Mediacheck

Rachel Marsden's Weird Career

Scandal at SFU. Pleading guilty to criminal harassment. Latest act? Conserva-babe on Fox.

By Rebecca Traister, 5 Apr 2007, Salon.com

Rachel Marsden

Marsden, in images captured from 'Red Eye.'

"Maybe [Pakistani cricket fans] should focus less on cricket and a little more on hygiene," opined Rachel Marsden on a recent episode of Fox News' middle-of-the-night talk oddity "Red Eye." Marsden was adding her two cents to a discussion of murdered Pakistani cricket coach Bob Woolmer, and seemed unaware that she had said anything offensive. But her co-hosts, Greg Gutfeld and Bill Schulz, looked appropriately aghast; Gutfeld was quick to assure viewers that "Red Eye," the Fox-for-frat-boys show he's been hosting with gross-out gusto since Feb. 6, did not endorse Marsden's views on Pakistani hygiene.

Her colleagues may have been momentarily tortured by Marsden's loose tongue, but whether they knew it or not, they had been sticking it to her just the night before, when they brought up the Duke rape case. Gutfeld had asked what should happen to the accuser if all charges are finally dropped, and Marsden had jumped in with unusual speed, pooh-poohing possible repercussions for the woman who claimed she was raped by members of the Duke University lacrosse team a year ago. "Charges are laid, charges are dropped," said Marsden. "It happens all the time. Unless she can get charged with mischief and they can prove she lied, then no, [she shouldn't be punished]. That's the process and the process works." But, argued Gutfeld, "Don't you think that being accused of rape is as bad as being raped? Those guys' lives were ruined!" Marsden bit back, "Let's give it 10 years and see if their lives were ruined."

It was all business as usual at "Red Eye," Fox's bawdy gabfest of a grab at a youthful audience, starring Gutfeld, comic foil Bill Schulz, and Marsden, a statuesque Canadian who dissects the news with as much Coulter-esque zeal as she can muster while rolling her eyes at her male counterparts. But in the Duke exchange, any viewer who knew anything about Marsden, whom Fox is clearly grooming for brand-name pundit stardom, might have felt a fleeting moment of sympathy for her. That's because the 31-year-old columnist is already well known in her native Canada as an oft-accused and once-admitted stalker who made questionable rape charges of her own 10 years ago, in a case that eventually cut short the career of a university president and changed the tenor of harassment cases all over Canada. In 1999, a professor at the same university went to the police with charges Marsden was stalking him, and in 2004 she pleaded guilty to criminally harassing a former Vancouver radio host.

Should executives at Fox News have hired Marsden as a nightly contributor to "Red Eye," on which panelists chew over topics like sexual harassment, without disclosing how her history might colour her views? In their yen for young male viewers, and their desire for a righty riposte to "The Daily Show," is it possible they prized Marsden's looks so much that they believed no one else would ever get past them? Did they think they could groom her to be an incendiary attention-getting conserva-babe of Coulter-esque proportions, when getting that coveted attention would guarantee the revelation of her Fox-unfriendly past? Or perhaps it was her scandal-laced life that made her enough of a celebrity to secure her a nightly perch in the first place.

"Red Eye," designed to appeal to the demographic most likely to be found on a beer-soaked dormitory couch at 2 a.m., is chock full of fart gags and homoerotic innuendo. Into this Pabst-and-poop-joke cloud of testosterone, it's only natural that Fox would want to bring a woman. A fox, to put no finer point on it. Enter Marsden, who for several years has been featured as the "Canadian correspondent" on "The O'Reilly Factor," who formerly decorated her website with alluring photos of herself, and who was once named "Republican Babe of the Week" by JerseyGOP.com, an honor previously bestowed on Florida chad-harpy Katherine Harris, Laura Ingraham and, of course, Ann Coulter.

She also writes a weekly column for the conservative Toronto Sun, in which she revels in the sort of juvenile ad hominems about liberals beloved by righty louts. In the most recent, Marsden, an avowed disbeliever in global warming, ripped apart Al Gore's testimony in front of Congress, proposing that in a cross-examinations, lawmakers put this to the former vice president: "Al Gore could really pollute a bathroom.... Just look at the guy. If someone doesn't take away his pork 'n' beans, he's bound to get another one of those 'gut feelings' and mistake his own greenhouse gas production for science!"

SFU scandal

Marsden grew up in a suburb of Vancouver. Her father, Claude, was a high school teacher who in 2000 had his teaching license suspended after admitting to an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old student. Marsden, in the bio on her website, describes growing up listening to Canadian talk-radio bulldog Jack Webster. "Listening to these radio shows during visits to grandma's house ignited a lifelong passion," writes Marsden, adding, "Rachel finds it cute when liberals think they have an original argument. Chances are she heard it for the first time at the age of 7." Marsden also writes that as a "former national level competitive swimmer who still holds records in BC, [she] lives for challenges and thrives on competition."

