Mike Klander, who was executive vice-president of the Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario), ran a blog where he opined about the current election campaign. He posted a picture of Olivia Chow, the wife of Jack Layton and an NDP candidate in the Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina, next to a picture of a chow chow dog under the banner "Separated at Birth".
The worst thing about that particular post was that it was not funny. Even hard-core haters of the long time Toronto City Councillor would have a hard time seeing the similarity between Chow the candidate and chow chow the dog. In fairness to Klander, perhaps if you stared at the picture for hours you could convince yourself that there was a resemblance between the two. Mr. Klander, besides being not funny, obviously had way too much time on his hands. apparently it was also supposed to be humourous because both Ms. Chow and the dog are of Chinese descent.
In the olden days the mainstream media, much of which is friendly with and sympathetic to the Liberal Party would devote a lot of ink and air time to any PC/Reform/alliance/Conservative candidate or high ranking party official who made "inappropriate" comments while treating similar acts of their beloved Liberals as at most, a one day wonder.
But those days are long gone. The technology that allowed Mike Klander to display his juvenile mind to the world also helped to bring him down. Conservative blogs were quick to pick up on the Chow/chow chow incident and the subsequent publicity forced Klander’s resignation.
as well as being prime news on the blogosphere, the attention that the blogs paid to Klander’s ridiculous attempts at humour forced the mainstream media to give coverage of the event, something that would have been very unlikely a few years ago.
The appearance of the fiasco in the mainstream media that no doubt forced Klander’s resignation put the Liberal Party on the defensive. They began to make up excuses such as the fact that Klander was not a paid employee of the Liberal Party but a volunteer. as true as that is, he was the executive vice-president of a provincial wing of the federal party — he wasn’t stuffing envelopes somewhere in rural alberta for a Liberal candidate that no one outside of the immediate family ever heard of. and we were treated to the standard "he doesn’t represent the party" line, one which never stopped the media from painting all conservatives with the same brush as the miscreant of the day.
Like the various right wing parties, the Liberals are learning what it’s like when people try to tar the entire party for the actions or words of one person. and it looks good on them.
Klander removed the offending pictures from his website. He now knows, if he didn’t before, that much like Las Vegas, whatever happens in cyberspace stays in cyberspace. The bloggers were able to get the cached deletions and post Mr. Klander’s fine work for all to see.
Some of the bloggers went back into Klander’s blog and to the surprise of pretty well no one, the comments about Olivia Chow were not isolated ones. as summarized by the blog, angry in the Great White North, the former executive of the party of tolerance and diversity also did the following:
So now we have it — a high ranking official of the Liberal Party of Canada made racist and sexist comments as well as made fun of gays and the physically challenged. Blogger Stephen Taylor thinks that Klander’s comments will hurt the Liberals more than Scott Reid’s "beer and popcorn" remark and he may be right.
The Liberals, like all of the other parties, are making great use of the Internet. Unfortunately, Liberals like Mike Klander don’t fully understand but they’ll learn.
Some in the mainstream media that reported the incident reported only on the Olivia Chow picture; leaving out the other egregious examples from the former Liberal exec’s website. To the chagrin of the Liberals, the bloggers are not confined by either space or time; the entire thinking of Mike Klander is now out for the world to see.
The work of the bloggers is a great example of how the Internet not only provides political balance but makes it impossible for the mainstream media to avoid covering or burying issues like this like they would have in the past.