More Links

Via, Voice in the Wilderness, I see that I've been remiss in not noticing that Simon had actually started posting to his By and Large blog, which so far appears to be a mix of political commentary and movie reviews. I'll have to start giving Simon bogus movie recommendations since reviews of bad movies are always funnier than reviews of good movies. More seriously, his post on the Downing St. Memo is worth a read, it certainly needs all the exposure it can get since the media doesn't seem too interested.

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In other news, just in case anyone out there is still able to hear the words 'Fraser Institute' without automatically raising their bs deflector shields, The View From in Here goes into detail on one of their weaker (even for them) recent efforts - this one purporting to show a 'left-wing' media bias at the CBC¹.

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Finally, Star writer Antonia Zerbisias has always been one of the most blog-aware media folks so it is perhaps not surprising that so far her blog has been an excellent read - recommended.

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¹Just in case anyone is planning to comment that of course the CBC *does* have a left-wing bias, feel free, (I disagree) but that's not the point at the moment - the point is that as a piece of research, the Fraser Institute report is pathetic.

Welcome Back Timmy

Via Andrew, I see that Timmy has returned fromto the wilderness and is back blogging. Which is good, since now I won't feel so silly going to his site so often.

Blogging Dilemmas

Over at Voice in the Wilderness, Timmy eloquently follows up on Rob (from One Damn Thing After Another)'s earlier post in which he wonders what the best response is to idiotic and offensive stuff like David Frum's recent NY Times column in which he suggested that, unlike the U.S., Canada was immature because of the corruption in *our* politics.

As Rob says,

"right now, the conversation is entirely about Frum’s comments. What’s more, it pushes progressives into the uncomfortable and ill-fitting role of defenders of the status quo… which we actually feel needs some serious changes."

but as Timmy replies,

"There are many things one can bring oneself to ignore. If I responded viscerally to every outrage perpetrated by the far right, I'd be fresh out of viscera, but to never respond is to completely surrender the media landscape to the extremists."

It seems hard to imagine a blogger running out of viscera(!), but Timmy has a point here, as he does later on when he notes that it's not always about framing or controlling the debate,

"To ignore the Frums and the Coulters and the O'Reillys completely is to invite madness from their constant repetition, their undying contempt, their naked hate and the disturbing ease with which they peddle their lies. Sometimes, a response is really a form of therapeutic scream, and occasionally - occasionally, mind you - that's reason enough [to] vent."

In the end I can't really completely answer Rob's question (when to respond, when to ignore, and what the most constructive course of action is) either. I think that for the most part I lean towards ignoring the nonsense and the stuff which just irritates me rather than wasting any energy or time on it (no post on Frum's column here).

But I make a distinction between people like Frum who, while smug and irritating and seemingly willing to betray his own intelligence to score points with those he seeks approval from, is simply making a poorly argued case for his agenda, and people like Coulter for whom reason and logic and facts are clearly just a thin veneer covering up an agenda which looks to exploit the depths of human anger, irrationality and hatred for personal or ideological gain.

It's when this latter group, which should be confined to the lunatic fringe, starts to work its way into the mainstream (and Time is one of the most widely circulated magazines on the planet) that I feel like something has to be said, if for no other reason than so that, looking back, I can say that I wasn't completely silent in the face of the legitimization of hatred.

What He Said

James Bow has up a two-part series of posts, the first on why we need to disengage from the middle-east (we're not helping) and the second on how (use less oil).

Needless to say, his posts are a lot more illuminating than my 3 word summaries so I recommend you read them for yourself if you haven't already done so.

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If you have any interest in reading a personal story which documents some of the changes in the newspaper business in B.C. over the last couple of decades, I recommend this post from View From Seymour.

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Finally, for a humourous but disturbing comparison of David Horowitz's 'Students for Academic Freedom' organization with a previous campaign for academic freedom, see Billmon's post on the topic (via Voice in the Wilderness).

A Few Good Posts

Just a quick note to mention a few worthwhile posts I've seen in the past few days:

Jonathan, over at No More Shall I Roam, has a great post on Copyright.

Timmy over at Voice in the Wilderness has an on the money take on Bush's comments on Missile Defence when he visited Canada a little while back.

Andrew over at Bound By Gravity recounts his experience at the Conservative party regional policy conference the other day.