{"id":853,"date":"2008-09-18T17:21:44","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T00:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valianthosting.ca\/clients\/daemon\/?p=853"},"modified":"2008-09-18T17:21:44","modified_gmt":"2008-09-19T00:21:44","slug":"move-along-nothing-to-see-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/?p=853","title":{"rendered":"move along… nothing to see here"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m still suffering from my klutz induced injuries but I caught something in the news today that’s royally pissed me off.\u00a0 My dad used to say that “we’re all equal in Canada; some of us are more equal than others<\/em>“.\u00a0 It’s a sad truism that can be proven by looking no further than our national media and it’s response to ongoing issues in the latest Federal Election campaign.<\/p>\n

The TV, radio and online news is buzzing about the Conservative aid’s comment<\/a> that could be construed as racist.<\/p>\n

The exchange was caught on video and broadcast as the lead item Wednesday by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you behave and you’re sober and there’s no problems and if you don’t do a sit down and whatever, I don’t care,\u201d said Mr. Cannon’s assistant Darlene Lannigan to Mr. Matchewan. She then added: \u201cOne of them showed up the other day and was drinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you calling me an alcoholic?\u201d replied Mr. Matchewan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not calling you an alcoholic. No. It was just to say that you’re in a federal office. If you’re coming in to negotiate, I expect, there’s [decorum] that has to be respected,\u201d said Ms. Lannigan. [Source: Globe and Mail<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ms. Lannigan has since apologised. For those of you who are unaware of her position, Ms. Lannigan is an assistant to Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon.<\/p>\n

So what am I so hot under the collar about?\u00a0 It’s taken over a week for any real notice to be paid to the racist comments made by two Liberal Party candidates during their campaigns.\u00a0 Sure, a few newspapers have carried the story.\u00a0 Most notably the National Post [here<\/a> and here<\/a>] and Le Soliel [here<\/a>].\u00a0 It’s all over the blogosphere.\u00a0 What I want to know is why hasn’t it been all over the TV and radio news for the past week?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the Liberals have also had issues this campaign related to aboriginals.<\/p>\n

Two Liberal candidates in Quebec resigned last week in relation to controversial remarks.<\/p>\n

Simon B\u00e9dard is no longer the Liberal candidate in the riding of Quebec for comments the former radio-host made in French to the Le Soleil newspaper about his views during the 1990 Oka standoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone was scandalized because I said: \u2018Send in the Army and let’s clean this up once and for all!’ But maybe we should have done that because 17 years later, it’s still the same thing. If anything, it’s worse,\u201d said Mr. B\u00e9dard, according to Le Soleil.<\/p>\n

The Liberal candidate in Beauharnois-Salaberry, Ricardo Lopez, also resigned after attention was drawn to remarks he made in 1988 when he was a Tory MP.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think all the Indians should be sent to Labrador, to go live together and have peace and leave us in peace,\u201d Mr. Lopez was quoted as saying at the time. [Source: Globe and Mail<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Globe and Mail indicates that Simon Bedard was fired on 9\/11<\/a> for his comments. Canada.com indicates that Bedard resigned<\/a> and was not fired. CBC.ca posted a similar message<\/a>. I watched the big 3 news casts in Canada on Sept 11 and I don’t recall – granted my memory could be very fuzzy from pain pills – any sort of media frenzy or time spent calling out Mr. Bedard or the Liberals for comments that were made.<\/p>\n

I realize that in the above comments, what M. Bedard said doesn’t seem overly evil. After all, he’s had the benefit of hindsight to change his opinion, which he reiterated in the above quoted materials.\u00a0 What he originally said on a CJRP radio program in 1990 was:<\/p>\n

You go in there with the army, then you clean up all that. Fifty dead, 100 dead, 125 dead, that would put it out. We bury it and life goes on. [Source: Montreal Gazette<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Adds a bit of a chill when you think about what M. Bedard was advocating – the use of the Canadian Forces to slaughter Aboriginal Canadians.\u00a0 M. Lopez desire to round aboriginals up and ship them off to the far regions (Labrador) are repulsive in their own right.<\/p>\n

But of course, our TV and Radio news media are all about providing Canadians with a serious and non-biased review of the day’s events as they occur.\u00a0 Excuse me while I prepare a chunk of swampland in Florida for sale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m still suffering from my klutz induced injuries but I caught something in the news today that’s royally pissed me off.\u00a0 My dad used to say that “we’re all equal in Canada; some of us are more equal than others“.\u00a0 It’s a sad truism that can be proven by looking no further than our national […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":854,"href":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions\/854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/screamingpages.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}