Galactic Ruler Xenu Hires a Lawyer

There once was a guy who wrote sci-fi short stories for pulp magazines. Then one day he wrote this story:

75 million years ago, the earth was over-populated with 186 billion people, so its ruler rounded up most of the people and put them in volcanoes and blasted them with H-bombs. But their souls escaped, so he rounded up all the souls and made them watch movies that tricked them into believing they were gods or devils. After that the souls clumped up and invaded the bodies of the remaining people. The souls are still in us today, and the only way we can get rid of them is to join Scientology.

L Ron Hubbard wrote that story over 60 years ago, but the cult based on it is still in existence, and lots of nutty Californians are members. Actually, not that many - it seems that Scientology only has about 25,000 members - but when you think how ridiculous the story is that is (apparently) the basis of the entire faith, it really is a lot.

The Feb 14-21 New Yorker has a long, engrossing story about Scientology, The Apostate, and author Lawrence Wright does a brilliant job. I was glued to the page for hours. This is even more amazing given the awkward writing style which I am certain was caused by a team of lawyers scrutinizing every word to ensure that the aggressive Scientologist legal team couldn't find grounds to sue. In fact, that aspect of the writing makes the article even more engrossing: there are things not said, things teasing me from words I can just barely sense were removed.

At one point the author flies to California for an arranged meeting with the Scientology spokesman, but the guy plays games with him and utimately won't talk to him. A few paragraphs later, the spokesperson flies to New York to meet the author and his editors, and brings with him an entourage of two other executives and four lawyers, along with 48 binders of supporting documents. What did the New Yorker do to cause that about-face? An entire backstory lurks behind the tale.

In my lifetime, the three litigious heavyweights have been Brian Mulroney, Conrad Black, and the Church of Scientology. News articles about all three have had this awkward, overly scrutinized feel. I remember one article about Mulroney in the Globe & Mail (the article that broke the news of the envelopes of cash from Karlheinz Schreiber), which was almost unreadable - and the bombshell $300,000 figure was hidden in a paragraph near the end. The breakthrough of the New Yorker article is that the legal scrutiny actually made the article better.

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Bribing Canadian Politicians

Richard Fadden, the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), is in the news this week spilling some very important information: the Chinese government is paying Canadian politicians to spy for it.

It seems clear to me that this was no mistake: he went to the CBC interview to give this information. He must have known that he was risking his career to say this. I suspect he felt it was important for the public to know. Why would he do that? Because we vote in politicians, and once in office there's little that can be done to prevent this sort of thing. The head of CSIS probably weighed his options and decided that the only way to successfully address the issue was to make it public.

The news spin has been about everything but the main issue.

On The Current this morning, Anna Maria Tremonti focused on how this is a slur on the Chinese community in Canada.

Today's Globe has a column about how heads should roll at the CBC because they delayed broadcasting the interview until the eve of the arrival of the Chinese head of state.

Maclean's attacks the whistle blower, saying that his backpedaling is "awkward" and a "ragged retreat".

Is this willful denial, or are serious news outlets - as I hope - sending out investigative journalists to follow up on this story and get us some facts?

And kudos to the CBC for airing this interview just before the G20, when it will get picked up by international media. They may have realized that Canadians wouldn't be able to see the forest for the trees.

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The Print Media Transition

Newspapers and magazines are having to find new business models as people turn increasingly to the internet for their content. That describes me: I haven't bought a newspaper for years. I still find the odd magazine convenient for when I'm on the go or the couch, but not much of that either.

This is a good trend. It's great for the environment: even if you recycle, there's a great deal of energy and pollution involved in thick daily newspapers. It's great for readers: I have hundreds of news sources bookmarked, categorized by type of publication.

So far, it's not so great for the publishers as they struggle to make their operations profitable. I find that the transition to electronic media is making some mistakes.

The biggest problem online is advertising. Advertising should enhance a publication, and so far, electronic media has not figured that out. Print ads tend to be informative, while online ads tend to not be. In the old print model ads were an integral part of the paper, and people flipped through the paper looking for sales, coupons, promotions, special events, etc. I would like papers to reproduce their print ads online - especially local papers where the print ads tell you about local businesses and events, zoning applications, etc. Papers can keep all their current online ads. Many magazines also have interesting ads that are lost online (think the back of the New Yorker or NYT Magazine... or even comic books).

Next, online publications are becoming too inefficient: it takes too long to open a page. The worst offender is the Huffington Post, where when you click a link you might as well go out for coffee. The Washington Post has always been a bear. Lately other publications, such as the Globe & Mail, have started to deteriorate alarmingly. It ruins the entire online model to make reading an unpleasant experience. This also applies to those ads that pop up, obscuring the article.

Finally, online publications are much more about the writers than print. I hardly ever click my bookmark to the Toronto Star home page, but I regularly click on my links to the Star's columnists, especially Chantal Hebert. If you want hits on your site, you hire great writers and you promote them.

