Nuts for May
Can you say viral??
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Apparently, John Bennett, who styles himself Communications Director of the Green Party, threatened a blogger, a lefty bloger as it happens, with a suit for slander unless that blogger took down the video above.
Yo, John, there really is nothing dumber than threatening a blogger with legal action…It can give you a nasty virus.
I phoned John Bennett on his cell. He stated this is a doctored interview (though not who doctored it) and then hung up on me before I could confirm his quote. He also stated that the interview was obtained illegally.
Listen and judge for yourself.
Here’s the deal John, don’t threaten bloggers with legal action if you want to bury an embarrassing quote. Don’t try to tell people that “The Agenda with Steve Paikin” is in the habit of doctoring tapes. You look dumb and you embarrass your leader and your party. It is pretty clear May said that Canadians were stupid. Deal with it.
(Huge hattip to SDA)
Update: Last night as I tried to post this 4000 people had watched the video, as of (9:00 Pacific this morning 10,400 people had seen it. Way to go John.
Update II: TVO confirms the tape is intact.
Update III: 14,956 views at 9:24 PM Pacific and the Communications genius for the Green Party, John Bennett, has apologized but managed to refer to Leftdog as a Conservative blogger twice on Mike Duffy. Dolt.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Bennett’s bullying and ridiculous attempt at damage control does far more damage to the Greens than May’s utterance did. As you noted, Jay, if Bennett maintains that the audio was doctored he’s also in effect accusing TVO and/or Steve Paikin or whoever puts their shows up on the TVO site of doctoring the clip, because the audio at the TVO site is the same as that on the YouTube clip.
And sadly for Bennett—just to throw another spanner into his spin-works—the show is presumably also on videotape, since the audio is from a taping of The Agenda with Steve Paikin. Were May’s lips moving when she spoke?
It’s funny: I assumed after I’d heard the whole show in context that she meant to say “All politicians are scared to mention the word ‘tax’, and they think all Canadians are stupid,” but Bennett’s reaction makes me wonder—pure, idle speculation here—if maybe he panicked because he was entirely familiar with such utterances behind the scenes; maybe what HE saw wasn’t a slip up in his own mind but rather a slip-up, an inadvertent and entirely unwelcome public peek behind the curtain. At least, that’s a plausible explanation of why he’s threatening people for something SHE said on-air: he was just trying to stop the tape from “going viral.”
Whoops.
September 12th, 2008 at 5:32 am
What can we glean from this GPC response? Reactionay, reflexively chauvinist, intolerant of criticism/dissent, bullying, ideologically totalist…so much was revealed.
Scratch a Green you find other darker agendas from collectivist statism to luddite fascism to Malthusian eugenics. All the dark orthodoxies too repugnant to even the devolved Dippers.
Obviously a free press and internet are not in their agenda either.