On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
"Mr. Speaker, I'm sure the picture of the honourable member for the NDP is posted in much more interesting places than just police stations." That was Harper's remark. Was he insinuating something about Robinson, an openly gay man? Good question. Could it be seen as a snide remark about Robinson's sexuality? Yes.
And there's the problem. The Canadian Alliance has long been suspected of being a hotbed of homophobia. Harper's predecessor, Stockwell Day, saw gays as being second-class citizens. Former MP Bob Ringma saw nothing wrong with an employer sending gay (or, for that matter, black) employees to the back of a shop. Earlier this year, Alliance MP Cheryl Gallant told foreign-affairs minister Bill Graham to "ask your boyfriend" in Question Period. Harper's views on gays are ambiguous at best. This statement, whatever its meaning, doesn't help his case among anyone, and reinforces the perception of the Alliance as the homophobe's party of choice.
Dumb.
Dumb.
Dumb, Steve.
It was all unnecessary. Harper could have just retracted the original statement that raised Robinson's ire -- the one about criminal conduct by Cabinet ministers. He would have then been free to attack the Liberal government on ethics, an issue on which they are vulnerable. Instead, the story became one of a veiled slur of a gay MP by a right-wing party.
And the Alliance actually blame "the Eastern establishment," "liberal media elites," and the Progressive Conservatives for their failures? Christalmighty, their leader shot himself in the foot today, just as have his predecessors.
That kind of trouble you bring on yourself.
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