Dear Leah McLaren: Go Fuck Yourself, You Sanctimonious Bottomfeeder

Dear Leah McLaren,

Open letters are fun, aren't they? You've been getting a lot of them lately. Many of them are written by feminists -- those whom you seem to believe are otherwise your contemporaries -- criticizing you for your sexist treatment of Nazanin Asham-Jam MacKay. My favourite letter to you was from Asham-Jam MacKay herself.

Well, I'm not going to pretend to be kind to you. I'm going to say some pretty mean things to you, and it's not because you're a woman. It's because you embody the ongoing betrayal of the public interest that the Canadian media has become.

But mostly, I'm just come right out and say it: you can go fuck yourself, you sanctimonious bottomfeeder.

Not just you, really. You and every other so-called "journalist" pushing this pile-on of MacKay over comments that, it turns out, he never actually made and over emails that, as it turns out, he didn't actually write.

Apparently these are two facts that just don't matter in the eyes of you and every other muckraking demagogic hack masquerading as journalists in the Canadian media.

As I'm told, this is quite a change. I'm assured that, once upon a time, facts actually mattered in the media. When journalists and columnists decided to jump all over someone for some slight, it mattered whether or not there had actually been a slight. Real, not imagined. Or made up. And apparently I have to rely on these assurances, because of late in the media I've seen no evidence of this whatsoever.

Your arrogant, obnoxious and nasty letter to Mrs Asham-Jam MacKay was written long enough after this non-story had been thoroughly revealed to be false for you to actually know that the story had been revealed to be completely and utterly false. MacKay never actually made the comments in question, and not only did he not write the emails in question, but they were completely inoffensive to anyone other than clowns like you who were looking for something to be offended about.

Perhaps you would have preferred that the female staffer who wrote those emails have suggested that female civil servants who happen to double-shift as mothers neglect their kids? Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with you?

That's not a rhetorical question, by the way. While some of the other open letters written to you do a fairly good job of explaining what the fuck is wrong with you, I'd actually like to hear, from you, your personal account of what the fuck is wrong with you.

Because guess what? To write a letter like that to the wife of a politician because he was alleged to have said something wrong when in fact he didn't say something wrong and you and innumerable other hacks in the media don't want to admit to it? Something is fucking wrong with you.

And while I'm honestly interested in hearing you account for what this is, I do have some ideas of my own. For example: you're a fucking idiot.

You insist that it's not true that not enough women don't apply for judicial appointments. For my own part, I don't actually know if that's true or not. Because it's never actually been shown whether or not that's the case. The best the Toronto Star -- who with their shoddy reporting started this farce in the first fucking place -- could do was conjure the example of a woman who admitted that her own application for a judicial appointment was based not on her qualifications but on her politics, but also based out of ideological hostility to the sitting government. And that's the one example the Star was able to come up with.

So let's get this clear: your case that there isn't a lack of women applying for judicial appointments is a sample of one. And not only on a sample of one, but a sample of one who pretty much admits that she didn't make her application in order to stand on her qualifications. Holy fuck, that's so stupid it's almost brilliant. And while it's becoming clear you must have eaten paint chips has a child, please do me this one favour: please, please, pleeeeease assure me you haven't been eating them while pregnant with or nursing your child. Please assure me this. You know, for the children.

So I'm sure you've figured out by this point that I'm angry. Really, really angry. Like punch a journalist in the face for participating in this farce then tell them exactly why they just got punched angry. Let me explain to you why.

It's because apparently the media in this country reported a story they knew they couldn't adequately support, then when they learned the story was false they just ignored that and went on reporting it as if it were true. Whether this was done out of malice or just plain old dumb-as-fuck stubbornness is immaterial. The media decided that the truth doesn't matter. And you have made yourself emblematic of this indifference to the truth.

