I’m on the back stretch of the new book, and have hit a bit of a research roadblock.  I am looking for any and all articles containing commentary about the photo of this young man water skiing, way back on the Canada Day long weekend in 1993.  There is surprisingly little I can find.  Anyone who can help will get my thanks, and a mention in Fight the Right!

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Here’s the truth.

It couldn’t have been a very good political fundraiser: None of us can now recall who was speaking. Most likely, it was a Conservative — because we were exiled to the furthest corner in the room, with some of the other Liberals in attendance.

While the speaker wasn’t at all memorable, the pleasant woman at our table was. She was employed by a mortgage broker association. Asked what was new in her field of work, she said: “Subprime mortgages. We’re quite worried about them. If things unfold the way we think they might, it could be very, very bad.”

How bad? she was asked.

“They could cause a new recession, we think,” she said.

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“You don’t believe in anything. You’re not passionate about anything. Your cynicism is a pose, and it’s boring. So are you.”

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Sure looks like it. BCL strikes again!

The Fourniers and Stephen Harper, 2003.

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…just most of them. To wit:

“Lead researcher Gordon Hodson told LiveScience that the results of the study indicate a vicious cycle, in which people with low intelligence are drawn to socially conservative ideologies. In turn, those ideologies can contribute to prejudices.

“Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order,” he said, explaining why those with lower intelligence may gravitate toward the right. “Unfortunately, many of these features can contribute to prejudice.”

The researchers found that people with lower intelligence also tended to have less contact with other races and groups, which, Dr. Hodson said, supports previous research that determined interacting with other groups is mentally challenging and cognitively draining.“*

My book Fight the Right – which is coming out in the Fall from Random House – is chockful of useful (and irrefutable) information-bits like this.

If I do it, er, right, I will be making tiny conservative heads go pop all over North America!

* H/T

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…by the always-authentic David Akin.

Me? I don’t like any of it. It stinks. It makes the Sun folks, many of whom I know and like, look bad.

Now, as I pointed out to another Sun chum, there is an essential falsity at the centre of everything that TV news does: asking you to pretend to type at your desk while they film you, asking you to pretend to be walking down a hallway to your office, asking you to re-create some event or statement, because the cameraperson arrived too late to capture it. Others have written about this, more compellingly than I ever could.

There was no excuse for this mistake. News should be about truth; it shouldn’t be about fakery.

And, so, the next time one of the Sun’s many newsroom critics is hovering above a quote, looking to pretty it up – or clipping a bit of tape in a way that they know will create an entirely different meaning than what was intended – that should remember that axiom, too.

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Stereotypical backwards-masked pop video, with cliched hash brownie appearance, and unsurprising cameos by weird threatening guys in wrestling masks. My kids’ fave tune of the moment.

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Warren reacts to Brian’s decision to show him porn.

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Dumb.

Dumber.

Brings to mind that old adage of, er, me: the only people who still believe that people look to the media for ethical inspiration are the media.

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We have a candidate for mayor to beat Robo Ford!

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