by matttbastard
Regular readers know that I rarely pay much attention to the more wing-nutty residents of the blogosphere, much less the Canuckosphere. I leave that to stout-hearted compatriots with stronger constitutions for regular bullshit consumption than yours truly. Still, occasionally something from the outer fringe will catch my attention that immediately triggers my ‘dude, WTF?!’ nerve.
In this instance, the flying monkeys are circling over Teresa Wright.
I know, at this point most of you are asking: Who’s Teresa Wright? Well, dear readers, Wright is a reporter with the Charlottetown Guardian who wrote about a recent speech given by Conservative Senator (and, formerly, CTV’s longtime top Tory sycophant) Mike Duffy.
Ok, with me so far?
Good.
Anyway, the headline to Wright’s piece:
‘Duffy’s speech hints at looming federal election.’
Pretty innocuous, right?
Well, for whatever reason, Duffy decided to break out Grandma’s pearls, clutch away, and, in an interview with talk radio blowhard/columnist Michael Harris, stir up a teapot tempest over what Duffy contends is a gross mischaracterization of the speech:
I gave a speech yesterday to the Rotary Club of Charlottetown, in which I never used the word election, and frankly, never mentioned the Prime Minister, I gave a very dry, because as you know, Rotary is a non-political body, I gave a very dry report card on the more than 200 million additional dollars this government has poured into Prince Edward Island.
[…]
I was never asked about an election. I never used the word election. I never mentioned the Prime Minister by name in my speech or by his office. And yet the headline comes out this morning, Duffy refuses to dampen speculation of an election and sings the praises of the Prime Minister in a speech laden with rhetoric.
[…]
I didn’t mention the Prime Minister. I didn’t ever use the word
election or make any reference to it because I didn’t want to hurt the neutral ears of the Rotarians, who do so much great work. And I thought, don’t drag that dirty political thing in here.
Those poor, delicate, Rotarians–why, the mere mention of anything as jejune as *gasp* politics might cause their pacemakers to short out! Kee-rist. The faux-grievance and feigned innocence is so thick that ol’ Iron Ass himself, Dick Nixon, must be enjoying an appreciative, jowly cackle from the bowels of Hell.
But wait — it gets even better:
[T]he newspaper reporter never asked me about an election or about anything else related to the Prime Minister. She had no, repeat, no questions, so, at least not of the national scene. She asked something about a local community college. But that was it. And then I wake up this morning and here they’ve got me singing the praises, great rhetoric. Well, let me tell you, as much as I like to think that every speech is a good one, they’ve obviously never heard me when I’ve gotten going as we have. And so, they put it, all this great rhetoric. I was reading a grocery list of, of projects for the island. So anyway, this whole thing is manufactured. And I was thinking so much about you today as I read the paper and the brilliant column you wrote in last week’s Sun about wafergate in New Brunswick, where the editors made it up. It had nothing to do with what the reporter said. And so, I’m saying to myself, my God, this is like the virus or something. It’s creeping across provincial borders. Now all of a sudden the Charlottetown paper can’t just report the news. They’ve got to make it up.
[…]
I saw [Wright] yesterday. And, well, in fact I was at an event this morning. And by the time it was finished and I went over, she had jumped in her car and fled. So, I didn’t get a chance. But you know, never get in a fight with people who buy ink by the, by the barrel. I mean, it’s another example. Here it is in the quiet summertime and everybody’s bound and determined to try and create something.
So, Duffy disingenuously blows the ‘Wafergate‘ dogwhistle as a means to deflect legitimate speculation generated by what anyone with any sense (even the hothouse flowers of the Charlottetown Rotary Club) could reasonably interpret as a fairly partisan speech that, indeed, does nothing to stem election speculation (who exactly is “we”, Duff?)
Yeah, there’s definitely something that’s been manufactured here, and it ain’t a headline.
That’s right, kiddies: cue the slack-beaked vultures of the far-right, hungry as always to gorge on ‘liberal’ media carrion, as they swoop down with typically measured reserve and sharp insight (snerk):
- This is not new…too many examples to mention. However they are now being exposed. The game has gone on too long. The snakes can no longer hide in the grass. The serious journalists are starting to do some real journalism. I so appreciate Duffy being free to talk about the ‘old club’….especially the part about Toronto..”the thought control center”.