It was swimming that led Marsden to meet Liam Donnelly at the Westminster Club where they both swam in 1990, when she was 15 and he 22. Three years later she enrolled to study biology at the famously progressive, utopian Simon Fraser University, where Donnelly was swim coach. In 1995, she accused Donnelly, who was not her coach, of sexual harassment and date rape, claiming that he repeatedly molested her over the course of a 16-month friendship/relationship. Donnelly claimed he was innocent, and on the advice of a lawyer, boycotted the university's investigation into Marsden's claims.

In 1997, SFU fired Donnelly. The university agreed to pay Marsden $12,000 to compensate her for injury to her feelings and the academic scholarship she lost during the case. It was reported that they denied her request to be part of the hiring process for a new swim coach.

Donnelly fired back, alleging that it was Marsden who had done the harassing. He handed over photos of the scantily clad student that he claimed she had slipped under his door, and released an e-mail she had sent him after the date of the alleged molestation that read in part, "I suggest that you just relax and let me undress you, touch you.... If you want, you can undo the garter and take off my stockings, take off my lace bra and underwear, and let your hands explore my body wherever they want to."

According to Donnelly, Marsden had been stalking him for years, making multiple hang-up calls and showing up at his home. Donnelly claimed that this behavior had begun as early as 1992 but had worsened over time. He alleged that by 1995, someone he believed to be Marsden had vandalized his car, strewn condoms in his driveway, posted graffiti advertising his number as a phone-sex line in campus bathrooms, subscribed to Playboy in his name, and left phone messages for him with a voice-altering machine. Donnelly later told the press: "She was everywhere. She would turn up at events where I was working. She was phoning me all the time.... She admitted she bought a voice-altering machine. That was the one that scared me the most. It sounds like the devil."

Donnelly had lodged complaints with his local police departments about these occurrences in 1992, and again in 1995, when he named Marsden as the person he suspected was behind them. Sgt. Don Brown, the policeman who had investigated his claims in 1995, told the Vancouver Sun that Marsden was not charged at the time, because "there were lots of little bits and pieces, but some of it was hard to attribute to one person."

'A case of stalking'

After Donnelly's firing and his subsequent allegations against Marsden, the fight got complicated and ugly. Women's rights activists supported Marsden throughout her case; it was a post-Clarence Thomas universe in which the fight to keep women safe and empowered in classrooms and workplaces was finally being taken seriously. Feminist lawyer Anita Braha argued on behalf of Marsden; so did Simon Fraser's progressive president, John Stubbs. Accusing a young harassment complainant of being a scorned, obsessive lover sounded like a low trick to sexualize and blame the victim. Even Donnelly tried to distance himself from the backlashy whiff of the controversy. "People have turned this case into one about campus harassment, the feminists versus the reactionaries," he said to the press at the time. "I see it as a case of stalking."

Marsden admitted to some of Donnelly's counter-charges, while refusing to back away from her rape claim. She held a press conference in which she said she was a virgin at the time of the rape; she asserted that she gave Donnelly the sexy photos of herself after he had picked them out of her modeling portfolio, and she played the tape of a male voice she said was Donnelly's saying, "Call me." She claimed to have sent the suggestive e-mails in "a desperate attempt to entice [Donnelly] into meeting with me so I could obtain accountability and an apology from him for the abuse, harassment and rape I suffered at his hands." She had also admitted to sending him the Playboy subscription, reportedly telling the SFU panel in 1996 that she did it "with the hope that he would be able to take out his sexual frustrations on the magazine instead of on real women."

Two months after his firing, Donnelly was rehired, exonerated by the university of all charges. According to the mediation agreement between SFU and Donnelly, the original findings of the harassment panel had been based on Marsden's credibility, which had been cast into doubt by "inconsistencies between her statements before the panel and her response to Mr. Donnelly's harassment complaint [against her]." The school paid Donnelly $35,000 in legal fees and expunged his record of harassment charges. Marsden also kept her $12,000, meaning that SFU paid out to both sides of the conflict. An examination into what went wrong with the university inquiry culminated in the eventual resignation of president Stubbs, who stayed on as a history professor at the university.

