Just Boring
his del.icio.us bookmarks, links to Sigri Agrell complaining about the lack of major political scandals broken by Canadian bloggers: “In the States, the publishing of such information, gossip and provocation online is fuelling a new kind of scandal: Death by blog. It has impugned the credibility of Dan Rather, outed Trent Lott as a racist and the daughter of Alan Keyes as a lesbian, and uncovered the late-night professional activities of fake White House correspondent Jeff Gannon.”
First of all, most Canadian political scandals involve money, not sexual orientation or racism. The most recent political scandal involved friends of the Liberal party getting advertising contracts for effectively putting the Canadian government's logo at sporting events. Boring! Besides, Canada is small-time. Sorry, fellow-Canadians, but we have the country the size of California. Politics is low-stakes compared to the United States, so here you don't have to be so squeaky clean. You basically have to break or look to have broken criminal law here in order to have your political reputation destroyed. British Columbia Glen Clark, who had enough money-related scandals to bring him down (budget deficits, fast ferry cost overruns) when it finally took a criminial investigation into accepting a hunting knife as an alledged bribe. (He was later cleared.) Maverick openly gay former MP Svend Robinson who regularly angered Christian conservatives and loggers and often his fellow NDPers ended his career by stealing a diamond ring. Those are the two most-recent examples, but I can't think of any scandal involving someone hating black people or having a daughter that liked women or posing as a fake reporter.
Agrell finally cites Catherine McMillan pointing to Instapundit who gets 200,000 hits a day and, implicitly, wonders why there isn't a Canadian blogger with the same kind of influence. McMillan blames a “disinterested public”, but who can blame that public? Canadian bloggers aren't “pussies”: it's just that the material they have to work with, Canadian politicians and politics, is just boring.