Let me conclude this letter with some advice for you: retire. Retire, and darken the pages of Canada's newspapers with your garbage no more. This personal experiment of you trying your hand at journalism? It failed in the most spectacular fashion imaginable. And take every single "journalist" who participated in this smear of Peter MacKay with you. Not a single one of you is worthy of the title "journalist" -- only people willing to commit to a media where facts and truth matter are worthy of that title. And you've demonstrated that you aren't.

Canadians deserve a media where the truth matters, where facts matter. We need a media that will help us make good decisions based on facts and based on truth, not one that will have us making bad decisions based on stories that turn out to not actually be true. The former helps us. The latter hurts us. And as Jon Stewart once told Tucker Carlson, you're not helping us. You're hurting us.

And I don't mean hurting conservatives. Somehow I get the sense you wouldn't feel very bad about that. You're hurting the Canadian people by deliberately feeding them ideologically-narcissistic bullshit.

And for that you can go fuck yourself.

Go fuck yourself,
-Patrick Ross

ps For anyone reading this in the midwest, I'm sorry I said "fuck" so much.

Canada, Meet Your Newsmedia

So, this happened: "Justice Minister Peter MacKay defends suggestion women are too busy with their kids to be judges."

Except that, as it turns out, MacKay never actually made that remark. Apparently, someone who attended a closed-door meeting between MacKay and the Ontario Bar Association either misqupted MacKay, twisted his words, or just outright lied. And because the story reinforces the preferred political narrative of the newsmedia in Canada, they have run with it rather gleefully.

And apparently this never happened: "people have lost complete confidence in the Harper Government, because when there's a spill, or there's an explosion, the last place Stephen Harper visits...he still hasn't gone to Lac Mégantic. And that's a shame."

That was Adam Vaughan, the Liberal Party's candidate the Trinity-Spadina byelection trying to make political fodder out of the victims of the Lag Megantic tragedy. Something he did while Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was in the room with him.

Based on the coverage of these remarks -- or lack thereof -- you'd insist this never happened. Yet it did. The only place where Vaughan's ridiculous comments -- indicative of an irredeemable personality -- appear in the newsmedia is buried in an article entitled "Vaughan offside with Trudeau on pipelines."

Not even Sun News is reporting this story properly.

If it had been a Conservative stooping to such a horrendous low, the headline would be blaring on the front page of every newspaper in the country. But because it's a Liberal, the story is very clearly being suppressed.

It's almost as if the citizens of Trinity-Spadina don't deserve to know that one of the candidates trying to get elected to be their MP is a nasty little creep. Somehow the story about him missing a candidates' debate on climate change policy was bigger than this one. And this certainly pales in comparison to the attention paid to the made-up MacKay story. Hell, the Toronto Star even dug up some lawyer who admitted, in the course of the story, that she only applied to become a judge out of political hostility to the sitting government.

As it turns out, this government has appointed to the bench practically every qualified female or "ethnic" applicant it could find. And it's still looking for more.

And yet Adam Vaughan dances on the graves of Lac Megantic's victims and... nothing. Barely a blurb.

It's almost enough to make you think that the newsmedia in this country has nuzzled itself into a certain party's pocket.

But that would be crazy, right?

Stephen's Chosen, But the Hope of the Party Remains

As I recently noted on this blog, I've lost confidence in Stephen Harper as Prime Minister and as Conservative Party leader. His refusal to rein in the secretive backroom behaviour in the Prime Minister's Office, and his determination to double down on that by circumventing due process have become an utterly untenable position for anyone who values democracy.

That being said, I'm not pulling a sonakent. What I mean by this is that, unlike some, I never supported or joined the Conservative Party merely as a means to gain political prominence. Rather, I supported and joined the party because I cherish the values for which it stands, and principles upon which it was built.

To allow the political destiny of Canada to be dictated by unelected officials in a backroom of the PMO flies in the very face of that. It's the reason why then-Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay turned his back on the demands David Orchard made in such a backroom and put the destiny of that party before its membership.

Stephen Harper should know this very well. In the end, he was a beneficiary of that decision. It allowed him to negotiate the merger of the PC and Canadian Alliance parties. The events that followed culminated with him becoming Prime Minister of Canada. He seems to have forgotten this. But I haven't.