I get the impression that print media think of their online component as an sideline to their main thing. They need to change that thinking. Their online product has to compete head-on with other online products. There is lots of competition, and they will simply lose us if they put content behind a subscription wall or provide an unsatisfying reading experience. To succeed, they need to play to their strengths: for example, the Waterloo Regional Record has great local coverage. I don't read it for the reprints of international or even national articles. Why then is the Local section not on a tab at the top, and only accessible from the home page? I open the Record every day and the only sections I look at are Local and Opinions. If they had local ads, I'd look at those too.

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Battling Over Celebrity Mugs

Canadian media are complaining about the way the PMO is restricting their access to the prime minister. The PMO releases staged photos of Harper, sometimes mislabeling them, and in some cases forces journalists to accept their claims about what happened.

Now my readers will know that I abhor the tactics of this government. There's a definite Big Brother quality to the cyncial manipulation and obfuscation they employ.

But. Coverage of political figures is a sad joke. Political photojournalists are too much like Hollywood paparazzi. The tiniest slip of the tongue is treated like an indictable offence. Unfortunate candid photos are used to totally discredit someone.

So what are the actual problems the Globe cites in the article I link to above? There appear to be three: a photo of Harper playing the piano was taken at a rehearsal, not the actual event; the claim that he ate raw seal is backed up by a PR photo that journalists didn't witness; and they weren't granted access to photograph him climbing a ladder onto a submarine. This is truly a case of "Where's the beef?"

The focus on photos makes this whole issue less about journalistic freedom and more about freedom to provide profitable infotainment.
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Old Ladies, Crumpets Key Features in Political Analysis

Okay, so I'm no political strategist or insider or big media pundit, but it seems to me that the desperate hang-wringing and hysteria by Globe & Mail columnists (among others) about the strategy of the Liberal party is a Little. Bit. Silly.

Igs has a good plan. He's been leader about nine months. He spent the first 8 months raising money and learning the ropes. As soon as parliament reconvened in the fall, he announced he would no longer prop up the government. This has two main benefits: it forces Layton into the propping-up hot-seat and it puts Ignatieff in the limelight. It has one drawback, hopefully short-term: Canadians don't want an election and are letting him know via their answers to pollsters. (But not to worry: polls mean virtually nothing between elections.)

Media pundits are going wild. Here are a few of the hysterical outpourings in the Globe:

• Women no longer like Igs! According to Michael Valphy, in six short months Ignatieff's support among women over 50 has dropped from 46% to 26%. What a fickle group we old ladies are! Worse, according to Valpy our main concern is whether a male politician is "sexy" or "a crumpet" - and while Ignatieff was a heart-throb in the 1990s he is now, well, just another old guy in a grey suit.


• Bruce Anderson is very concerned about Ignatieff's strategy. He believes that Igs has been "hiding his light under a bushel" and needs to "make his pitch." Nice point; unfortunate that Bruce has missed the fact that that's exactly what he's doing.


• Igs is down in the polls. Today, the Globe has trumpeted that with an article called Liberal Support in Perilous Slide. When this article was first posted in top position on the Globe home page, it was called "Harper in Majority Territory" - despite the fact that a poll this far before an election does not mean much, and they know it. Two months before she lost nearly all Conservative seats, Kim Campbell was miles ahead of Jean Chretien.

Some Globe columnists think Ignatieff is doing quite well, but the Globe isn't letting that slow them up in making it seem there's a landslide of criticism of him:

• Greg Fergus actually thinks that Ignatieff might be the next PM, because (1) of his bold step announcing he will no longer support the government, (2) Ignatieff's vast international experience give him fresh, impressive ideas and make him uniquely qualified to run the country, and (3) under all the spin, Harper is doing a terrible job. Despite the content of the article, the Globe in its wisdom decided to make it look like another doom and gloom missive with the headline "It's Deep Breath Time for the Liberals".


• Judith Timson wrote a positive article about Igs, with lines like, "Iggy marched into the House of Commons last week and delivered a highly focused speech about why his party wanted to bring down the government, which showed a man getting back in touch with his vision and sense of purpose" but the Globe slapped the headline on it, "Iffy Iggy: This is your 'real character moment'".

Heck, I know the print media is hurting and this is their way to sell papers. But in the long run this sort of crappy analysis is not going to help their reputation.

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Manufacturing Controversy

In a breathtaking display of bad taste, Niall Ferguson and the Financial Times have likened President Obama to a black cartoon cat. Ferguson recently wrote, "President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. ...Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky." Um, Niall? In North America in the 21st century, black cats are unlucky, not lucky; and Obama's starting his presidency saddled with a war, a world that is mad at hell at the US, a financial crisis, an impending depression and an unprecedented deficit is the opposite of lucky.

