This election is giving plenty of reasons why Canadians are increasingly tuning out the traditional media establishment. (To be frank I wanted to title this post "Gutless Media Jerks" but consider this my good deed of the day).
Most recently we have exhibit one: Heckling reporters.
A reporter asked Harper recently whether he'd hypothetically "accept" a decision of the Governor General to allow an opposition coalition to govern.
To which Harper replied, as any politician with a half brain would, that he wasn't going to answer hypothetical questions.
That should have been good enough. The reporter got his shot at the Tory leader. Time to move on to other attempts to make Harper foul up - after all that reporter needs a juicy story doesn't he?
Instead he pressed Harper further. To which the Conservative crowd booed.
Now, you would think that might be a sign to said reporter that he might have crossed a line there. Instead it has become about how Tory supporters want to silence the press, believe their leader infallible, and are plain simply barbarian hoardes or alien kitten-eating devils.
Exihibit two: Jack's Massage.
Layton had a massage 15 years ago. Only problem is that the massage parlor he went to was suspected of being a bawdy house. The police questioned him. No charges were laid. Nothing's happened since.
To put it simply: who cares?
Certainly not Canadians. Canadians care about putting food on the table and making coffee in the morning. Whatever alleged infidelity Jack Layton may have committed 15 years ago doesn't rank higher up on that list than paying the bills, or getting the newborn feed. Gilles Duccepe and Stephen Harper recognize this and have refused to comment on the story.
Sun TV News was supposed to report the REAL news. Be the voice that the rest of media wasn't. This trash reporting does none of that.
I think the real moral of the story here is don't take massages ... I kid.
Exhibit three: The Liberal Disconnect.
I swear if I read one more article about how the Liberals ran such an amazing campaign but just can't seem to translate it into votes I'm going to puke.
I don't want to kick a guy when he's down, but in all fairness Iggy's campaign was far from flawless.
He had a candidate in Quebec that turned out to be a white supremacist, a gaffe on the coalition question on day one, a lackluster debate performance, and an inability to stay on message just to name a few problems.
I think it was that last point that was the worst. What was the Liberal ballot question again? Oh ya - Are you better off now after 5 years of Stephen Harper?
Whatever happened to that message was lost in Iggy's bizzare "Rise Up" chants that I can only assume that he made up while high on medical marijuana on the Liberal campaign bus.
Maybe Iggy should've had a more scripted message. Maybe he should have focused on trying to control the story just a bit more. Maybe he should have limited what he said and limit the "off-the-cuff" remarks he's so fond of.
Those things are quite frankly more plausible reasons for Iggy's failure then an apparent magical "disconnect" that can't be explained.
