Categories: Capital Read, Inside the Queensway

The Blackberry Roundtable: "He told me he deleted those pictures from his hard drive after we broke up!"

by kadyomalley on Sunday, September 28, 2008 9:32am - 40 Comments

Courtesy of the one and only Andrew Potter, check out our latest back-and-forthing here. Oh, and somehow, a mischievous gremlin in the printing press incorrectly attributed a paragraph of my musings to poor Scott Reid. For the record, this is all me:

That’s true, but not every foot soldier slogging through the mud on the electoral battlefield may have expected to be there, and unless you’re willing to live your entire life as though you might, at any point, be on the national — or even the local — stage, fielding pointed questions from the media — I’m not sure if there’s any way to anticipate every potentially embarrassing eventuality. What you should do, however, is make sure that your campaign knows about that experimental art video you made with your now-estranged ex-boyfriend before they find out about it through a press release from the opposing team.

Enjoy!

Tags: Andrew Potter, blackberry roundtabling, google: destroying future political careers since 1998, helpful advice delivered after the fact is just irritat, no one expects the facebook inquisition, ottawa citizen, Scott Reid

More by kadyomalley

http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

Scott Reid seems a tad cranky that his job as professional blatherer is slowly being usurped by the great unwashed masses.
http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

“You are evidently not in favour of the free market.”

No kidding. I find it absolutely hilarious how all these Conservative partisans are parroting Marxist media critiques.

A fun game is to take all these critiques and replace ‘leftist’ or ‘left-leaning’ with ‘bourgeois’ which is really talking about the same people – the moneyed elite from Toronto. So here we go:

jwl – Our pooh bahs are attempting to impose their bourgeois ideology of ‘kittens, lollipops and rainbows’ on us and no dissent is acceptable. So people who don’t behave exactly like the bourgeois want are mau maued. The people want more eccentrics and less of these milquetoast pols we seem to end up with.

kody – We don’t want a perfectly good media manufactured meme being wrecked by the truth or anything. The media dares not go into any depth in examining who Harper is (best to stick to politically motivated partisan attacks by the bourgeois as the primary source for the “hidden Harper” allegations).

kody – Translation via bourgeois media filter: “hidden and scary”. It is pure political partisan spin. Ironically the basis of the position is a complete lack of evidence: you can’t see it because it’s ‘hidden’. BTW, why the Harper ads were so effective: it was just him. Talking. Unfiltered. Its the same reason Paul Wells was given the gears awhile ago for simply showing a clip of Harper talking at a table. Unfiltered is not good. We shouldn’t unhide that which we want to be hidden.
Jack Mitchell

kody, I think Harper is a very complex person with lots to offer the country. I think he is by far the most intelligent and thoughtful of the five leaders, though that’s maybe not saying a lot.

But he is surrounded, seemingly, by a positively Rasputinesque cabal of firewallers and cultural warriors, who are simply anathema to a newspaper-reading middle-of-the-road type guy like me.

Most likely, Harper is using them to keep himself riding high – that’s if you buy the Kinder, Gentler Harper thing, which I’m prepared to do, especially since I admire Machiavellian cynicism when it’s sincere. But Harper himself is being used, it seems, by the fanatical Republicans manqués of the aforementioned cabal; and a sizeable chunk of his public support comes from the Know Nothing jwl’s. So who is the Trojan Horse here and who are the Greeks? Nothing on earth could make me support pro-life, pro-Bush Western populists. If Harper is willing to put a bit of distance between himself and them, he and I will talk (metaphorically); but how can he do that, when ignoring them is what deep-6′d the Mulroney Tories? I guess I have no time for coalitions with the damned.
http://deleted Sandi

Does this CPC “paranoia” ever stop?

Paranoia is a weakness and a sickness – get help.
http://myblahg.com Robert McClelland

I think Harper is a very complex person with lots to offer the country.

Are you kidding? Harper is a textbook ideologue and they’re about as deep as a thimble.
Mike Horn

I feel like I’ve stumbeled into an editorial board meeting. ( forgive my spelling everyone.) If you want to discuss our collective responsibility to provide balanced coverage, then get yourself hired by an editorial board. Otherwise the revelation that journalists and politicians ambush one another is what we call “old news”. As for the ridiculous standards that politicians are being held to… WTF? Do we really feel that paranoid bigots don’t deserve any political representation? Isn’t it enough that we cast shame on them for thier opinions? Should we really hunt down and eliminate any conspiracy theorist who dares run for office? That would make anyone paranoid. The point of representation is that we all deserve it, even Newfies. Oops let me retract that one word! I think parties should have to keep thier problem candidates and just say it’s abig tent with room for mistakes in it.
Wascally Wabbit

Kady – don’t drive poor darling Jarrid away – pretty please…
I’m still waiting for him to rationalize the brick wall and fall off the cliff of Harper’s leadership creds. yesterday…in the NANOS Nanmers…
funny how these little boys will pull your pigtails – for what was a confused and hotly debated round table – but ignore the polls when they show that the Canadian pulbic has apparently rumbled Harper – at last!
Wascally Wabbit

Oh – and having read the citizen roundtable thingie a second time…a rhetorical question Kady – when did you officially become a “Veteran” political commentator?
sf

Jack Mitchell: You can your scary cadre of socialists scare me far more than someone like jwl who makes sound arguments and believes in freedom and other traditionally Canadian values.