When there was some expression of dismay at the article, Ferguson shot back with Why My Comparing Obama to Felix the Cat Is Not Racist, an almost wholly irrational defence. But rational argument is obviously not the point for Ferguson: he seems to be aiming to (1) gain celebrity through shock-jock tactics, and (2) publicize as widely as possible the Obama/F-t-C comparison.

I grew up watching Felix the Cat every Saturday morning; this is an extremely disrespectful comparison, to say the least. And yes it is racist. Comparing an African American to a black animal is like saying a Chinese person is a yellow fish.

Paul Krugman thinks this was a mistake by Financial Times editorial staff. I disagree. This reeks of Republican strategy: I bet the goal is for Republicans to start playing the Felix the Cat theme song (the article quotes lyrics from the song and Ferguson refers to Obama as "Felix the Pres"). This could create a musical equivalent of the racist code words that southern Republicans have used for decades. The Republicans have apparently decided that instead of shying away from racism, they'll embrace it.

Ferguson is a right-wing libertarian nutter who wants to abolish income tax, social security and most social service spending. He is best known as a defender of colonialism. As a TV personality he has been able to popularize his extremist views in a series of picture books and media appearances. He is known as a contrarian. The only good side to this stunt is that people might wake up to what a sleazebag he is.

The insidious brilliance of the plan is that there's no real defence. Complaining about it only further publicizes the trick (I don't have enough readers to do any damage.) If Democrats fight back the Republicans will say that Obama is "polarizing". The only effective response might be, eventually, for both sides to drown out productive debate with insulting songs that can be reproduced as simple, catchy tunes. The Democrats could, for example, blast the Woody Woodpecker song at Republican candidates. That would be just another step away from substantive debate - a tactic that definitely favors the Republicans.

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Bubonic Plague in China

The pandemic du jour, now that H1N1 has lost its ability to scare the pants off us, is bubonic plague, which has recently cropped up in a very small way in China. To read some news reports, you'd think it was the first case of bubonic plague since 1350.

Actually, it's not that uncommon. For example, bubonic plague is endemic in the Usambara Mountains (Lushoto District) of Tanzania. I have visited the area... there were no travel advisories against doing so, at least in the mid 90s. A recent study of the sparsely populated area found that in the period 1986-2002, "there were 6249 cases of plague of which 5302 (84.8%) were bubonic, 391 (6.3%) septicaemic, and 438 (7.0%) pneumonic forms." Plague has been there for decades and illness from it is a seasonal phenomenon, like flu (although it's more deadly).

I mention this only because media seems to get stuck on a topic and ends up distorting reality - like making it seem that crime is rising, when it's actually falling; or clobbering us with every instance of abductions of pretty white girls, which are actually pretty rare.

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The Problem with Waterloo Region's LRT Proposal

Okay, there are lots of problems. It costs too much. It will continue to cost too much. Once built, it will cost a fortune to change the route. It will drain resources from regular bus routes; it will be a drain on our budgets (and cause tax increases) for decades to come. The route through the core of Uptown Waterloo, turning left across our major intersection and then ploughing through the middle of our major park, is insane.

But the main problem with the Region's rapid transit proposal is that it's rapid transit. Rapid transit means that there aren't very many stops.

Here's an example: between Victoria Street in Kitchener and William Street in Waterloo, the King Street bus route has ten stops. In the same area, the rapid transit proposal has one stop (at the hospital). There's a stop in Uptown Waterloo and then no more stops till the University of Waterloo. This means that to use the LRT, people will either have to drive to a stop, walk a long distance, or transfer to buses. However, there is not even a sensible plan for convenient bus transfer points. And there are no plans for building parking lots near the stops.

Advocates like to say that we all need more exercise. That's true but completely irrelevant. We live in a climate that's cold six months of the year and raining some percentage of the rest. We have an aging population. Many of us have young children. To woo people out of their cars and on to transit, transit simply must be more convenient.

You might think that fewer stops would make the transit rapid. However, Waterloo's LRT is barely faster than the iXpress that currently runs the same route. It still runs on regular roads with speed limits and traffic lights. Being fast and convenient is not even the goal of LRT in Waterloo Region: the goal is to create density nodes and try (for the umpteenth time) to revitalize downtown Kitchener.

Rapid transit is the wrong approach for Waterloo Region.

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Pigs and Pandemics and Zombies (Oh my)

From time to time I write fake news articles for a web site called Zombie World News. The premise is that the zombie virus has spread around the world, resulting in marauding monsters causing murderous mayhem. Zombie world news is lots of laughs, but media coverage of the recent fears of a swine flu pandemic is not so ha, ha, ha.

