The coverage of the Jamie Carroll affair in the francophone press this week was outrageously bad for the Liberal party. I am not going to link to any of it because its all garbage. The journalists were doing their job trying to create heat, but it was all garbage just the same. The person who initiated the leak of the private conversation must be forced to resign.
Let’s be clear about something to begin with. The alleged “joke” was not funny and no excuses should be made for such a joke. Humour is a social phenomenon and the scripts for what is funny and what is not are implicit. You know it when you hear it. Take for example the n----- word. When Chris Rock uses it: funny (sometimes). When the tall weird guy from Seinfeld uses it: not funny. Dave Chapelle: always funny, etc… You get the picture. An anglophone can tell the same joke word for word as a francophone about francophones and it is not funny. In fact, it is a sure-fire conversation stopper. That’s the script. And in this case even a francophone could not pull off such a quip (I am not interested in exceptions that prove the rule here). Liberal MPs in Quebec are a bit of a survivalist club. They know the script and to survive they know that they must immediately denounce such a joke on the spot without hesitation otherwise they will be wearing the blame for it too.
The person who leaked this story (whether it is true or not) also knew the script. Fortunately, this did not happen during an election. If the person who initiated the leak is left in place, it will happen during an election. Following the reasoning of my post yesterday, for the good of the party this individual must resign or be forced to resign immediately.
After the Turner defeats in the 1980’s, we lost a lot of seats permanently. And now there is more than one party that is all too eager to occupy space vacated by the Liberals. The idea of throwing an election is arrogant in the extreme.
We are asking for peoples’ trust. And that starts by respecting them. The leaker must go.
2 comments:
Anonymous, I hope I haven't made a bad call here by deleting your post.I did it because I think the latter part of your comments became too personal towards someone. I have not thought much about the issue of regulating comments, but I guess I should think that through. The first step might be to eliminate anonymous postings.
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