Uncle Steve

VICTORIA, B.C.

You may think the Harper Tories are getting ready to do battle with the Liberals under Justin Trudeau (whom former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney just called “a potent package”) and the New Democrats under Thomas Mulcair (whom Mulroney called “the best Opposition leader since John Diefenbaker”), but if you do, you’d be mistaken.

Nope, at least according to the mail they constantly send their supporters, the Harper Cons getting ready to go to war with the media.

That’s the right, according to the stream of fund-raising emails the Tories send to The Base, the Libs and the Knee-Dips may be a bit of a problem, but the big one is that “the urban media elite are mobilizing against us.”

Reading this stuff makes it feel like your country is being run by your crazy Uncle Steve, the guy who brags he has an unregistered firearm hidden under the floorboards of every room in his house — “in case of burglars” — and says he’s ready to shoot back when the black drones from the United Nations manned by aliens start patrolling the airspace over his house. And he lives by himself, so there’s no one to give him his meds and lead him back to his room. Yeah, that Uncle Steve.

Except, you might argue, the Uncle Steve running the country, the one whose party functionaries and MPs send out these electronic epistles to the faithful, may be crazy like a fox.

Every third line or so in every one of those little e-pistles says something alone the lines of this: “chip in $5 and help us fight back and get our own positive record out.” (You know, like the 111,800 real jobs lost in Canada last month, which a compliant Statistics Canada managed to whittle down to one tenth that sum thanks to anemic job growth in the public sector and by counting the almost 87,000 people who chose, if you will, “self-employment.” Another 21,000 people didn’t even get counted any more because they’d given up and stopped looking for work.)

Who knows? By writing this I myself may get a dishonourable mention in a Conservative fund-raising email as an honourary member of the media elite – something for which the real media elite, which is Conservative to a man and woman, would never give a blogger credit. They’re certainly willing to strike back at individual journalists who fail to toe the Tory line. Case in point…

“Friend,” Fred DeLorey, the CPC’s “director of political operations” told me the other day in a note sent to thousands of others who clicked a link in a Tory Facebook ad, “this morning, I picked up a paper to read with my morning coffee. You won’t believe what I found inside. I discovered a 740-word column by the Toronto Star’s Heather Mallick, full of disgusting personal attacks on the Prime Minister. I won’t go into detail, but it included the word ‘sociopathic.’ Not even trying to hide her bias, Mallick ends her column hoping that when it comes to Conservative majority, ‘next year it will be over.’”

I think they threw in the bit about 740 words because that would sound like a lot to the Conservative Base. But, anyway … then came the first pitch for a $5 donation.

Holy Cow, Martha, better send five bucks to Mr. Harper right now!

Just for the record, in fairness or whatever to Mallick, here’s what she actually said: “Perhaps it was Harper’s dead sociopathic eyes or the way he campaigned with pre-selected audiences from behind a metal fence. No. It was when people started to think of his hair as a separate organ, like Dick Cheney’s heart which he basically kept in a pocket, a living pulsing thing that would halve, leap on you and clap both sides of your head if you poked it.”

This of course, prompted the usual withering response from the real media elite, the one that instructs its editorial boards to plump for Tories even when they’ve spent weeks deciding to do something else. Never mind that, though, back to DeLorey:

“How did the Liberal leader fare in her column, by contrast? It read like a heartsick teenager’s love letter: She swooned over his ‘intellect and wit’, his ‘good looks’, and the fact that he can really ‘wear a suit.’ Yes, it was thorough, hard-hitting journalism. If you ever had any doubt that the urban media elite are mobilizing against us, this ridiculous piece should end it.”

Actually, this sounds a bit like Mulroney, swooning over Trudeau: “He’s a young man, attractive, elected two or three times to the House, attractive wife, beautiful kids.” Maybe Mr. Mulroney’s now part of the urban Ottawa media elite now too, though! And you’ve got to admit – just sayin’ – Trudeau really can wear a suit!

Getting back to DeLorey’s come-on, this is where we find the second pitch for $5, which I particularly liked: “Let’s make sure that Mallick and her friends in the Liberal media elite have something to write about for four more years. Chip in $5 today …”

He concludes: “We’re up against the Liberals and the NDP in the next election, but we also have to fight an uphill battle against all their friends in the Ottawa media. Since we can’t count on fair coverage, we’re going to need to speak directly to voters. It’s not cheap, but it’s the only option.” This is followed by yet another pitch for five bucks.”

Other Tory emails ask for 25 bucks. “Unlike the Liberals, we don’t have the Ottawa media elite backing us,” said one such recent plea. “But we have something even better – our strong and supportive grassroots base – people like you and me, who understand that we’re better off with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and are willing to work together to make our country a better place.”

You get the picture.

Now, look, I hate to say this, but if you do have five bucks, there’s a better way to put them to use. Why not click on the donation button and give your five bucks to Rabble? Bloggers? We’re doing more than the Conservative Party ever will to bring the media elite to its knees!

This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary. It’s called Alberta Diary, because the author is only temporarily in British Columbia, dealing with some family business.

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...