I came to the conclusion some time ago that a flu pandemic is unlikely (I describe why here). Nonetheless, I'm in New York this week, hanging out in crowded public places, and the reports of swine flu pandemic were initially so disturbing that I thought I should keep an eye on the situation in both NYC and Canada. The Globe & Mail and New York Times home pages seem to be updated hourly with new causes of concern. At least the headlines cause concern; all the details seem pretty reassuring: outside of Mexico, everyone who has had this strain of swine flu has been only mildly ill; and the strain is not resistant to Tamiflu (which everyone stockpiled after the bird flu scare two years ago).

We in Canada have been through SARS so know how important it is to handle flu outbreaks carefully. But Jeeze Louise, this swine flu coverage is just fear mongering.

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New Journalism

I saw the film State of Play this week, and it was pretty good (engaging but forgettable). One thing that bugged me though was that it created a false distinction between print media and online media. It portrayed print media as the last bastion of experienced investigative journalists, and portrayed online media as the home of bloggers hired by newspapers to write gossip.

I read a lot of "MSM bloggers". (We really need a name to distinguish them from people like me. By MSM blogger I mean a person who writes a dedicated blog for a newspaper - which is what State of Play was about, too.) The MSM bloggers I read are prestigious, experienced journalists. Their blogs are a delight because they don't need to conform to usual print standards for length or style; they can add lots of online links; and they can be more casual, which often allows them to discuss things they couldn't discuss in a column. Some examples:

- Kady O'Malley's blog Inside the Queensway on Macleans.ca
- Paul Krugman's blog The Conscience of a Liberal on NYTimes.com
- Howard Kurtz's blog Media Notes on WashingtonPost.com

The whole premise of the movie was Luddite: a railing against the new in defence of the old. I wouldn't mind except that it spreads misinformation about the exciting new world of online journalism - an innovation that is not only positive, but also necessary.

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Building Walls

I'm not a hockey fan but I'm fascinated by Jim Balsillie's attempts to buy an NHL hockey team for Waterloo - he may really be aiming for a team for southern Ontario, but I like to think his goal is Waterloo - so when news broke today that his favorite team, the Habs, is up for sale, I fired up Google News to see what the rumor mill had going.

One of the articles that caught my eye was from the Nashville Post. Balsillie's last attempt to buy a team was the Predators, so you can imagine that city is interested in the topic. But when I clicked on the link I got a message that unless I'm a subscriber, I have to pay $7.50 to read the article. It's difficult to imagine that anyone would pay that much (even a hockey fan). Just for fun I clicked the link to buy the article, and it opened an email: the only way to purchase an article is to write an email or call their subscription department. That inconvenience makes it even less likely that anyone has ever actually paid the $7.50, or that the paper even expects anyone to.

Their goal is probably to get people to subscribe: they may hope that faced with such a high price for an article, the reader will opt for a subscription. However, a little more clicking tells me that a subscription to online material is $99/year. Now, even Salon.com's premium subscription is $39/year (and I refuse to pay that). A hundred bucks is steep. There's no way an individual would pay that unless they're super interested in Nashville news - and are probably a local. The Nashville Post might prefer that; after all, newspaper revenue is all about ads, not subscriptions, and they may aim their ads at local businesses that don't care about readers outside the city limits.

That seems like a failed marketing strategy - especially since, when I check out their home page, I see that their ads are customized to the visitor (so I see ads for Toronto). It's not clear what articles they're putting behind the subscription wall, but it's not based on freshness; I clicked on several inaccessible articles that were posted today.

We hear a lot about the financial difficulties of print media, and this is just an exaggerated example of what newspapers are doing wrong. Profitability is linked to eyeballs, and eyeballs are not attracted to over-the-top fees (either $7.50 per article or $99 per year). In fact, now that I know that the Nashville Post puts their articles behind the subscriber wall, I won't click on links to them anymore - just as I stopped reading the LA Times a number of years ago. (The LA Times may have changed their policy, but I read hundreds of online newspapers, and I can't keep up with their marketing flipflops.)

Samuel Chi over at RealClearPolitics thinks that subscriber walls are inevitable due to declining ad revenue. He suggests that all print subscribers of Newspaper Association of America (NAA) papers should be offered a deal to get online access to all 2,000 NAA papers for one fee of $50/year. There are a number of problems with this, one being that internet traffic is international (trust an American to forget that); a bigger problem being that it will drive people to other media sources that are free, and further hurt the finances of newspapers. Ad revenue is down because it's a recession: when demand falls, raising the price rarely solves the problem.

It's not clear to me why newspapers are finding it so difficult to figure out the internet economy. Everyone else is trying to create sites that attract readers so they can make revenue from ads; newspapers are one of the biggest draws for readers that there is, and they're squandering their opportunity. Or at least some of them, like the Nashville Post, are. Since different articles attract different types of reader, newspaper articles could even provide advertisers with nice neat demographic targets. The internet business model is not even that different from the print business model: newspapers have always received the majority of their revenue from advertising.