So “scary” is a subjective concept – but it doesn’t stop you from calling people lunatics it seems.

Secondly, it is obvious to the conservative-leaning people here that Kady and her band of Liberals’ rountable commentary is biased. It’s as plain as day. In fact, it might be unavoidable with popcorn-man at the table.

Mike Moffatt: we (meaning conservatives) are not abandoning the free market when we point that out. Not everything a conservative does is a reflection of the free market.

Sandi: And it’s not paranioa either. We are simply providing our feedback to Kady’s posts and her roundtable, which is exactly what these comments are for.

Mike Horn: People are free to discuss whatever they want. If bias is the thing that is most evident from the roundtable, then so be it.

Let’s be serious!

So far in this campaign, it has been 3 Libs, 3 NDPers and 2 Cons booted. In the roundtable Kady says: “although oddly, it’s the NDP and the Liberals who are ratcheting up the bedpost notches”: There is no factual basis for her to say that, although I’m sure she will have some convoluted and unbelievable explanation handy.

Once again let’s look at the numbers: 3 Libs, 3 NDPers and 2 Cons booted. The only parties they talked about were the Cons and mostly the NDP.

When are we gonna hear any discussion about the 9/11 truthers and anti-Semites in the Liberal Party? Never, not on this blog anyway. Not even when the Liberals are running one of the worst cmapaigns in history, will there be any mention of that around here.

Now, despite her partisan leanings, Kady is a very good journalist and writer, so don’t even bother telling me to go somewhere else (I know that’s what partisans love to say).
http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

“Mike Moffatt: we (meaning conservatives) are not abandoning the free market when we point that out. ”

I hope you mean “Conservatives” rather than “conservatives”.

Without explaining how/why profit-maximizing corporations are choosing their ideologies over profits (which is what these Conservative partisans are doing), then yes, that is entirely what you’re doing. Just saying “no we’re not” is not a satisfactory explanation.
LeslieE

I agree with Andrew Potter, Scott Reid is cool. The best part of Mike Duffy Live was when Scott Reid and Tim Power use to face off. They were both “cool”.

Now, IMO, the coolest is Kady!!!
http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

Or to put it in more detail, sf:

Conservative partisans like to argue that:

1. The privately owned media has a number of things it ‘should’ be doing, beyond maximizing the returns for their shareholders AND

2. That the media is oversupplying ‘liberal’ (or ‘Liberal’) voices for consumers interested in that sort of thing, but there is some huge pent up demand for ‘conservative’ or ‘Conservative’ voices that the corporate media isn’t meeting. Basically that there is some kind of large scale market failure and that the free market isn’t working. But they’re never able to identify the source of this market failure (externalities, government policy, etc.) so all we’re left to conclude is that these people think that the free market simply does not work and is incapable of meeting the desire of consumers.
http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

sf: Just a really quick clarification, and then I’ll keep my word to leave y’all to mull over our musings in peace and quiet:

When I reread the line about bedpost notches this morning, I realized that I should have been more clear: It was the NDP and Liberal *war rooms* that were racking ‘em up as far as uncovering — or, in some cases, publicizing that which had already been uncovered by bloggers and/or the dreaded MSM.

I don’t believe there were any condemnations from the Tory war room over any of the three NDP drop-outs – the former MP supporters, Julian West or the subsequent Facebook controversy over war resisters, and they obviously weren’t going to be demanding resignations from Warawa(the younger) or the Gay Conservative – Chris Reid? – in Toronto Centre.

Hopefully that wasn’t too overcomplicated. I agree that my wording was awkward – sorry about that!
Ti-Guy

like jwl who makes sound arguments and believes in freedom and other traditionally Canadian values.

Ah, ha ha…

I love free market insight.
sf

Mike Moffatt: When a conservative (Conservative?) believes in free markets, he does not say that free markets are perfect. No system is perfect.

When a conservative comments on a roundtable, it may have nothing to do with the free market. I am not commenting on the roundtable because there is no Conservative roundtable. Believe me, there are plenty of places I can for Conservative partisanship, the Blogging Tories comes to mind. I am commenting on the roundtable because I like to debate.

However, I think that the traditional media is biased towards the left, but I do not see it as a market failure. I do not expect the market to provide exactly what I want at all times. And I don’t think there is a pent-up demand for conservative media, mostly because the media is not all about politics. Most people buy media for all kinds of news, not just polical commentary.

I think the media has bias due to the political leanings of most journalists. I think that media companies tend to have more Liberal employees than Conservative employees, some more than others (the CBC comes to mind). Whatever studies have been run (here and in the US) seem to confirm this.

But you are truly oversimplifying things. The Toronto Star is very left-wing, but I bought it all the time when I lived in Toronto because I wanted to read the news and the sports pages. I did not care about their editorials. So for to point out that the Star, with the largest circulation in Canada, is hugely biased to the leftis parties, is not pointing out a market failure, because it provided exactly what I wanted from it. That also does not mean that I have abdicated the right to criticize the Star.

Frankly, political commentary is a small aspect of what the media provides. It is never going to be perfectly balanced left/right. The market is never going to be all things to all people. The best thing about the market is that if someone wants to change things, they can start their own business, there is no government authority (other than the CRTC and the CHRC and the growing list of others) dictating what the media can say. That is what a free market is. You are describing a perfect market, in which whatever one wants is available at low cost and in proximity.