Is This How Bob Wanted to Win?
Now I had the option of going all mock outrage on this story, but I won’t because there is a serious issue here. There is the issue of grassroots involvement in politics.
I started my blog back in 2004 because I was amused at how Warren Kinsella was taking it to Paul Martin and the Board. He could do so from his computer. On the blogosphere, everyone gets their voice. We can agree and disagree with people. We are all a bunch of average Joes and Josies, everybody is equal. It is one of the only grassroots things left in politics.
Why am I upset that the Bob Rae campaign paid a lobbyist and communication specialist money to come post negative comments anonymously on my blog, Ted’s blog, and I am sure countless other blogs? Because they have ruined a world that we had previously used as an exchange of ideas, an open forum, a democratic space untouched by most professional communications experts (except you Warren, but you’re a punk rebel so we love you that much more)
The Globe has released the handle of the person making the negative comments all over the blogosphere saying he used the name “skip” and operated the blog Dissension Delivered (I’m assuming delivered at a price?) He is the employee of BCP, yes the BCP of Yves Gougoux and John Parisella (like we needed to see Gougouz’s face again) If you don’t know all your Quebec communications firms after last year, you aren’t as much of a news junkie as I am. BCP calls Jean Louis Dufresne a rogue employee. However, the firm was hired to do work for Mr Rae’s leadership campaign and John Parisella has been far from quiet.
Parisella doubles as a political analyst and has been slamming Michael Ignateiff since the beginning of the campaign. Now his paid employee is attacking Michael systematically and anonymously. I doubt these people are part of Bob’s campaign financing. Is this really how Bob Rae wanted to win? By corrupting the blogosphere along the way. It is the type of the scorched Earth policy we have traditionally seen from some Liberals in the past and it is one we wanted to avoid this time around.
So the campaign of the backroom has more backroomers corrupting the blogosphere. I should have known this was eventually going to happen. Every blogger must condemn these kinds of actions. Not because it is Bob Rae, but because in order to preserve the place we have created for ourselves on the blogosphere, there is no place for this kind of smearing anonymous garbage paid for by rich people. Politics is not supposed to be done this way.
I call on all bloggers Ted Betts, Bart Ramson, Jason Cherniak, Jonathan Ross, and even the professionals like Kinsella to stand united against this kind of garbage. Feel free to criticize Michael, but identify yourself, and do so without getting paid to do it. I would actually appreciate if Michelle Oliel and John Lennard would join in here as well. If we want to preserve any integrity we have on Liblogs, we have to fight intrusions like this.
I started my blog back in 2004 because I was amused at how Warren Kinsella was taking it to Paul Martin and the Board. He could do so from his computer. On the blogosphere, everyone gets their voice. We can agree and disagree with people. We are all a bunch of average Joes and Josies, everybody is equal. It is one of the only grassroots things left in politics.
Why am I upset that the Bob Rae campaign paid a lobbyist and communication specialist money to come post negative comments anonymously on my blog, Ted’s blog, and I am sure countless other blogs? Because they have ruined a world that we had previously used as an exchange of ideas, an open forum, a democratic space untouched by most professional communications experts (except you Warren, but you’re a punk rebel so we love you that much more)
The Globe has released the handle of the person making the negative comments all over the blogosphere saying he used the name “skip” and operated the blog Dissension Delivered (I’m assuming delivered at a price?) He is the employee of BCP, yes the BCP of Yves Gougoux and John Parisella (like we needed to see Gougouz’s face again) If you don’t know all your Quebec communications firms after last year, you aren’t as much of a news junkie as I am. BCP calls Jean Louis Dufresne a rogue employee. However, the firm was hired to do work for Mr Rae’s leadership campaign and John Parisella has been far from quiet.
Parisella doubles as a political analyst and has been slamming Michael Ignateiff since the beginning of the campaign. Now his paid employee is attacking Michael systematically and anonymously. I doubt these people are part of Bob’s campaign financing. Is this really how Bob Rae wanted to win? By corrupting the blogosphere along the way. It is the type of the scorched Earth policy we have traditionally seen from some Liberals in the past and it is one we wanted to avoid this time around.
So the campaign of the backroom has more backroomers corrupting the blogosphere. I should have known this was eventually going to happen. Every blogger must condemn these kinds of actions. Not because it is Bob Rae, but because in order to preserve the place we have created for ourselves on the blogosphere, there is no place for this kind of smearing anonymous garbage paid for by rich people. Politics is not supposed to be done this way.
I call on all bloggers Ted Betts, Bart Ramson, Jason Cherniak, Jonathan Ross, and even the professionals like Kinsella to stand united against this kind of garbage. Feel free to criticize Michael, but identify yourself, and do so without getting paid to do it. I would actually appreciate if Michelle Oliel and John Lennard would join in here as well. If we want to preserve any integrity we have on Liblogs, we have to fight intrusions like this.
par / by Anthony à / at 5:34 a.m.
3 Commentaires:
(this ones for you, simon)
i dont know about the other normies out there, but when i read fud-dud or cherniak or any of those blatantly liberal folks, i dont see it as "the grassroots" but "the liberal party hack crew" ...
has more backroomers corrupting the blogosphere
followed by
I call on all bloggers Ted Betts, Bart Ramson, Jason Cherniak, Jonathan Ross, and even the professionals like Kinsella
haha a list of people active in the party. except i have no idea who ted betts is. woo, out of the loop!
yeah, its more meaningful when people do this for free, but maybe in some sick way our market system makes what rae's slimeballs are doing 'fair' ...
the litany of endorsements on this page benefit the ig campaign 24/7 (wow, works as many hours as a robot volunteer!) for a cool $0.00 ... as do the many anti-rae/everyone else little slideshows on youtube.
rae's camp actually had to pay for their comment-snark, an expenditure that one hopes will cut into their finance limits. are these finance limits supposed to be the great equalizer or something? i dont know, ive always been totally skeptical. still, thats what they do in theory.
are you asking for some kind of control of the blogosphere?
what precedent would anyone have for setting blogosphere limit laws? who knows, who cares, but lets speculate...
manpower in the form of unpaid volunteers is not generally regulated. signs are regulated, due to printing fees, which must be recorded. posts on the intarwebs, which are as durable and long-lasting as a nice campaign poster or ad in a public space (and harder to chuck into the recycle bin than a pamphlet), are unregulated. should they be? haha, that would be revolting. hands off my intarwebs!
the bc government tried to do count blogs as part of campaign limits during the stv campaign, so its not like theres no precedent for that sort of bs.
this post of yours would have been less whiny and more effective if you did go the snarky route and just point out how pathetic it makes the rae camp look. someone being paid to be online and harassing people is not the brutal attack on the blogosphere you think it is.
Angela it's one thing to do it oublicly, but a completely different thing to be paid to smear candidates.
Thia skip was constantly lying on other people's blogs knowing full well he would lose all credibility if people knew he was getting paid to do it.
ironically the blog is called dissension-delivered
delivered indeed
Some of your commentors have some truth behind them. The article stopped short of saying "Bob Rae paid people to comment anonymously on the Internet about Michael Ignatieff and what an awful person he is."
Or else we'd REALLY have a story
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