...but all this crap about Dion being "ambushed" on CTV is just that..CRAP! It was a simple question and Dion blew it. He has been critical of Harper's economic position on a number of occasions and where I come from if you are going to knock someone's comments you had better be prepared to offer you position/alteratives.
- John Oakley: Dion's Katie Couric moment reveals the worst of the Liberals
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Now that Stephane Dion’s campaign team is into full damage control over that Bud and Lou bit with CTV Halifax, it’s apparent these guys think the best defence is a good offense.
Unfortunately, the transparency of their approach makes the plate spinner on the old Sullivan Show look like a piker. Blaming it on a hearing impairment when there was, effectively, a team of flacks who were in the room signing the questions for him, seems disingenuous at the least. Or that the studio was too loud, as if maybe he had his Whisper 2000 turned up to 11. But then reverting to the victim card has always been a favourite Liberal fallback, we just didn’t know they’d deal it for themselves. Might as well go for the trifecta and shoot the messenger(s) while you’re at it. Whether CTV betrayed certain broadcasting conventions by airing B-roll, or in first granting a mulligan, which implies that the first tee-up was null and void, could be fodder for an ethics in journalism course. And claiming that the Harperites were showing their true stripe as blue meanies by ginning up Dion’s Katie Couric denouement is also a stretch.
Politics is pugilism and Dion, in the absence of a Mills Lane intervention, needed a guardian angel when he was on the ropes A good handler covers their boy. Dion’s entourage reeks of rank amateurism. To borrow from Brando, they shoulda looked out for him just a little. He coulda been a contenda…
- National Post Editorial Board: Language skills count
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We’ll admit to having some sympathy for Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion in his disastrous interview with Steve Murphy, news anchor at ATV, CTV’s Atlantic affiliate. Mastering the subjunctive tense in a second language is extraordinarily difficult. Our sympathy is all the more acute given the snide, sophomoric manner in which the Tories attempted to capitalize on Mr. Dion’s struggles -- chortling that the interview was “worthy of an SNL (Saturday Night Live) skit” and delaying Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s departure from Winnipeg by an hour so he could use the broadcast of the Murphy-Dion interview to suggest the Liberal leader is unfit to govern.
But that being said, the worst behaviour in this incident belongs to Liberal campaign organizers who first tried to suppress the question-and-answer session by leaning on CTV not to air it, then sought to portray Mr Dion -- who has a mild hearing impairment -- as the disabled victim of a vicious attack from Mr. Harper. Pardon us while we roll our eyes.
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