Hacks & Wonks

Hack he hasn't even been deceased for 24 hours and you are already talking about who is going to take his job ? ! Yikes. Give it another couple days.

Yeah, was about to say:

Another reason to hate the partisan crapness of blogs is that they encourage people to show just how indecent they actually are. Why not speculate on where his staff will go, too, or who will run to fill the seat?

Christ, you must have been trained by Ryan Sparrow.

Guys, you're reading far more into the post than was intended. There is a reason I made little comment on his death itself, however with Minister Lathlin being a cabinet minister, there are political ramifications to be taken into account. As such, I wrote two simple sentences about the most logical moves to deal with the situation and left it at that.

If you think that was tap dancing on a man's grave or something of the like, may I suggest you are projecting just a little? There was no ill-will directed and I believe you'll be hearing the exact same discussion about possible cabinet changes in the morning in the broader media because it is a logical discussion to come up.

Isn't his Ministry something of a priority area for the long-term well-being of the province? Shouldn't a Minister of the Crown should be replaced, at least on a pro tem basis, with utmost speed. Do we honestly think that whilst planning a memorial that the Premier's Office isn't looking at what to do?

I love the beauty of an anonymous poster commenting on the "crapness" of blogs from the shadows while making a broad ad hominem attack. Nice comparison to Ryan Sparrow too. Don't betray yourself as too much of political insider with that lil' reference that 99.999% of Manitobans would not understand.

This is a politics blog. Little bit strategy, little bit gossip, lots of inside baseball. I wouldn't expect the blogroll to be at half-mast and I doubt you guys did either. It would just be nice if the NDP communications staff would just restart Blackberry Addicts rather than all the anonymous posting here and on Policy Frog etc.

Maybe before you bitch about the crapiness of blogs you could consider the crapiness of the guy's performance.If Robinson is taking over it will be a real improvement!
Yeah, he's dead; but it doesn't turn him into a saint.

As for Flor,she'd stand a better chance with Labour - and Nancy Allen has been lobbying for the CHTS for ages!
And-in case you didn't notice that Minister had't died.

Drew is next in line, Flo will have to wait.

In the land of union rules, under the surface, there are still seniority expectations. It brings to mind the odd backbench body like the St Norbert MLA, hoping for the royal nod their direction.

She got a little bit stiffed on redistribution and maybe deserves a payback to help her profile.

On the good side, she does have some experience with community groups.

On the bad side, maybe the redistribution results were intentional and being passed over or taken for granted so often makes it easy to do it again.

Interesting set of rules you Young Conservative bloggers play by. You feel free to make denigrating & insensitive remarks about people of other stripes in a public forum, but when someone calls you on being boorish, you whine about your private party being infiltrated by the enemy. I miss the Addicts, too, but doubt it had to be them: just Google "federal election Conservative gaffes" & Sparrow's name comes up first.

I'm pretty sure that's one of the top ten searches being conducted on Google. Almost 100% certain.

If the Hack has a readership over 500 I'd be surprised (no offence Hack). I'm willing to bet that aside from media folks every other one of those readers has worked on an election campaign in the past 4 years.

The blog itself is for hacks, wonks, freaks & geeks. People who would naturally wonder who might step into the void that has been created.

Our current Queen was declared sovereign by the Canadian government of the day on the same day her father (the King) died. I guess that puts Louis St. Laurent into the "insensitive" "denigrating" or "partisan" camp too I guess.

I've long maintained that the NDP spin machine isn't good so much as the Tory spin machine is freaking terrible. Reading blog commentary (always anonymous) only reinforces this opinion.

How does adding "Clay" to your comments makes them any less anonymous...really?

Yours truly,
Ted Turner

'Cuz I know which "Clay" it is, Ted.

By the way, I stand by what I said earlier. You guys are projecting. Most reports that I saw/heard (CBC radio and the Winnipeg Sun for sure off the top of my head) made mention that Minister Robinson would be taking over Oscar Lathlin's responsibilities.

And in the end I wrote a grand total of two sentences on the topic. That's hardly insensitive and hardly boorish.

re: the bet that "aside from media folks every other one of [the Hack's] readers has worked on an election campaign in the past 4 years": well, you'd lose. I'm not in either of those categories, & have never been. You guys are just tone deaf. The issue here isn't that the gov't shouldn't replace dead officials in a timely fashion, & the media shouldn't report on same, it's that it's in poor taste to start publicly speculating on office politics type things before the body's even cold & the family's still in mourning. Have a little respect.

But for future ref., to paraphrase Mr. 'Make-It-Up-As-You-Go-Along-To-Snow-Your-Opponent" The Unapologetic Ex-Wpger,

"Probability Theory dictates that the odds of being labeled a bully, insensitive jerk, or bullshitter are inversely proportional to _being_ those things."

You're offbase on this one Anon. (Though I'm sure you'll come back on it again.)

Over the last 48 hours, I've managed to ask around and not a single person - no matter the affiliation or gender or race - has believed it was inappropriate.

I stand by writing the lines on Sunday and will be done with it as of this post. If you feel the need to keep criticizing, that's fine. I appreciate the traffic.

In the end, if you feel the need to keep returning, I must be doing something right.

Well, my crit. this time wasn't directed at you so much as the circle-the-wagons mentality of your frat. brothers, to discount the crit. as just being politically motivated by NDP insiders.

I grant you prob'ly didn't mean any disrespect, but, again, for your own good (remember how Leslie Hughes' past posts came back to haunt her, thanks to the beady-eyed blogger BlackRod), I'm just echoing the first 2 other Anon's pt., that to anyone who knows the family (not me, in this case, but I could relate to what they were saying), this can be perceived as needlessly insensitive. What was so urgent that you had to muse publicly about how his death would affect the political landscape - why couldn't you wait a week, until he'd been buried, or just emailed some of your buds privately? He's got 6 kids. I've lost both parents, & can tell you, the emotions run pretty raw for a while.