Today, rank-and-file delegates at the party convention voted to tighten party rules regarding financial reporting. It's an imperfect means to discourage -- if not outright prevent -- unilateral decisions to use party funds for questionable purposes, but it does serve to one very specific, and important, end: it reminds party brass that they are not to simply use party funds for any purpose they deem fit, up to and including making potentially-embarrassing episodes go away.

Interestingly enough, a number of labour unions in Canada -- those who donated funds to help Pat Martin fight a defamation lawsuit that he eventually settled -- have a very similar issue of their own to plumb. I'm not aware of any of these unions holding a convention since these donations became public knowledge, but whether or not rank-and-file union members try to head off such actions in the future will be interesting to see. As it will be interesting to see how hard their leaders may resist such rule-tightening.

The Stephen Harpers and Nigel Wrights of the party brass need to take note of the message rank-and-file members have sent today: we expect that party officials will take their direction from party members, and that unelected bureaucrats will take their directions from elected officials, not vise versa. Any of you who cannot abide this had best vacate your positions.

As for myself, I will not turn my back on the party and on my fellow party members; not so long as they continue to stand for the values and principles for which this party -- and this country -- stand.

Who Edits Michael Harris' Columns, Anyway?

Recently, iPolitics columnist Michael Harris took some valuable iPolitics webspace to pout over a scathing letter to the editor by Peter MacKay. It was well-earned by Harris, who had bought into Amir Attaran's bizarre attempt to single-handedly re-write Canadian drug law. Whichever iPolitics editor decided it was a good idea to give Harris space to publicly mope over the tongue-lashing ought to have their heads examined.

Doubly so for his most recent work.

It's everything that Harris has managed to distinguish his work as: lazy, amateurish, and steeped in a Twitter-ized narrative that doesn't hold up to very basic scrutiny. It's less a coherent work of political journalism and more a list of complaints. But even as Harris piles on the complaints, he also manages to pile on the factual errors. To whit:

"During the Idle No More protests in Ottawa, PM Harper was as aloof as Louis the 14th, refusing to meet certain native leaders who were tired of the federal runaround on land claims and treaty rights. They learned that Stephen Harper doesn’t make time for nobodies.

The government attempted to humiliate Chief Theresa Spence during her protest by leaking an audit about her lack of managerial skills on her home reserve. That tactic was put in perspective when the Treasury Board later lost $3.2 billion in taxpayers money, but said that was okay because no one was alleging any misspending."

This is the kind of disaster that ensues when a would-be journalist takes their directions from social media.

First off, Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn't refuse to meet with First Nations leaders as Harris claims. Harper did in fact meet with Assembly of First Nations Chief Shawn Atleo. Other First Nations leaders -- many of whom backed Spence's demand for such a meeting -- refused to attend such a meeting, and even threatend Atleo with political repercussions if he did attend. In fact, Spence herself attempted to emotionally blackmail Atleo.

Secondly, the Deloitte audit of Attawapiskat's finances was released at the time it had been scheduled to be released. Spence was fully aware of this, and decided to grandstand against Harper -- by faking a hunger strike -- anyway.

Then there's the biggest whopper of all: claiming that the $3.2 billion was "lost" only after the release of this audit, when in fact the money in question was budgeted between 2001-09. Which means that for approximately five years, that money was either spent or not spent -- the audit in question couldn't actually tell which -- under a Liberal Party government. (Update - the treasury board has tracked the $3.2 billion. Not a penny of it was misspent, misappropriated, or lost -- something Harris seems to have very little to say about.)

That's three staggering factual errors in just two paragraphs. It's enough to beg the question of just who does the editing at iPolitics -- or if Harris' work is subjected to any kind of editing at all.

One thing is for certain: if Michael Harris won't check his own facts -- and it seems clear that he won't -- someone needs to do it for him. Unfortunately for iPolitics, it was me.