Charlie Smith is seriously putting his paper's tagline of "Vancouver's News and Entertainment Weekly" in serious doubt - on both fronts.
Charlie Smith’s follow-up attempt at humour to his post on the potential surrounding Jean Chretien’s death is once again in poor taste. He just doesn’t get it.
In fact, I am quite surprised that he didn’t examine the potential for political gain over the tragic death of Mario Lague, Michael Ignatieff’s communications director which occurred just this morning. Although, this was written by Stephen Hui, so maybe Charlie’s post-script of this loss of life is on its way.
Yesterday I received an email from Smith that stated the following:
“Hi Jonathan,
My sister, a retired teacher, told me that she thinks you write a scurrilous blog. I responded that you’re a Nobel Prize winner compared to Tsakumis.
There are many adjectives you could choose to describe me. Smug is probably the least accurate one on the list. I’m possibly the least smug person you would ever meet.
If I was smug like some journalists, I wouldn’t be busting my ass seven days a week.
Charlie”
Sorry Charlie, but after reading your analysis of what the deaths of the last five Prime Ministers of this country might mean for the political climate – because you “threw this out to tease them a bit” (them referring to us, the critics of the original piece of trash he wrote) – then you really should have no confusion over why I find you smug.
Like one of your commenters, I also found the post to be “irrelevant, boring, uninspired, lazy, meaningless.” However, most of all, it was offensive and completely inappropriate as a man lay in wake recovering from such an operation.
Charlie seems content to couch his justification upon his assertions that a) people speculate about death all the time, particularly when it comes to political or public figures b) it is a relevant analysis because of the inevitable impact such a passing might have to contemporary Canadian politics and c) it was a speculative “what if?”, not something where he was willfully pushing for that particular outcome.
Once again, he doesn’t get it, and no amount of attempts at explaining why his judgment with regards to this post was so ill-conceived is going to change that void in comprehension.
As I get over the shock of Lague’s death and console some of my friends who were working with the man each and every day in very close quarters, I will also keep an eye out for Smith’s forthcoming commentary on the matter.
Hey Charlie, did you want a complete staff list of the rest of the Office of the Leader of the Opposition so that you can flesh out your upcoming analysis?
This is what you call ROADKILL !
http://surftofind.com/roadkill
An Ignatieff landslide ought to prove that you can kill the messenger -the message SURVIVES !
How many private investigators were following this Communications Director around? Are the Police Investigating them?
This is the link which explains this tragedy !