Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Watching them watching us watching them - again

I never thought I'd get involved in a counter-post war with CTV, but it seems that self-proclaimed "humble worker bee" Bill Doskoch has taken issue with my Where's the Outrage? post.

He has posted a Newsnet script describing the Ambrose hair-mocking incident on his blog.

O.K. Bill, is this meant to show me how you guys are balanced? And what's with the caps? Are you shouting at me?

He's quoted Jeff's comments from my post:

obviously the big differnece here is that the remarks about ambrose weren't made in the house of commons, in front of visiting dignitaries, veterans and school children, by canada's new government's minister of foreign affairs. it's not quite the same is it?

(Boy, Jeff, I bet you would have taken more care with the typing if you knew this would be your 15 minutes of fame, huh?)


However, Bill must have hit a deadline and therefore failed to read a bit further down the comments:

jeff & Dictus,

You are correct about one thing, there is a big difference between what was said about Belinda and what was said about Rona

Belinda: At H of C infront of a national audience

Rona: At that UN infront of world wide audience
(posted by Kitchener Conservative)



That was one of several noteworthy comments.


Hey, Bill, I'm just having a bit of fun here, really. No harm intended.

BTW, you can thank your pal David Akin for encouraging me to start this blog. Never mind he probably did it to get a little peace.


If truth be told, I really love CTV. Any network that offers "Corner Gas" can't be all bad.


* * * *

More sexist comments at The Politic.

And then there was Ralph Klein... Sheesh!

UPDATE: David Akin gets into it! This is too funny!!!

7 comments:

C. LaRoche said...

Corner Gas is great.

In other news, Rumsfeld is stepping down. My preliminary thoughts (taken from my blog):

hat timing. Had Rumsfeld quit three weeks ago, the Republican Party might have appeared even more of a sinking ship than it already did. With Rummy's resignation coming now, just after the election, the Repubs can paint this as "Party renewal." Brilliant. This is not to mention the fact that the resignation news lead has moved Nancy Pelosi's historic win (first female Speaker) off of the top spot of every online news organization's mainpage. Brilliant, indeed.

Afterthoughts: I wonder if this will hurt Bob Woodward's sales, or make them explode?

Jeff said...

in my own mind, i'm the star of the show. just ask my wife... ;)

Anonymous said...

"And what's with the caps? Are you shouting at me?"

Obviously, he cut and pasted from the actual newsscript.

Traditionally, newsscript copy (particularly script that's read out loud) has always been typed in capital letters. I used to work with BN teletype machines that did this, and at the college radio station where I used to broadcast we typed our copy in all caps.

They explained the reason as increasing clarity in the words the reader was supposed to say on the air. It's still done in teleprompters and script for closed-captioning, but of course in the age of the Net it's become somwhat quaint.

OMMAG said...

Did you notice that the Headline for the piece reads : "Environmentalists insult Ambroses Hair" ?

If Doskoch had any credibility himself he would have understood the insult was to Minister Ambrose's Credibility! The snipe was about her ability to pay attention to things more important than her hair.
Tell Billy Boy to go back to school until he can comprehend what he reads.



Technical Trivia...
Old style teletypes used 5 bit Baudot code. Not enough character options for upper and lower case...therefore the print was MONO-CASE....hence the news wire machines printed what appeared to be all caps.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

PGP- Great catch! Yes, her hair is clearly beyond reproach.

Their reference to her hair of course, has the underlying suggestion that a man might not be so preoccupied.

So the headline should have read, "Environmentalists insult women as having any credibility as politicians."

And they wonder why women shirk away from politics. Sheesh.

BTW, thanks for the caps explanation, guys. I was just kidding there.

Joe Calgary said...

Whats the dif Joanne? Reporters sensationalize everything... it's not their fault, it's just that disease they contend with... Editoritus.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

The silence speaks volumes about Rona's strength of character.

Good point, Vicki. She didn't use it for a soapbox. Belinda did stick up for her though. I admire that.