing five out of the six people staying there. One of the victims was Kurtis Hansen, a 26-year-old former security guard at The Gazette, whose rather nasty smoking habit had him often conversing with editorial staff late at night in the smoking room. (Last night it became clear that, for the most part, smokers had a closer relationship with him than non-smokers)
Today, the paper carries a full-page feature on the fire and its aftermath, which as written by Katherine Wilton is so dramatic as to be almost surreal. It focuses on Karl Hansen, who barely survived the fire that took the lives of the five people he brought with him to the cottage.
It also says what Kurtis was doing for the last few minutes of his life:
Kurtis Hansen raced around the one-storey cottage looking for an escape route. They quickly decided the best option was to go through a window in a bedroom.
In a desperate bid to save his family, Kurtis grabbed a small end table and hammered it against the window until it broke. But inhaling the thick black smoke was too much for him. He fell to his knees, then collapsed.
With the flames surrounding the cottage and his son lying on the ground, Hansen instinctively dove head first through the window. He rolled down the hill to extinguish the flames that were burning him.
“Kurtis is the hero in all this,” Karl Hansen recalled recently. “I couldn’t have got out the window without Kurtis breaking it. My doctors said if I breathed in that crap for another few seconds, I would have passed out.”
I don’t know if it’s the personal connection, the inherently emotional nature of the event itself, or Wilton’s writing, but a few editors (including myself) had to take a break after reading the story.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but the Christian Heritage Party, which describes itself as the next-most-popular party after the Greens, wants into the leaders’ debates. The party had 45 candidates in the last election, and seems to think 70% of the country supports it. Yeah.
Their platform includes:
In other words, it’s the platform of the Christian conservative end of the Republican Party.
That might make the debates more entertaining.
UPDATE (Sept. 23): They’re suing.
The Liberal Party is planning to formally apologize, in the House of Commons, if elected, for the Komagata Maru incident. Conservative leader Stephen Harper apparently won’t issue such a formal apology.
I’m with Harper on this one. After all, there was nothing anyone could have done about it.
So apparently the biggest political news of the day had to do with a bird pooping on someone’s shoulder on a website. Canadian soldiers are dying in Afghanistan, our climate is becoming unstable, and our housing market is in trouble, but all of that is unimportant compared to analysis of whether a bird should be pooping on someone online.
Stephen Harper, whose Conservative Party website showed the pooping puffin, apologized for it after his handlers calculated that the bad joke went too far and was too personal (actually, it wasn’t personal at all, it was just pointlessly insulting). Stéphane Dion, the poopee, countered that this showed more about the Conservatives than about him, again following the politically appropriate route as instructed by his handlers and political strategists.
And the media, desperate for a scandal/process/horse-race story because they’re too lazy to research platform points and analyze actual policy issues, sucks it all up.
The excuses that the Conservatives give for this gaffe are the usual barely-believable stuff (a cursor was hiding it when it was approved? Give me a break). But there’s a reason why this was done, a reason why the person who came up with the idea crossed the line, and it’s a problem at the very heart of partisan politics.
Remember all those bad jokes during the Democratic and Republican conventions? Remember how the delegates found them much funnier than we did? In the partisan bubble that these politicians and their staff inhabit, the opposition is dehumanized. Instead of respected colleagues who challenge us to develop our positions on important issues, they’re seen as evil enemies bent on world destruction who must be mercilessly defeated.
That mindset leads to cruel, immature jokes and inevitable comparisons to Hitler. Nobody is there to stop them, because everyone in the bubble is part of the same partisan clique. But once those jokes leave the bubble and reach the reasonable, non-partisan outside world, it finally dawns on them that they were inappropriate.
I watched MSNBC during prime-time tonight, mainly because there was nothing better on TV. (It was mostly in the background as I caught up on some online reading.) The lineup consisted of liberal hero Keith Olbermann, followed by Air America talk show host Rachel Maddow, followed by a repeat of the Keith Olbermann show at 10pm. Listening to the two hosts, they sound identical (though one is much prettier than the other). They both use the same sarcastic points to bring down their enemies (in this case, John McCain, George W. Bush and the Republicans).
