Wednesday, December 3, 2008

My last letter to the Globe & Mail

Because doing it this way should be a lot more fun.

Dear Gary Mason,

Contrary to your column today, it is not true that BC voted 'mostly Tory' in the last election. Steven Harper won 61% of the seats with well under half the popular vote, and if Westerners are going to feel alienated about anything that would be a good place to start.

As I'm sure you know, it is also not true that talk radio callers are representative of anything other than their spittle-flecked selves. Is that really the best data you can find?

Over half of BC and Manitoba voters and almost half of Saskatchewan voters did not vote for the Tories; even in Alberta, a third did not, and they managed to elect an NDPer in Edmonton. Are all these people feeling 'betrayed' by the coalition too, or are they thrilled at the prospect that they might now, albeit indirectly, get a little representation? Lazy writing like yours today does absolutely nothing to help a Torontonian like me figure out what is really going on in the West. All it does is confirm my suspicion that Canadian journalists have a habit of saying 'the West' when they mean 'loud rural Albertans'. Thanks for nothing,

yours sincerely,

Dr. B.

Mason's column was actually not the worst in the Globe today. As so often, that honour goes to John Barber, their regular source of hazily wafting fumes vaguely related to Toronto.

Shorter Barber: Michael Ignatieff lives in Yorkville -- Yorkville, I tell you. Also, as an insider, I have long suspected that Jack Layton was a politician.


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