More harassment claims

Simon Fraser's harassment policy coordinator Patricia O'Hagan, with whom Marsden became close during the university's investigation into her claims, also left her job in the wake of the scandal. O'Hagan later alleged that Marsden had harassed her, claiming to reporters that the student had called her more than 400 times, tracked her down after she'd changed her number, and signed letters, "love from your daughter who loves you a lot." Marsden responded in kind, claiming that she referred to O'Hagan as mother to "set boundaries" with the older woman, who she said had repeatedly hugged and kissed her. "I felt strange," Marsden told the press, "and wondered what her intentions were." O'Hagan's lawyers told the press she "vehemently denie[d]" that she had had "any type of physical relationship" with Marsden. Two days after O'Hagan's harassment claim, it was reported that Marsden showed up at a conference at which O'Hagan was the guest speaker.

The sordid saga wreaked havoc on the lives of Marsden, Donnelly, O'Hagan and Stubbs. But it also took a steep ideological toll on feminists.

The whole disaster read like an Oleanna-style wet dream of the right's most misogynist thinkers, who love nothing more than a woman-makes-it-up tale to underscore the often-unprovable nature of harassment and rape claims. This situation, like the Duke rape case, was a no-win for anyone. Had Marsden been telling the truth about Donnelly, the barrage of sexualized invective hurled her way might have deterred any sane harassment victim from coming forward in the future. The suggestion that she was not telling the truth fueled the fire of those who routinely claim that women love nothing more than to lie about being assaulted and violated. As it was, Donnelly never followed through with formal charges against Marsden; the case was dropped; neither her culpability as stalker nor his culpability as rapist was ever legally established. Perhaps this small mercy in her own experience led Marsden to comment about the Duke case that "the process works."

But for women's rights advocates, the process did not work. They supported Marsden in her purported hour of need, only to get kicked in the gut -- not simply at the time, but by her current professional persona, much of which is accessorized with snappy anti-feminist quips about how Hillary Clinton "fills out a cup better than Peyton Manning."

"Oh god, she is feminism's worst nightmare," said Neil Boyd, an SFU criminology professor who claimed that Marsden harassed him too. Boyd was a vocal critic of SFU's handling of the Donnelly case; his 2004 book "Big Sister: How Extreme Feminism Has Betrayed the Fight for Sexual Equality" was inspired in part by the case. "She used these people, who were only too willing to jump on her bandwagon," said Boyd. "I'm not sure that she ever really presented herself as a feminist as much as she took advantage of an openness to victimization that existed on the university campus at that time."

Pled guilty

Boyd remembered Marsden as conservative, even as a student. She would later tell BC Report magazine, in an interview titled "The 'barracuda' speaks," that "radical feminists work at SFU, but I never felt comfortable being lumped together with them." But at a 1997 press conference she sounded like a woman who shared concerns with women's rights activists, when she proclaimed, "It is my fear that the media sensationalism will prevent other victims from coming forward. This would be the biggest injustice of all. If I could say a single thing to the other victims of harassment, it would be not to suffer in silence. It is only in coming forward and speaking out as a lone voice that one can really begin to heal and that we can ever hope to put an end to sexual harassment."

Marsden eventually returned to SFU as a student, telling the press that she had nowhere else to go and had been living in her car. University officials warned her to keep her distance from Donnelly, and remove reference to him from her website, or else get thrown out of student housing. It was around this time that criminologist Boyd, then 47, accused her of stalking him.

By phone, Boyd explained that as he had been a vocal critic of the school's handling of the Donnelly case, he was surprised when Marsden showed up to take one of his classes. The university denied his request to be exempt from teaching her, but agreed that he wouldn't have to evaluate her, since it might be a conflict of interest. Boyd said that partway through the semester, Marsden sent him an e-mail saying that it was going so well, she thought he should be able to grade her. When he refused, he claimed, she began phoning and e-mailing him frequently, asking him out, and "showing up after talks I gave in the community, or after classes, wherever I might be." But Boyd, who has a background in law, kept all her calls and e-mail messages. In 1999, Boyd took these records to the police, who reportedly warned Marsden to stay away from him. According to Boyd, she did.

Marsden was next charged with criminally harassing former Vancouver radio host Michael Morgan in 2002. According to the statement of facts in the case, Marsden and Morgan met in 2001; soon after, he called the police when Marsden sent a teddy bear and flowers to his home. Marsden was warned to stay away from Morgan. But according to court documents, contact resumed and the two began a consensual sexual relationship several months later. When Marsden traveled to the U.S. in 2002, Morgan began dating another woman. According to the court summary of events, this didn't go over well with Marsden, and she began calling and e-mailing him repeatedly, also contacting his new girlfriend, his sister, his son and his business partner, and waiting for him outside his apartment. Police investigated at Morgan's house, where they listened to several phone messages from Marsden described in court documents as "vindictive and threatening." Morgan turned over 38 e-mails sent by Marsden between Sept. 20 and Oct. 10, 2002. According to the court, Marsden also rigged Morgan's computer to send her blind copies of every e-mail he sent to anyone.

