The Riders are off to the Grey Cup! Their decisive victory over Henry Burris et al. have tossed in the rodeo ring with the Alouettes- two team that will meet for the first time in the 97 year history of the Grey Cup. Aside from TSN's penchant for finding the topless guys with man-boobs in the crowd, the fans were amazing as they made Mosaic Stadium an unwelcoming and deafening place for the Stampeders. My prediction, and the only one I will make without jinxing the team (because I, like all sports fans, have that cosmic ability to control the destiny of an entire sports team), is that Riders fans will paint Calgary green!
And then I see this wonderful headline:
Federal NDP making gains at Liberal, Tory expense: Poll
I don't read to much into the crystal ball gazing of pollsters, but it is a nice headline to start the week off. And an Ipsos Reid poll to boot.
And to top that off, Norman Spector, that sage of forgetfulness for the Mulroney era and no friend of the NDP, wrote a warming story entitled Credit the NDP. In it he highlights the English media's tendency to ignore the NDP - including, inexplicably, giving kudos to the Liberals on the Afghanistan issue, and the NDP's principal stance, even when it is not popular. To quote, at length:
The more likely explanation for the discrepancy in the coverage is the longstanding tendency of the media to give short shrift to the NDP — a tendency that is less and less evident in Québec.
The same phenomenon is noticeable in coverage of the prisoner transfer issue, which outside Québec has been taking on an increasingly Grit hue. That’s surprising, in light of the absence from the debate of Mr. Ignatieff who, to put it tenderly, has some ‘issues’ on the issue of torture. It’s also an undeniable fact that it was the Liberals who got us into the Afghanistan war, it was the Liberals who deployed our troops to Kandahar and it was under the Liberals that General Rick Hillier signed the first (and deficient) prisoner transfer agreement.
Let’s be frank: Whether you agree with them or not, the NDP has been consistent in its opposition to the Afghanistan war — even after the 9/11 attacks, when it was not easy to take this position. And it was also noticeable, last week, that the NDP was the first party in Ottawa to call for a public hearing into Mr. Colvin’s allegations — a bandwagon that the other opposition parties quickly jumped on to.
One of the NDP spokespersons, Paul Dewar, radiates sincerity on the issue — as opposed to the faux outrage one normally sees on our television screens coming from Ottawa. And, in Jack Harris, the Dippers appear to have an MP who can match Bob
Rae in competence.
So let’s give credit where credit is due. And, with the NDP riding high in the polls and even outscoring the Liberals in the Hochelaga by-election, isn’t it also time for the media to take the party more seriously and give them a bit more coverage?