Even though I agree with them on their positions, I can’t help but cringe sometimes when I watch these shows. There’s that same immaturity, the same mean jokes, the same anoying smiles when they point out some flaw in the other side. And in Olbermann’s case, an ego the size of Alaska as he goes on with his boring feuds with the Fox News Channel and its pundits.
Olbermann and Maddow are, sadly, part of the problem. They have like-minded staff who won’t tell them that they’re becoming too biased toward the left. Those who do criticize are seen as the enemy or ignored.
The worst part is, some of these activists may be fully aware that they’re crossing over the line, but they accept their actions because they believe the ends justify the means.
Partisan hacks and political pundits need to learn what the politicians are already keenly aware of: cruel insults and immature jokes may get a good response from hard-core supporters who are drinking your Kool-Aid, but they turn off the rest of us, making us ashamed of both you and the political process.
Considering how much ink has been spilled over this issue over the past decades (remember when the PCs made fun of Jean Chrétien’s face?), it’s astonishing there are people who still haven’t learned to attack the issues and not the person.
I was going to do a post about this campaign sign from Bloc candidate Vivian Barbot being up a day before the federal election was called, but Kate beat me to it (with the same candidate), and had a follow-up pointing out that there’s nothing illegal about this.
So instead I’ll contribute this, taken a day later:
From the Gazette’s new On the Trail election blog: The Bloc Québécois’s campaign bus has English-only signs all over it and stars-and-stripes upholstery, because apparently it was built for a U.S. campaign.
Ouch.
To those of you who might think that our local papers are getting too lazy in their reporting, and look to the respected media like the Globe and Mail and New York Times for insightful analysis on important issues, I point you to the following:
The Globe and Mail has an article about how big Vanna White’s head is. Literally. Who knows how much CBC paid the Globe to write an article about Wheel of Fortune just before it starts airing on the network, but this is certainly an interesting angle to take on it. Will the next piece be an in-depth look at Alex Trebek’s moustache?
Meanwhile, the New York Times summarizes last night’s Colbert Report, regurgitating the jokes made by New York governor David Paterson, who was the headline guest.
I admit, I get a perverse pleasure out of people who are the creators of their own misfortune. Tragedies in the classical sense. Not necessarily causing death, but at least causing inconvenience. Hurricane Gustav created two examples of this, and the victims are our favourite punching bags: politicians and the media.
The first comes out of the video above. A few weeks ago, Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family posted a video online in which he half-jokingly suggests that Christian Conservatives pray for rain during Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at an open-air stadium. They say they never meant for it to be taken seriously, but it was, and the video was pulled (the one above is a copy).
Of course, there was no rain the night of Obama’s acceptance speech, and the Democratic convention went off without a hitch. But the day after, as John McCain was announcing his vice-presidential pick, we start hearing about this hurricane headed for the Gulf Coast. Toward New Orleans. Three years almost to the day that Katrina struck.
Oh the irony. It almost makes me believe in a god, as it did Michael Moore.
The second example comes from our good friends at CNN. When Barack Obama announced his VP pick, CNN filled the airwaves with news and analysis. Responding to a viewer comment via Facebook (oh how the media has changed, folks), anchor Rick Sanchez says this on air:
By the way, I have to share this with you. It is from Sam. He says, Rick — this is on Facebook — I’m counting on you to do the same kind of coverage when McCain announces his vice president as you’re doing tonight when Barack Obama has announced his vice president. Sam, we’ve already made that decision. I can guarantee you we will.
No caveats, no ifs or buts, just a bold guarantee. Of course, neither CNN nor the other news networks are coming close to meeting that guarantee for the convention. Half the news about Sarah Palin was surrounded (literally) by hurricane updates, and the convention coverage is being threatened by it. Even the convention itself is changing plans at the last minute to deal with people (like President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal) who can’t speak.
I actually feel a bit bad for the Republicans. It’s not their fault this hurricane hit with such horrible timing, nor is it their fault that Bristol Palin got pregnant. If they lose in November, it should be because of the issues, not because the campaign was derailed by … well, acts of God.
Congratulations Green Party on selling your soul to a corrupt Liberal reject in a desperate bid for legitimacy getting your first MP into the House of Commons. Of course, negotiating for an independent to join your party is entirely different from actually having someone win an election under your party banner, but it’s a first step anyway.
Now, as André Pratte asks, does this mean we have to let the Greens into the party leaders’ debates?
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