Last night when I should have been chilling and swilling, I was googling and oogling, trying to find a story anywhere in the MSM (other than the little Terrace Daily Online) about the Conservatives' appointment of Sharon Smith as "Go To Person" for all things governmental in the Skeena-Bulkley Valley electoral district. Such an unusual and clearly undemocratic appointment should be worth at least a few lines and a few questions... or more appropriately, a screaming 72pt headline.
Other than a few very tenacious bloggers, and the local Terrace news, I came up empty-handed. The Terrace and Houston news ran a press release issued by MP Dick Harris (Conservative, Cariboo-Prince George), but other than that I couldn't find a single word written about what amounts to a Conservative Party scandal. Vancouver Sun - zip. Victoria Times-Colonist - nada. National Post - zilch. Globe & Mail - dick. The Sun chain - fuck all. I found a couple of thingsabout Mayor Smith,
but nothing about her appointment as the Go-To Person™, the Only One in Skeena-Bulkley Valley with The Ear of Canada's New Government™. Hmm! Was this announcement deliberately kept low-profile because it's only of local interest, or [adjusts tinfoil hat] because it was meant to fly under the radar of the larger MSM? Only Dick Harris knows for sure!Let's see. Local news stories: a terrible house fire, a bank robbery, a kitten being rescued from a tree by awesomely hunky firefighters, subverting democracy... Okay kids, which one of those isn't like the rest?
The appropriate response to Dick Harris's quiet little press release (in which he openly and happily admits that if you don't have a Conservative MP you ain't getting sweet fuck all from the government, not even its' ear) should have been a long low coast-to-coast snarl building to a sustained nationwide scream. And it probably would have been... if anyone knew about it.
The major market MSM clearly missed out on this opportunity to ask the question "If democracy is subverted in the forest and there's nobody around to see it, is it really subverting democracy?" Thanks to tip lines, honest MPs and Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, hopefully they'll get to ask it in the near future.
UPDATE: Turner joins the fray.
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