Honestly, because the likely impact on the cabinet is news and was worthy for discussion and thought. (This is why the government made it known Sunday night that Eric Robinson was taking it over.)

Also, is it really logical that the family was spending their Sunday afternoon checking out what I had to say about their father? That makes sense?

When emotions are the roughest, no one is going to be out reading political blogs. Especially ones written by Tories who had been very critical of the deceased for his political actions (and inactions) in the past?

The comments that open this discussion thread were projections of false malice on Sunday and to pretend otherwise is revisionism now.

Whatever. Fine, the family itself might not see it, esp. not right away, but friends & colleagues might, & the pt. is, more neutral people (than your Young Conservative frat bros.) who've experienced grief themselves or who know others who have will perceive you as lacking empathy -- or basic "decency," as the 2nd one said -- so you might want to work on that.

As for "projections of false malice": that's as bad as Unapologetic: mangling & bastardizing a professional term of art.

There's "Malice" - "a legal term referring to a party's intention to do injury to another party";

and "Actual malice" -- in United States law is a condition required to establish libel against public officials or public figures and is defined as "knowledge that the information was false" or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not."

- but nothing answering to "false malice," and at any rate, the charge wasn't that you were intentionally causing harm or spreading falsehoods -- it's that you were oblivious to the fact that it could be hurtful, or at the very least, to be perceived to be in poor taste, to chattering about replacing such a recently deceased person and openining the floor to criticisms of his performance.

And it's not _their_ projection which is most at play here, it's your defensiveness.

Anyhow, there's an easy solution to this: if you don't want outsiders to your point of view to be scandalized by & scold you for your infelicitous remarks, don't make them publicly: make this an invitation-only, log-in site.

Why am I posting about things said by "anonymous" when it might be one, two or 10 different people?

Maybe because one identified himself as Ted Turner and in order to prove my "validity" to this anonymous poster I'll simply ask: still working in the Fishbowl? That's right Ted, its the same "Clay" you knew it was.

I am especially impressed with Anonymous 23,000 who has found I'm part of a conservative youth movement. Which prompts me to think your name is Colin and that you're fanning the flames on purpose because I ain't been "youth" in a political sense in about 6 years (that's two Gary Doer elections or thereabouts which in politics is an eternity).

I also think its interesting that because I support the Hack in speculating on who will emerge as a Minister of the Crown and Privy Councillor (provincial) that it means I've apparently never lost anybody. And don't know what its like. Because you're right. No death or loss in Tory circles. Ever. You stupid twit if you think that Oscar Lathlin's family was reading this exchange it was only because you, in your glory hound aspirations, pointed it out to some of 'em. Ignoring, of course, the fact that Oscar's family have spent the past 18 years being related to an MLA and however many years before that being related to a Chief. They certainly wouldn't understand the distinction between the public and private personae of their dad/grandpa.

I am likely done now. I have a hard time believing that "each" anonymous lacks a gmail account to at least take credit for the commentary. You choose to be anonymous because it allows you to be preachy.

Yeah. Until the Proud and Unapologetic one posts I'm done with this thread. I don't quite get the shot taken at him though.

ok fine, you not-so-young-anymore C's (my mistake, for considering 30-ish "young"); get all indignant & miss the larger point. Don't set aside the politics as a "blood sport" mentality. Don't be empathetic. Don't worry about people's feelings or perceptions. But don't be surprised when the Hack or Unapologetic run for office to see them repaid in kind with attack ads (like the ones from Norm Coleman & Al Franken that've ruined my coach potatoery these past few months) or blogs (like BlackRods), portraying them as insensitive, misogynistic, or whatever might be (mis)read into some of these posts. (and, no, I'm not anyone you know, so don't start maligning anyone else.) As you were.

If you really need to discuss boorish behaviour maybe you should consider the response of one of Niki Ashton's campaigners who upon being told Lathlin had died said "[Marcel] Balfour's gonna expect it handed to him".
So is boorish the observation of a bystander writing a blog or is it the expected manoeuvring of an aspiring candidate?

Okay, so I lied. I'm posting even without the Proud and Unapologetic one.

For starters if the second to last anonymous knows our age range I'm chalking 'em up in the "people in the know" category. Which is why I'm surprised (s)he doesn't realize that Proud & Unapologetic Ex-Winnipegger has already run for office. So, I guess the opportunity to run him through the grinder has come and gone.

Also, dissing a dead MAN (which hasn't happened by the by) is never going to be portrayed as misogyny. Its not even misandry. Its just a politics blog talking about politics... asking the same questions that all the political reporters were asking themselves upon hearing the news.

Hell, unlike others I'll stake my "political future" right here and now by saying that the Hack was being kind in his comments. The deceased MLA was an arrogant, lazy and barely competent benchwarmer in the Doer administration. This ain't like the loss of Greg Selinger, Tim Sale (god I miss his capability), Diane McIntosh or even the overhyped Theresa Oswald. This is the loss of a guy who only won the 1999 election because, quite literally, his clan was bigger than the other guy. I didn't respect him in life and am not sure why "decorum" demands that we suddenly sanctify him now.

I'm happy to let any and all Dippers put this into any file they have on me. With the proviso that I think its lame if you actually do have a clippings file on me. Genuinely lame. But, if you do (lame) I ask that you at least make sure my last name is spelled correctly.

FYI: I just googled them; the ID's of both the Hack & Unapologetic were 'outed' by other bloggers (Dan Lett being one), which is how I knew their age range, & indeed knew that Unapologetic had run. But go ahead, Gaseous Clay w/o a profile, keep slinging your doo doo; people will judge you all by the company you keep & your collective tone