Tuesday, August 23, 2011

open letter to Christie Blatchford of the National Post

‎Hi Christie,

While it is currently rather late in the evening, I just read your article in today's post and felt the need to respond. Not to the content of your article, which demonstrates that you are more of an opportunistic person than the deathbed Layton whom you set up as a martyr for the left. Such would prove an obvious and unnecessary reply to your writing, and I am sure that your email is currently overflowing with spectacularly colourful words indicating support for Mr. Layton in opposition to your inane prattle. Rather I am asking about the point of your words and the meaning behind them, beyond simply your paycheque.

Public figures have public deaths. Mr. Layton's was not unduly spectacular. Instead of simply letting the matter go, and writing about something more important than your own politics, you have positioned an argument based on a view that media coverage is the sole public. Other than a Liberal MP, no "normal citizens" are quoted. If you had done so, their words would indicate that they went about their unspectacular days unspectacularly. Surely you understand that the media organizations are fueled by viewership which translates into advertiser revenue, and the (unexpected) death of a notable public figure will often receive a full day of coverage on the news networks, with other stories being relayed by means of text crawlers or news highlights.

Surely you watch enough television to understand the limits of news broadcasting relative to the "hot story". To be frank, your paltry analysis of the public and/or media is limited to the CBC and Stephen Harper and is, as such, a complete joke. The tone of your words, on the other hand, is far from humorous. Your article is at best a rather selfish attempt to diffuse what conservatives often accuse as a weak and irrational emotion: the bleeding heart. Don't cry for Jack, you say. He's a schemer.

Frankly, not specifically to speak to the blackness of your kettle, but your pose around the funeral casket demonstrates that greed truly is the virtue of the damned. Unlike most of the people who have or are about to email you, I don't want you to go fuck yourself or anything, but if you aren't a better person than suggested by your opportunistic article, perhaps you had better go do that.

PS: I agree that Jean Chrétien was a bit of a douchebag today, but that's why you focus your nonsense on him rather than take a shot at a cancer patient.

Regards,