It’s fair to say that there’s a fear that Jack Layton’s death may inspire a kind of Lady Diana dead-celebrity cult around him, dwarfing what the NDP are supposed to be doing as the Official Opposition. But there’s just as big a likelihood that someone on the polticial or media right will say something really farking stupid, insensitive, and mean-spirited, enough to unite the centre-left vote in this country … and so far, there are a few cases that the first stage in the latter scenario is well under way.
Dr. Dawg’s blog has the case in point where Dave Nalyor (not the former CBC Regina sports reporter, now writing and broadcasting for TSN), the city editor of the Calgary Sun, tweeted an insensitive, offensive and stupid joke about Layton, based on a thoroughly discredited story about how Layton supposedly was caught by a Toronto cop in a massage parlor more than 20 years ago. He pulled the tweet soon after, but enough people saw it to confirm that Quebecor doesn’t mandate that their journalists must be right-wing jerks — it’s something born internally.
Then, the Postmedia group brings us Krusty The Klown, aka Christie Blatchford. (National Post) Such a collection of mean-spirited vitrol against a man who sincerely tried to change things for the better … Blatchford makes The Grinch Who Stole Christmas sound like Mother Teresa.
The last word, as it should in many of these matters, goes to Ed The Sock — what, you never watched Much Music in the 1990s? Or the show on City-TV that came on before the soft-core porn features? You culturally starved people. Anyway, here’s fresh from Ed’s Twitter feed …
After her slag on Layton, I’d say Christie Blatchford needs to look in the mirror but Geneva convention forbids cruel & unusual punishment.
Replace’ the mirror’ with ‘her soul’ and you’d be more accurate, except, by the proof of her column. it would be hard trying to find her soul.
