The cyber-sewer: Hate bloggers explained

Online anonymity has created what the computer scientist Jaron Lanier calls a “culture of sadism.” Some Yahoo comments were disgusting. “She got what she deserved,” one said. “This is what happens when dumb sexy female reporters want to make it about them.” Hillbilly Nation chimed in: “Should have been Katie.”

The “60 Minutes” story about Senator Scott Brown’s revelation that a camp counselor sexually abused him as a child drew harsh comments on the show’s Web site, many politically motivated.

Acupuncturegirl advised: “Scott, shut the hell up. You are gross.” Dutra1 noted: “OK, Scott, you get your free pity pills. Now examine the image you see in the mirror; is it a man?”

Evgeny Morozov, author of “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom,” told me Twitter creates a false intimacy and can “bring out the worst in people. You’re straining after eyeballs, not big thoughts. So you go for the shallow, funny, contrarian or cynical.”

Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” says technology amplifies everything, good instincts and base. While technology is amoral, he said, our brains may be rewired in disturbing ways.

“Researchers say that we need to be quiet and attentive if we want to tap into our deeper emotions,” he said. “If we’re constantly interrupted and distracted, we kind of short-circuit our empathy. If you dampen empathy and you encourage the immediate expression of whatever is in your mind, you get a lot of nastiness that wouldn’t have occurred before.”

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, recalled that when he started his online book review he forbade comments, wary of high-tech sociopaths.

“I’m not interested in having the sewer appear on my site,” he said. “Why would I engage with people digitally whom I would never engage with actually? Why does the technology exonerate the kind of foul expression that you would not tolerate anywhere else?”

Why indeed?

A local case in point: Canada’s most widely-read white supremacist. Why did TVO or the National Post or Maclean’s give her a platform/credibility?  Why would the Canada Israel Committee junket her to Israel?

Good questions.


In today’s Sun: Odious

It’s never the break-in. It’s always the cover-up.

That’s the political truism from the ’70s-era Watergate scandal, of course. It wasn’t so much the cartoonish June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters by Republican operatives that felled U.S. president Richard M. Nixon. It was the stonewalling and cover-ups by very senior people working at the White House — including the president himself — that forced the ignominious resignation of Nixon, in August 1974. It is always thus.

Voters are pretty reasonable, you see. There can be a guy running for mayor of Toronto, for example, and he can be linked to all sorts of malfeasance — drunk driving, drugs, you name it — and he can still end up getting elected in a landslide. As long as the politician confesses to his or her misdeeds early on (which Rob Ford did, sort of), people will forgive. They don’t get as worked up about these things as the media and the political chattering class do.

But if you lie and prevaricate for a long time, and you don’t cop to your failings right away, you’re done. It’s over.


“Go f@#& yourself”

The Globe’s Gary Mason, whose stuff I have always admired, wrote this in the paper this morning:

“This week, journalists in this country were all atwitter about a tweet of Maclean’s columnist Scott Feschuk. He jumped into the middle of a spat between Canadian Press reporter Jennifer Ditchburn and Dimitri Soudas, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s communications chief, and sent a shockingly crude tweet about Mr. Soudas.”

Being shockingly crude myself, I wanted to see what Feschuk had Twitter tweeted.  As far as I can tell, it’s this:

“Question: Would it be inappropriate at this point for me to tell @pmosoudas to go fuck himself?”

Feschuk, who types for Maclean’s, wrote that on Wednesday afternoon.  It must have riled PMO press flak Dimitri Soudas, because within ten minutes, Feschuk was tweeting stuff suggesting that Soudas had complained to Feschuk’s bosses at Maclean’s. “Don’t go crying to my Mommy,” wrote Feschuk.  I couldn’t find anything that Soudas tweeted, apart from a couple snarky messages to Ditchburn, who is the nicest person on Earth, and who had tweeted about Jason Kenney for stating that Radio Canada lies all the time, or something like that.  When you poke through Twitter entrails after a while, your head will start to hurt, as mine now does.

There’s all sorts of fun stuff we can chit-chat about, here – Why has the Harper regime decided that Twitter is the best place to communicate with Canadians? Does CBC lie all the time?  Why does the Prime Minister’s press spokesman think it’s good strategy to suggest the media lie all the time? Why does anyone in the Reformatory Party regard Jason Kenney as strategic, other than what he is, which is a loose cannon whose big mouth torpedoed Bev Odious? – but I wanted to focus on Feschuk’s shockingly crude suggestion to Soudas.

As anyone who has ever worked with me on a campaign will know, I swear all the f@#&ing time.  I can’t help myself.  I f@#&ing swear like a f@#&ing trucker.  I like people who swear; thus, this, my favourite Christmas carol.  That day that my former boss Jean Chretien told Michel Vastel to f@#& off was one of the happiest days of my life – only bettered by the day that my former boss strangled a maniacal Bolshevik who was blocking his path.  God, I loved that.

