I’m not a big believer in coincidence when it comes to who is writing about what and when where politics are concerned. Today, the Ottawa Citizen printed and article by print media’s very own Lowell Green, Kelly Egan.
Egan valiantly takes it upon himself to inform us that “(we) have no idea how bad it is”… “(d)ealing with the federal government in this town (Ottawa).” It is so bad, he says, that “(s)ome days, honestly, you just want to scream.” He supports this claim with plenty of useful and reliable evidence in the form of anecdotes.
One of the most vital functions for any government department is to be the organized gatekeeper for the flow of information. In this town, there are literally hundreds of people who do nothing but this one thing all day. Why must it be such a battle?
Why? Well, Egan, you dishonest Harper bag boy, left me tell you why.
An investigation by The Canadian Press revealed in June that MEPs are being used across the federal government to literally script words uttered by cabinet ministers and lowly backbenchers as well as screen media requests for interviews with public servants who have expert knowledge of government policy.
The tools — aimed at yielding a desired headline or soundbite from a public event — allow Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Office, through its bureaucratic arm at the Privy Council Office, to stay on message while controlling access to politicians and public servants. They've been used to plan the details of everything from answers for a journalism student seeking information about aid programming to a conference on helping save the polar bear.
Critics say MEPs undermine democracy and transparency because they allow the government to micromanage its message while blurring the time-honoured separation of non-partisan public servants and their political masters.
But you already knew this, didn’t you, Kelly? This is not news, nor is it speculation. MEPs control all public messages, and Ministers, as we have seen recently, can and do override departmental policies on information release.
For Pete's sake, the way they treat you, as though guarding information is Job One, not releasing it. What are they so afraid of? Where is their commitment to public discourse?
The commitment is there, Egan, but unfortunately harper has duct-taped it into silence.
What is evident -- and most dangerous -- is the brick wall that has been erected between the public service and the public via the media conduit. Can you think of one prominent federal public servant who is regularly quoted in the nation's newspapers? We have 140,000 PS workers in this town and one sealed lip. Amazing.
Egan does what dishonest, partisan neander-hacks do: he blends some truth with blatant omissions, producing an overall lie.
Yes, there is a brick wall, and yes, it is very, very dangerous, and yes, the media isn’t getting the message from the public service. What Egan doesn’t bother saying, and what I maintain he deliberately misguides readers on, is that the brick wall has been erected by various elected governments, and the bulk of that wall was built by harper who introduced MEPs and is widely known by anyone who isn’t a complete moron as a message control freak of galactic proportions.
So why does Egan pick today to whine about public servants and how they just want to make him scream when it comes to obtaining information from them? Well, Egan manages to use an anecdote about Stats Can as useful and reliable evidence of how badly public servants suck at communicating info to the public. Yeah, Stats Can of the long form census. That very same entity of misinformation gathered through threats and intimidation at 10 pm at night, on your very doorstep. Bastards!
This bit of news made papers today as well:
Nationwide focus groups assembled by a federal pollster expressed "frustration" over the Harper government's lack of communication, leaving them in the dark about the Tory agenda.
Other articles (presumably not written by dishonest Harper bag boys) actually explain why the flow of info has stalled, linking much of it to Harper’s MEPs. Even Doris admits to his party’s use of duct tape as a promotional tool:
Treasury Board President Stockwell Day said he'd consider removing the veritable gag on federal public servants that's been in place since the Conservatives introduced a potent messaging tool called the Message Event Proposal four years ago.
Dan Garner writes an entertaining piece with a serious message illustrating the absolute lack of respect the Harper government has for conveying truth.
A slim majority of Conservative party members believe homosexuals should be arrested and imprisoned in federal dinner theatres, where they would perform The Sound of Music and other wholesome entertainment for children and seniors. Twenty per cent of the Conservative caucus dropped acid with the Grateful Dead. At least three cabinet ministers have outstanding arrest warrants in Nepal; one is a former member of the Manson family.
In the past, I would not have presented these claims as facts because they're not "true," in the narrow sense of an assertion supported by logic and evidence. That stuff mattered to me. I was a "member of the reality-based community," as a Bush administration official famously said about people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."
But no more. "When we act," that official said, "we create our own reality." That's where I am now. Stephen Harper, the Conservative government, and me. Creating our own reality. And dropping acid with the Dead.
While Gardner’s article is primarily about the distortion of truth as Harper massages the message, it is yet another study of how real information is kept from the public while providing the illusion that valuable communication is occurring.
The astonishing rhetorical genius Doris affirms this (unintentionally, of course):
"When I say that our tax plan is regarded as the most competitive in the G7 countries and I ask people that, hardly any of them are aware," Day said. "Those are called talking points and we believe they’re important…We send that stuff out all the time whether it’s talking points, speeches, whatever, we’re communicating it daily.”
No amount of letter writing to MPs will change harper’s demolition of information channels, because when the ideology that you are trying to force on an entire nation is so narrow that it only appeals only to a small percentage of the population (the 30% does not apply here because I am talking about the real, hardcore narrow ideology that would send most conservative supporters running en masse for protest sings), then truth and reality are not animals you want roaming free. Gotta club those babies. Lobotomize them. Do some corrective surgery.
… Facts, evidence, logic. Irony. We're moved beyond that. I might even say we've evolved, but some of the guys in the purple van might not like that. So let's just say we've opened the doors of perception. We make reality, man.
And hacks like Egan are more than happy to type up Stevie’s latest versions. So if we can’t get harper & co. to tell the truth because the truth is their enemy, and if we can’t get brown nosers like Egan to print the truth, we are left with one thing: vote the mother-fuckers out of office. Now. Hammer away at the opposition parties, insist they grow a decent set of balls, vote the CONs out next possible chance, hold a damn election, and vote strategically. (go see ACR)
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