A more interesting approach would be to reduce costs by producing a much smaller print edition, and make the bulk of the paper online-only - or just drop the print edition altogether. I don't read print editions ever, anymore, so this makes sense to me - but I can't be sure it would actually work. I have heard that printing represents 50% of a newspaper's costs.

By the way, I don't believe Balsillie would try to move the Canadiens. If he loves the team then surely he knows it has to stay in Montreal. Also, it's exciting to think that it might go back to Quebec francophone ownership, and gain back some francophone staff.

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Miss Pronownciation

I just heard an anchor on CNN International pronounce Azberbaijan in a way so bizarre, so incorrect, that she must have read the word off her teleprompter wihtout ever having heard it before. Eyes squinting a bit, in a questioning tone, she laboriously said something like, Eh-zber-gee-an?

Now in Canada we obsess over pronunciation. A couple of decades ago there was virtually a national debate over Lithuania: Lith-YOO-ania or Lith-OO-ania. I believe it was Joe Clark who fell afoul of public opinion with a dodgy YOO version. I remember championing the OO side with some gusto, although I may have simply been unable to accept the articulation of a Conservative. After a great deal of taxpayer-subsidized research, the CBC made a ruling and, well, I seem to have forgotten what it was.

CBC announcers are given pronunciation guidelines. CNN announcers - not so much. They seem to wing it. For example, Qatar, usually pronounced something like kuh-TAR, is regulary called cutter on CNN. For that matter, American government officials often say cutter as well. Given the dominance of US TV, after a while the poor Qataris (kuh-TAR-ees) will probably give up and become KUT-ter-ees. That's certainly what happened to poor old al Qaeda - no AYE-EE left in that name.

Just guessing here, but the widespread disregard that American media has for the correct pronunciation of foreign words, isn't that based on a sense that Americans don't follow no furrin ways? This attitude has had some admirable effects - I am a great fan of American spelling and think it superior in all respects to British forms. But language is more than 99% about following and less than 1% about leading, and American visual media could show a little more respect for accepted pronunciation.

Ahmadinejad, anyone?

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Politics, Like Hollywood Comedies, Is Getting Cruder

There has been a whole lot of penis talk in the news recently. I'm not talking about obscure bloggers, but some of the most popular, most highly remunerated and most influential infotainers in US media:

Christopher Hitchens: "I might orgasm in my trousers" (talking of his delight at the recent media bashing of Bill Clinton)

Tucker Carlson: "I have often said, when [Senator Clinton] comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs." and "[Lawyer Nancy Grace] scares me. I cross my legs every time she talks." and "It's like those pictures you see of the soccer goalie when they're about to get the free kick. That's me when [Senator Clinton] talks. I can't help it."

Chris Matthews: "[When Barack Obama spoke] I felt this thrill going up my leg."

Chris Matthews has also talks about being castrated. About Speaker of the House of Representantives, Nancy Pelosi, he said, "Is she going to castrate [him]?"

And of course, once said, eveyone else quotes the comments. Mark Steyn received a secondary rush of notoriety for his article called Obama, Political Viagra: "On the strength of Chris Matthews's vibrating calves, Mr. Obama raised a ton of money and massively outspent Mrs. Clinton."

One could argue that these guys are only masquerading as journalists and pundits and are really just shock-jocks, building up their careers by saying outrageous things - really not so different from Howard Stern or Don Imus. The difference is that they're on cable news in prime time, and their shows are taken seriously.

As Hollywood comedies get cruder, it seems that each must always raise the ante and be cruder than its predecessors in order to get the shock that brings laughter. Crudity in media seems to be going the same way (Hitchens' comment is the most recent and most explicit). The way it's going, and with the success these guys are getting with virtually no backlash, it will almost certainly get much, much worse in the months and years to come. And since shock-jock media seems to target women particularly, we should be prepared for even more misogyny and bashing.

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The War Against Women

This was a sad week for women.

Not only were we treated to an increasing barrage against women in the campaign of hate against Hillary Clinton, but singer k.d. lang also revealed ongoing McCarthy-style blackballing of gay women.

k.d. said in an interview this week that after her song Constant Cravings became a commercial hit a few years ago, she came out as a lesbian and that was the end of her commercial success. She said advertisers instructed radio stations that they didn't want the song played. She never had another hit. k.d. was easy-going about the issue, saying that it was a blessing in disguise because her music never ended up in a car or toothpaste ad. But that's not the point: this is another high profile case of women being put down when they don't follow mainstream images of what women should be - sex objects for men. Had she been better looking or more feminine, she might have gotten away with coming out (gay women being a male fantasy). But mannish, chunky and gay: no way.

On the Hillary front, a tiny wee bit of backlash is starting against misogyny in the Democratic presidential race. Unfortunately, some of it is pretend criticism. Jake Tapper wrote Is Obama using sexist language?, but he doesn't try to make any serious case for his question. He references one rather inoffensive Obama quote ("the claws come out") and then reports on how "female TV reporters" are pushing the issue. The end result of his article is, I think, to dismiss the issue. The hate-filled comments (559 at time of writing) are more revealing than the article.