Anyway.  What do you think, O Oracles of Webby Truth and Wisdom?  Is it wrong for political people to tell each other to go f@#& themselves?  Is it “inappropriate,” as Feschuk queried?  I say no!

Unburden yourselves – and feel free to swear your f@#&ing heads off, while you’re at it.


Help wanted

Speechwriter Position
Position Summary
The Speechwriter will work with the Communications Department to complete products in a timely manner, often with competing deadlines, and a caucus in a state of perpetual civil war. This involves working with multiple departments, and multiple hidden agendas, to gather the necessary information and incorporating the feedback given by the Director of Communications and the Principal Secretary, as well as Mike Harris and the Ontario Landowners’ Association.

Major duties and responsibilities

  • Write Speeches, Columns, News Releases, and falsify your party’s record, and other products as needed
  • Try and work cooperatively with all departments towards the completion of projects, but end up infighting about just about everything
  • Attend and contribute to interdepartmental meetings with respect to communications products, and always work to ensure that health care, education and human rights are gutted
  • Provide creative support on the Leader’s materials to our audio, video and graphics team, and make stuff up as much as possible
  • Pretend to listen to Rocco Rossi – who, as we all know, got less mayoralty support than Enza the Supermodel

Education & Experience

  • University degree, or (ideally) OLA membership
  • 3-5 years of previous communication experience, or the complete absence of a soul

Skills

  • Strong, concise written communications skills are somewhat desirable, but not a prerequisite (cf. our caucus)
  • High attention to detail, such as when expensing the leader’s Chicken McNuggets
  • Firm understanding of current issues and organizational values, which are: cut, slash, and burn
  • Ability to work under pressure while listening to senior leader’s staff scream at each other.  Again.
  • Ability to work long hours in the service of Big Tobacco and Multinational Pharmacies
  • Exceptional multi-tasking skills and ability to prioritize workload, because firing nurses and closing hospitals is a lot of work, you know
  • Ability to use tact, judgment and discretion – qualities that are notably absent within the Ontario PC team (cf. our caucus, Leader)
  • Willingness to screw over PC stalwarts like Norm Stirling, because that was a condition of the dirty deal Tim Hudak did with Randy Hillier

Details
Nature of position: Full time with benefits, until you are flushed by someone close to the Leader, that is, which is highly likely around here
Salary: Commensurate with experience, but nearly as much as you will get flogging ciggies to kids as a Big Tobacco lobbyist, after we lose the election


Timmy Hudak’s bad week turns into three bad weeks!

But don’t worry – Rocco Rossi has a plan to fix everything!

“A fight within Ontario Conservative party ranks flared up again this week after an e-mail revealed links between a renegade candidate and a sitting MPP.

The e-mail from Jack MacLaren, who is trying to unseat 33-year veteran MPP Norm Sterling as the Progressive Conservative candidate in Carleton-Mississppi Mills, appears to be routed through MPP Randy Hillier’s website.

Sterling has complained bitterly about links between Hillier, his caucus colleague, and MacLaren, the man trying to unseat him. He says he plans on raising the issue anew with Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak.

“Perhaps he will say something to Randy when he becomes aware of it,” he said.

Hudak, who embraced Hillier during the party’s 2009 leadership, even adopting the latter’s policy to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, refused a request from the Citizen to comment on the situation. A Hudak aide also did not respond to an e-mailed request for a statement from the PC party leader.”

(By the by, that italicized bit sure is interesting. Kind of public funding for private religious schools all over again. Except worse.)


Timmy Hudak’s bad week turns into two bad weeks

But I’m certain Rocco Rossi will fix it all up for him!

Inside the low-rise office tower overlooking the Queensway near Blair Road, Dr. Wilbert Keon, former heart surgeon and recently retired Conservative Senator, chided Hudak for speaking in generalities.

“ I have no idea what his plan is and a general statement like doesn’t make sense to me at all,” said Keon, who started his tenure as chairman of the Champlain LHIN board of directors last week. “The big mistake in health care in Canada is there is too much centralization, too many mega-facilities and not enough attention to services at the local level.”

“I’m a card-carrying Conservative but my love for health care transcends my political persuasions,” Keon added. “I have agreed to do whatever I can to help local health networks make the necessary adjustments to streamline the system as a whole.”

Keon added that he was waiting for the Conservatives to demonstrate they have a plan for the money that would be freed up by scrapping the LHINs, which have a mandate to streamline health care at the local level.

“If (Hudak) doesn’t have a plan for producing more community services, the money will just get wasted, as it has been in the past.”