The last person I expected to find myself defending is Postmedia News columnist Christie Blatchford.
Blatchford writes a lousy column, in my opinion, full of the worst sort of mealy-mouthed, right-wing tripe. She often composes emotional slop that belongs in the pages of the wretched Sun Media tabloids, where she worked for many years.
I've usually got better things to do than read her column -- for example, polishing the rusting hubcaps of my battered union-made Chevrolet with an old toothbrush.
Still, the brouhaha over Blatchford's column on the life and career of NDP Leader Jack Layton, published by all Postmedia daily newspapers on the day of his death, is troubling both for its intemperate tone, which echoes the screeching hysteria of Tory online trolls, and because a key point made by many of her critics is simply wrong.
Indeed, the offending column is far from the worst piece Blatchford has written, and it makes a good point that many of us who loved and respected Layton can surely agree with, or at least concede contains some truth. Its other arguments would better be dismissed with a shrug than with obscenity and imprecation.
I bothered to read this piece only because I came across some of the angry reaction on social media sites. I turned to it with a sick feeling, because I expected from the lead-up to read something truly disgusting, like the odious efforts of Calgary Sun city editor Dave Naylor. I finished it and concluded we should all take a deep breath.
The chief knock against Blatchford's effort seems to be that she called Layton a thoroughly political creature, and assailed his moving deathbed letter to Canadians with such uncharacteristically big words as "sophistry" and "vainglorious."
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Well, OK, the latter part of this opinion is graceless, even cheesy -- exactly as we have come to expect of almost any Postmedia columnist. But really, so what? It does not seem appropriate to me to respond to this kind of drivel by calling its author a "heartless cow," or worse, or wishing on her the same horrible fate that befell Layton.
Moreover, I think most of us can agree that Blatchford's silly allegation of sophistry and vainglory is merely a typical response, and possibly a heartfelt one, by a Tory sympathizer who must have fretted deeply about the implications of Layton's successful appeal to the better angels of our Canadian nature. Even our dour prime minister seems to have been improved by Layton's sunny vision, which in some circles might be seen as evidence of miraculous powers!
Sympathetic pity, it seems to me, is a more appropriate response to this part of Blatchford's argument than the fury it prompted in some quarters.
More troubling was the anger at Blatchford's mere suggestion Layton was a thoroughly political breed of cat. Well, of course he was! He wouldn't have gotten to where he did, let alone engineer a federalist and social democratic breakthrough in Quebec or raise our NDP to the Official Opposition of the land, without being such a person!
If you think this is an insult, check the label on your water bottle! You may have been drinking Tory bathwater without even knowing it.
Being a politician, especially a successful social democratic politician, is evidence of virtue, not its opposite. Pure politics in the defence of virtue is no vice, as Layton proved. He heard a higher calling, and took up his vocation. For this, we should rejoice!
The enraged reaction to Blatchford's words by some of my fellow New Democrats suggests to me that the ongoing Conservative effort to tarnish elected public service and engender popular cynicism about politics is succeeding, even amongst those of us who ought to know better.
Consider in this light the tone of many online comments, which sank very low. Indeed, the tenor of the response to Blatchford's column illustrates a victory for Conservative efforts to debase political discourse in Canada through the routine use of threats, abuse and hysteria.
Their ultimate goal is to tarnish the whole field of public life and thereby achieve the dual objectives of making assaults on public services easier and suppressing the vote, especially among idealistic young people who wish for change but are turned off by the cynicism and manipulation of modern electoral politics.
Surely we are not being true to Layton's hopeful vision of Canada's future by sinking to the same offensive tactics!
Even a cynical old hack like Blatchford had to concede Layton's strength, courage and dignity as the end approached. "Again and again, waving the cane that became in his clever hands an asset, he campaigned tirelessly," she concluded.
If Layton, as Blatchford opined, was "a canny, relentless, thoroughly ambitious fellow," this is no bad thing, and none of us should allow ourselves to be led into thinking it was.
Thank God for Jack's canny, relentless and ambitious nature, I say. Canada may yet be a better place as a result!
This post also appears on David Climenhaga's blog, Alberta Diary.
I much preferred this response: An open letter to Christie Blatchford
That picture is going to give me nightmares tonight.
She should go back to her old job as the face for 'Tales from the Crypt'
Seeing that some mouth breathing bottom feeder lamented in the Sun about the 'cost to taxpayers' for Layton's state funeral,this woman's column doesn't look as bad.
I wonder how long it would take before these 'people' would be fired if the deceased was Brian Mulroney or Stephen Harper himself.
I was delighted when Blatchford disappeared from the Globe. I groaned when she popped up in the Times Colonist which I also receive.
On this specific letter, Climenhaga has it right. What else would we expect from this right wing hack?
I see by your profile that you are a journalism teacher. Then you should know any good writer writes between the lines. Blatchford is a master at this. She is like a used car salesperson - she tells you one thing and sells you another. Blatchford uses words to make it seem like praise but throws in enough dog whistle points to register her ideological undercurrents with the reader. Your naivete to this is shocking. You almost sound like a Washington Post ombudsman who allows distortions with an ideological bent by its right-wing writers like Rubin and Will ("Oh, they're just being conservatives. It's the way they talk. Leave them aloooooone!").
But even more troubling is your phony equivalence of on-line hateful comments from anonymous shmoes with professional journalists paid large sums of money to inform us. Those ignorant comments occur on both sides of the aisle. It is the only recourse for the everyday person to vent at the expense many times of a Conservative-dominated media. It comes from a deep sense of not having a voice. Ugly as they are - let them vent. You don't have to read them.
Nor is it about Jack Layton's philosopy and values. It's about today's journalism and how the reaction to a particular column picked up steam by savvy readers who objected, sometimes with ugly language. In no way are these anonyous commenters equivalent to Blatchford, Kay et al.
Look, the National Post is engaging in the worst form of propaganda here. Blatchford opened with a nasty salvo against Layton and the left, covered in flowery compliments of same. Next day, her editor (I presume) Kay came out doubling down on her double talk. The following day - the day Layton was mourned in Ottawa - Kay's mom tripled down in the same National Post, insulting the mourners as being victims of "teddy bear grief' and decrying Layton's state funeral. If you, a professional journalist and teacher, cannot identify this as a calculated bit of propaganda following the Murdoch model, well we're in more trouble than I thought. Then again, in your own words, "so what?". I guess that's the Washington Post ombudsman model of journalism. And why so many people are turning away from traditional forms of journalism.
"Blatchford writes a lousy column, in my opinion, full of the worst sort of mealy-mouthed, right-wing tripe. She often composes emotional slop that belongs in the pages of the wretched Sun Media tabloids, where she worked for many years."
That is a useless paragraph, see what I am saying?
In his effort to show the world how classy he is, Climenhaga misses the point. It wasn't calling Layton "political" that upset almost everyone but him and a gaggle of far-right, possibly clinically insane journos. It was the suggestion that there was something wrong with being political, something that invalidated his deathbed letter.
Had this been one of Blatchford's precious men in uniform, would she have sneered about him going down fighting?