In Hillary sexism watch, Melissa McEwan documented 62 events from September 2007 to February 12, 2008 that raise questions about the misogyny of the US media. They aren't all examples that I would use, but it's an interesting recap of this troubling campaign.

Erica Jong, who has been plugging away trying to get people to see the war on women that this race has become, this week published Patriarchy:1000, Hillary:0, a summary of some of the misogyny she has witnessed in this campaign.

Jong ends, "I give up." Sometimes I feel that way too. But can we use our frustration? Can women and men who are sickened by what has happened to Hillary (and Geraldine Ferraro and Sheila Copps and others) channel our energy into making our political arena and our society a fairer place for women?

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Fighting an Election on the Crime Bill

I would love to fight a federal election on the Harper crime bill.

At the start of our last federal election campaign, mainstream media undercut one of Paul Martin's best campaign strategies by predicting that he would run a negative campaign that demonized Harper and scared Canadians into thinking Harper would impose values repugnant to most Canadians. This blanket media interference effectively kicked the stuffing out of legitimate Liberal arguments that Harper is at odds with the majority of Canadians on abortion, crime, capital punishment, the social safety net, universal health care, an evangelical religious agenda, and on and on.

When Harper came to power the media told us that Harper couldn't do any of those things, even if he wanted to, because he had a minority government. Then they told us that coming to power had shifted Harper towards the center and blunted some of his more extremist views.

But during the last two years Harper has moved Canada towards a less caring, more punitive US model. This "Tacking Violent Crime" bill is an outrageous reversal of practices that have helped Canada maintain a startlingly lower crime (and incarceration) rate than the US. As I've written before:

The homicide rate per 100,000 people in the US is 5.59. In Canada, it is 1.85... and declining. It makes no sense to follow the model of a country that locks up inordinate amounts of its citizens - especially minorities - and only manages to keep crime rampant.

Canada has had huge success with a kinder, gentler approach to crime. Jail diversion programs reduce recidivism, but that should not be the only metric used to judge their effectiveness. This is a human rights issue. Going to prison wrecks a person's life: it is traumatizing; it makes it difficult for a person to ever work at a good job or fit in to regular society; it is a training ground for future criminal behavior. People should only be subjected to prison when there is risk to society or a strong need for deterrence.

Since Day One, the Harper government has been waging a propoganda campaign to convince Canadians to Americanize our justice system. Their biggest target has been youthful offenders, who Harper wants to lock up more often and for longer periods - just the ticket to ruin their lives, ruin their family's lives, and encourage them to enter a life of crime.

Liberal party leadership have to decide which issue to focus on in the next election, and that decision should be made on the basis of a much stronger understanding of the country than I have, but for me, the crime bill is The issue of the day. Afghanistan is much iffier for me. I don't like the idea of Canadians being involved in any war, but a Liberal government got us into this engagement, and I supported Paul Martin's reasons for doing so at the time.

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Huffington Post - For Entertainment Purposes Only

Quick scans of today's main pages on the Huffington Post show the usual mix of celebrity bloggers and celebrity photos and celebrity news. Sometimes it seems that politicians make the Huff only insofar as they themselves are celebs.

The Huffer has a bad habit of putting headlines on the main page that promise content that isn't delivered. An example today is "West Wing" actor Bradley Whitford's column on the supreme court: "Supreme Injustices", with the tag line, "It's not too late to take back the Court. Supreme Court Justices may keep their jobs for life, but the person with the power to appoint them does not. Conservatives know where their candidates stand on judges. Do you?" That seems much more interesting than the usual HuffPo scandal and innuendo, so I bit. The article pontificates vaguely about the importance of who gets on the bench, but says not a thing about Hillary or Obama or who they might appoint. It doesn't even comment that there's little to say because there's so little difference between the two candidates, and such a huge gap on this issue between Democrats and Republicans.

Here's another (and keep in mind I'm only reading the articles that seem serious): "BREAKING -- Clinton's Economic Stimulus Package", with the tag line, "Just off the phone with a top Clinton strategist. It's a specific plan, not like Obama's "let's all hold hands and reach for the stars, which we can't even grab because we're all tangled up in each others' hands..."" This one turns out to be a (not funny) joke, with the stimulus package being the $5M she loaned to her campaign. I guess the joke is that a reader who wanted some real information might have been so stupid as to look for it here. Heyuk, yuk indeed.

I've said it before, but we need to be very wary of "new" "alternative" "web-based" media. Complain about the New York Times all you want (I do), but it abides by newspaper standards and government regulations, and readers have recourse when they detect unfactual or overly biased reporting. Newspapers can even get in trouble for not printing a fair representation of viewpoints in letters to the editor. They can face legal penalties for being unfactual. They regularly print corrections to even the most minor errors. Mainstream print media is far more responsible, reliable and accountable than the alternative press.