- Maritimers have the energy of an old sloth and will believe all the crap that is fed them by these lying urinalists,because they are to [sic] lazy from years of Alberta’s transfers and welfare to seek out the truth. They hate the Conservatives because like the old proverb goes, “you always bite the hand that feeds you”, and the Conservatives to these folks, represent Alberta, where most of the good hard working ones from these parts, have long moved to. For years the slimey liberals stole from the west and handed it out to these ungrateful people, here is the result.
- The MSM with its socialist statist legions are now running into reality. This is the response to the dike blowing. Trying to paper over the cracks in the artificail [sic] Universe the entitled elitists created in defiance of the Human condition. Including all known laws of physics. The dogma crafted so painstakingly turns out to be a steaming pile of lies. The world they imagined is collapsing from bowing to fairy tales, while natural Law comes back like a lion with issues. To rend the tale barrers[sic]. In the world of the MSM all must be the same in ideas as well politics. Every Women I meet always told me if you wash all the cloths together you get a grey. The brilliance goes away. So with us they want a collective of hive minds not individuals to speak down to. People with reality based ideas scare the MSM.
Yes, am sure the socialist-statists at CanWest, TorStar and CTVGlobemedia are positively quaking in their wingtips at the sudden imposition of such cold, hard reality (as always, irony is a leftist plot).
Kady O’Malley bends the laws of physics as only a lion(ess) with issues can:
There’s nothing remotely wrong with a senator delivering a partisan speech, notwithstanding the response it incites in certain PEI Liberals. That said, there is also nothing wrong with the Guardian having described it as such, no matter how vociferously the senator in question might dispute that interpretation. What is, frankly, ridiculous is to suggest that this is in any way similar to what may or may not have gone on behind the scenes at the Telegraph Journal, which, as far as ITQ can see, is a rather shameless attempt to feed the “biased media” meme that launched a thousand Finley-penned fundraising letters — not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that, either.
Apples, oranges — hey, it’s all fruit right?
Low. Hanging. Fruit.
Look, it seems obvious to anyone with half a brain (ie, those who don’t hang out in comments at SDA) that the leading luminaries of the partisan Canuckistanian right graduated with honours from the Humpty Dumpty School of Fallacious Argumentation (in this instance, showing off their degrees in false dichotomy). Yes, it may come as a surprise to the residents of KKKate’s bizzaro world, but some of us deluded consumers of MSM ‘bias’ (BIAS!!!1) actually demand something slightly more convincing than boisterous online agit-prop or half-baked assertions based on disingenuous denials from someone who, as a former journalist, knows what bullshit smells like. That Duffy now gleefully shovels it (and the base rewards him and his Conservative cronies with fauxtrage and hefty cheques) proves that Prime Minister Stephen Harper knew what he was doing when he called The Duff up to the big leagues.
The fact remains that the primary goal of these erstwhile right-wing media critics isn’t to improve the reporting of professional journalists. Rather, it’s to silence and, ultimately, destroy them — by any means necessary. In other words, the end game isn’t to garner a retraction or correct the record; they simply want another MSM head on a pike to (temporarily) satiate their collective blood lust (while the Conservative Party of Canada reaps the subsequent financial windfall).
But hey, if Duff wants to play footsie with a crowd that thinks his constituents “have the energy of an old sloth” and are “lazy from years of Alberta’s transfers and welfare” more power to him. It’s not like he has any actual accountability to the “ungrateful” people of Prince Edward Island, what being an unelected Senator and all (hey, remember when the Harpercons wanted to reform the ‘undemocratic’ Senate? Good times.)
See, that’s the difference between the so-called ‘liberal media’ and the knuckle-dragging, junior-league propagandists of the wingnutosphere: accountability. Sure, sometimes it takes some poking, but if Teresa Wright and her editors believe an error was made, they will duly issue a correction. Imagine that.
Oh, wait, I forgot: ethics are a Liberal plot, too — likely imported from overseas by that brie-scarfing Ignatieff interloper (just visiting!)
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