Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

I think the campaign is wearing me down as a blogger. It’s starting to get to professional journalists as well. There’s just not enough time to read, or write about everything that’s interesting and important in the campaign; And that is exactly what Stephen Harper (and John McCain) are counting on to win their respective elections.

Andrew Coyne explains how the media are enabling the Conservative money machine:

Harper isn’t interested in persuading the public to come round to his point of view, or in behaving in a principled or ideologically consistent fashion. All he wants to do is win. (The Coyne thesis.) How does he reconcile that with his long-run ideological ambition (the Wells version)? Because as long as he goes on winning, by whatever means, he becomes the status quo.

“Reporting about reporting. Campaigns about campaigns. We are all in mortal peril of disappearing up our own backsides.”

Coyne sees how Harper is moving the chess pieces around and playing Hide The Tory, but why aren’t big TV stations, Mike Duffy, Lloyd Robertson, Peter Mansbridge, and MacLeans giving it to the Conservatives for playing dirty? Listen to Coyne! TV producers invite him onto their TV shows, but then pretend his points are interesting by ignoring his sound advice.

And now I’m reporting about that report reporting. If a journalist reads this (and I hope they do) and then write about it or put it on TV (which they probably should), then the whole universe might collapse into some kind of recursive universe singularity. Which would be more tolerable than letting the Conservatives manipulate the media into giving them a majority while they have less than 40% support in the country.

And the media isn’t bothering to fairly cover the 17 registered political parties. There’s 308 ridings, so not even focusing on one a day could anyone get through them all in a campaign. But there are more than 17 days in a campaign. Where’s the media coverage of the other parties, and the issues they raise? Have you heard of Figueroa? Neither would have I, had another Ryan Sparrow not left a comment on MacLeans’ Blog.

- From this thread and Ryan Sparrow.

So the next time a journalist is tempted to cover puffin poop, they could suppress the urge by investigating and covering one of the other 12 registered parties that are running in the election. It will have the twofold effect of being one less instance of talking about poop, and one more instance of educating a journalist and the public about another viewpoint in the country. Don’t thank me for the idea — thank Andrew Coyne.

In the mean time:
We need to Save the Net.
We need to change our electoral system, so it’s representative of the majority of voters.
We need to vote strategically until the system is fixed.
We need to save the environment.
We have to stop Harper’s Conservatives from corrupting our electoral process more than they did in 2006 with the In and Out scheme and a plot to hasten the last election.
Let’s prevent voter apathy and protest.

And that’s just for starters. No wonder the media is overwhelmed. It doesn’t know where to start — so it doesn’t.