Unlike mainstream media, there are no codes of ethics to govern the behavior of alternative media and money-making blog aggregators like HuffPost. The HuffPost provides no auditor to ensure fairness in reporting. Its entire web site is sensationalism designed to increase ad revenue. It should contain a warning, "For entertainment purposes only" - but it doesn't even need to do that, because it abides by no laws, guidelines or standards.

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The Politics of Black and White

By Black and White politics in the current Democratic primary race, I don't mean skin color. The contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has become all about Demonization and Lionization, about seeing only Good and Bad and not the grey shades that are the real world. The two frontrunners, Hillary and Obama, are portrayed - especially in the left and youth press - as all Bad or all Good. The really disturbing thing about this is that false images and self-generating hype have driven out discussion of policies and real character differences.

In particular, Hillary is increasingly portrayed as "status quo", "dirty politician" and "hypocrite" by commentators who distort events and then repeat the distortion until it becomes common knowledge. I wouldn't mind if she lost on her own merits, but the current treatment of her is part of an insane pattern in US politics of distortion and demonization of front-runner Democrats that I have documented over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

When they couldn't find something to attack Hillary about, they overemphasized the role of her husband and attacked him. When Obama attacks Hillary, virtually nobody sees a problem with it, but when Hillary attacks Obama, the web rings with calls of "Foul!" If we were all geographically closer, leftist youth would probably have lynched her by now.

Just today, the rabidly anti-Hillary HuffPost ran an article with the headline, "Clinton Backer Compares Obama Ad To Nazi March". Talk about twisting the truth: Obama ran an untrue ad that could hurt the cause of universal health care, and then somehow it is Hillary's fault because someone who happens to support her (and is not even affiliated with her campaign) went too far in criticizing it.

Despite the relentless demonization of Hillary, she's still ahead in the polls. Although the gap is getting mighty narrow, she just might pull this nomination off. As she is the most qualified, inspiring, competent and electable candidate, I'm hoping she can find a way to do it.

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The Pablo Rodriguez Question

My last post sparked some really interesting comments by some very articulate people who disagreed with me. My next reply was going to be too lengthy, so I'm writing it as a post instead.

The background is: During the Ethics committee interview of Brian Mulroney, Pablo Rodriguez (Lib) asked the following question:

Mr. Mulroney, you said you made no presentation to Maxime Bernier on the wireless spectrum issue. While he was the industry minister, have you ever had a private or public dinner or lunch with him in Montreal, or any other city? Have you ever met with him at all? If so, how many times, in which city? Have you ever placed a telephone call to him, or has he called you? On any of those, did you discuss the wireless spectrum issue?

There is a pretty fair description of the episode here. The case against Rodriguez is this:

- The question was suggested to Rodriguez by a CBC employee.
- The question was not within the mandate of the committee, which is to examine the Airbus settlement of 1997.

To me, the first point is meaningless. Reporters suggest questions to committees all the time, as do private citizens, bloggers, and interested parties. Everyone should suggest questions. There is absolutely no suggestion that the CBC bribed or blackmailed Rodriguez, or did anything other than suggest the question. Part of suggesting questions is suggesting wording, so the big debate over how well Rodriguez speaks English is beside the point.

The second point, that the question is outside the mandate, is more important. I watched the coverage of the hearing live, and when I heard this question I thought, Oh god, why are we getting off track on this nonsense? I want this committee to stay focused so it can get its job done, and don't want anything to distract it.

But since the controversy about the question has arisen, I have thought further about the relevance of the question, and I now see that it is extremely interesting and relevant.

Noone is questioning that the committee should open its investigation beyond the $300,000 cash payments by Schreiber to Mulroney. There have been lots of questions about other possible payoffs to Mulroney. The timeframe of the inquiry has been extended both before and after 1997 by all parties: everyone has asked questions about Mulroney's time as prime minister and even before, and Conservatives on the committee have asked lots of questions about Mulroney's contacts with Stephen Harper in the past two years. The Rodriguez question is about a possible current impropriety by Mulroney and is relevant in the same pattern and time frame of other questions. This is the background of the question:

- Mulroney is not a registered lobbyist.
- Mulroney is on the board of Quebecor.
- Susan Riley cites allegations that "Mulroney has lobbied the Harper government to proceed with plans to set aside valuable spectrum for newcomers, including Quebecor."
- On November 7, 2007, Harper ordered his cabinet and caucus to stop talking with Mulroney to avoid impropriety in the Schreiber hearings, but this alleged lobbying took place after that order.
- Stephane Dion asked Harper in parliament, "Has the prime minister ever discussed wireless spectrum with Brian Mulroney? Yes, or no?" and Harper refused to answer. (His office issued a statement later.)

So Rodriguez's question was very pertinent to the hearings:

- In a hearing about possible illegal lobbying in 1997, the question asks about a pattern of illegal lobbying by Brian Mulroney that may be continuing today.
- It touches on the possible Harper coverup that Tory MPs have raised in the committee.

I am not saying by any means that Harper engaged in a coverup, that Harper lied about ceasing contact with Brian Mulroney, or that Mulroney illegally lobbied the Harper government on behalf of Quebecor. But it is a reasonable question to pursue and the Ethics committee is an appropriate place to do it.

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Conservatives Playing Silly Buggers on Ethics Committee

Conservatives on the Ethics committee are trying to side-line important business with a pointless political witch hunt.

Conservative MP Dean del Mastro is calling Mike Duffy and other witnesses to discuss the issue of who is "feeding questions" to MPs on the committee. In December, Mike Duffy interviewed someone who claimed that a CBC reporter suggested a question to a Liberal MP on the committee. Since then it has been widely reported that journalists and other citizens regularly suggest questions to committee members and there was nothing untoward in the event; in addition, the CBC has already disciplined the employee, saying they didn't want there to be any perception of wrongdoing. Mike Duffy, who is on CTV, has nothing to do with the issue at all.

CTV journalist Graham Richardson said this on Mike Duffy Live: "This is the most trumped up, ridiculous pandering to the Conservative core who believe the CBC is part of the enemy... this is just bald politicking and unfortunately it's politicking with someone's reputation." Duffy replied, "They're trying to embarrass the Liberals and the CBC - get a twofer."

The Ethics committee has important work to do. Harper's Conservatives have made it abdundantly clear that they don't want the committee to succeed: they tried to extradite Karlheinz Schreiber before he could appear, and they have tried to pressure the committee into rushing its work. Now they are trying to subvert its important business.

If you want to try to stop this subversion of the committee process, here are the people I wrote to complain about this latest tactic:

Dean Del Mastro (C) - DelMastro.D@parl.gc.ca
Russ Hiebert (C) - Hiebert.R@parl.gc.ca
Our PM - Harper.S@parl.gc.ca
Paul Szabo (L), committee chair - Szabo.P@parl.gc.ca

Update: For more info from the Conservative side, see this.

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The Twisting of Truth: Analysis of an Event

In the Nevada Democratic primary debate, Obama pretended Hillary said something she didn't, and the exchange has been further twisted by media into renewed charges that Hillary is playing dirty. What Hillary said is, in fact, completely accurate and fair.

The week before, Obama had made two separate comments to the Reno Gazette-Journal:

* One quote related to Reagan. Obama said, "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path..."

* The other quote referred to ideas. Obama said, "I think it is fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time over the last 10, 15 years..."

Note that the last 10-15 years does not have anything to do with Reagan, who left office 20 years ago.

In the debate, Hillary referred to the second quote. She said, "The facts are that [Obama] has said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote. Now, I personally think they had ideas, but they were bad ideas. They were bad ideas for America." This is an accurate representation of Obama's second quote and a fair criticism of it. You don't say a group is "the party of ideas" if you mean that they have useless, crappy, or even neutral ideas. Obama was obviously praising the Republicans for being the party of ideas and implicitly criticizing Bill Clinton's presidency (which started 15 years ago) as not having ideas.

Obama started to respond about Reagan. Hillary immediately said, "I did not say anything about Ronald Reagan." It was clear she was referring to Obama's statement about ideas, not to his statement about Reagan. Obama chose to pretend to misunderstand Hillary and he responded as if she were referring to the Reagan quote.

The media took Hillary's completely fair comment and twisted it to make her look like a dirty politician. Maureen Down wrote, "Hillary tried once more to take Obama's remarks about Ronald Reagan out of context, making it seem as though Obama had praised Reagan's policies." On Meet the Press, Tim Russert's panel went even further, claiming (by over-emphasizing selective quotes) that both Bill and Hillary had been big Reagan fans and that Hillary was being hypocritical about Reagan. On Hardball, Chris Matthews attacked Hillary for her comment that she hadn't mentioned Reagan; he said, "Why did she deny doing so, clearly having done so, by saying, almost in a high school fashion, 'I didn’t say the name Reagan?'"

The blogs have gone nuts too. Paul Waldman said she "twist[ed] some remarks Obama made about Ronald Reagan and the years since his presidency beyond all recognition." Even Ezra Klein mistakenly said that Hillary exaggerated Obama's comments about Reagan.

This is not just about Hillary. Whoever is the Democratic frontrunner is going to be subject to this sort of distortion. Al Gore was briefly made to seem a delusional liar and John Kerry was made to seem a coward, and now Hillary Clinton is being made to appear a dirty politician. It's a lie.

Hillary has been the clear frontrunner for a year (see chart below), but Obama is catching up quickly. When he is the frontrunner, the character assassination will switch to him. We never learn.



Chart courtesy of TPM Election Central.

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