In May 2004, Marsden pleaded guilty to the criminal harassment charges. Judge J.W. Kitchen of the criminal division of the Provincial Court of British Columbia sentenced Marsden to conditional discharge and one year of probation. Having completed the year of probation, Marsden is now considered not to have a criminal record. Marsden reportedly told the judge, "I promise that I'll never be back before this court for the rest of my life -- you have my word on that."

Who is 'Elle Henderson'?

Around the same time, it was widely reported that Marsden, who was trying to build a career in conservative politics, was forced to resign as an aide to MP Gurmant Grewal, after it was discovered that she had been working for him under the name "Elle Henderson." The press, which had been feasting on Marsden for seven years, also tore her apart for fudging her online résumé, on which she claimed to have assisted Connie Chung at ABC (ABC denied at the time that anyone by her name had ever been employed at the network) and that her writing had appeared in the National Post and Maclean's magazine (at the time, she had only had letters to the editor printed in either publication).

Marsden had been for some years writing conservative political commentary, publishing it at EtherZone, PoliticalUSA, GOPUSA and on her website, Rachel Marsden's Web Lounge, which had morphed from a sultry site for those who might want to book her for modeling, acting and commercial gigs, into a sultry archive of her news analysis and scanned images of notes to her from people like Ken Starr ("To Rachel, with all good wishes"), and links to more photos of her. (Marsden has since buttoned down her website considerably; she is now featured only in a shiny leather suit.) Marsden also began hosting a conservative talk show on CITR radio in Vancouver; guests included Coulter herself, Andrew Breitbart and G. Gordon Liddy.

In 2005, Marsden was hired as a columnist by the Toronto Sun. Senior associate editor Lorrie Goldstein said by phone that Marsden approached the paper. "We certainly knew the controversy surrounding her," he said. "We asked the questions about those controversies and we were satisfied with her answers and we are very happy with her. In the dealings I've had with her she's been a consummate professional."

Marsden's current editor, Rob Granatstein, who took over the paper's editorial pages in December, agrees. "We're delighted to have her because she has quite a voice, let me tell you!" he said.

He's right about that. In a recent column, describing how Vice President Cheney survived a bombing during a trip to Afghanistan, Marsden wrote, "For Dick Cheney, it must have felt just like any other day at the office: Folks who don't shave, don't bathe, and want him dead. Wow, feels just like back home!" She's called the speaker of the house "President Pelosivic," and has referred (rather poetically, all things considered) to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's serving up "a triple scoop of crazy, sprinkled with crazy, and topped off with warm crazy sauce."

"I think you'll see her for a while to come, as long as she keeps doing what she's doing," noted Granatstein, who two months ago moved her column to Sunday, the Sun's "biggest read of the week." Of course, doing what she's doing involves saying rude things about the cleanliness of foreigners (and liberals) and cashing in on what is her already eroticized reputation in her native country. For a woman who has been repeatedly ravaged by sex-scandal news cycles, Marsden has shown no hesitation about working her leonine good looks, online and now on television.

Image all important

As Marsden explained on a web page for Americanada, the communications company she briefly ran, "Your image is your calling card." Marsden's image surely couldn't have hurt her with Fox News. Right-leaning media has for some time been building an army of attractive fire-starters -- Coulter, Ingraham, Malkin -- whose public personae teeter compellingly on the edge of Crazy Town. The left has not yet produced a comparable army of sirens. Peter Worthington, founder of the Sun newspaper chain for which Marsden writes, described Marsden to the Western Standard almost romantically, as "good looking... articulate... but nine miles of bad road." It's surely precisely this kind of noirish notoriety that made Marsden, with her skimpy journalistic résumé, recognizable enough to secure a regular column in a big Canadian paper.

As Marsden once told a reporter about the impact of the Simon Fraser case, "Fifty percent of people want to sleep with me, and the other 50 percent want to kill me." That's a formula that should sound familiar to readers of Coulter's "Godless."

Granatstein said that he could see Marsden at Fox News. "I think she's perfect for them," he said. "She's opinionated, she's loud, she's fun. I really think that might work out beautifully for everybody." He pointed out that given the rigmarole of paperwork it takes to get a Canadian situated at an American network, "they must have really wanted her."

Given the speed with which she moved from O'Reilly contributor to a regular gig, it is clear that someone at Fox really wanted Marsden, and really liked what they got. "Red Eye" senior producer Shelly Stevenson explained by phone that she didn't make the initial call on hiring Marsden for the program, but as the executive on the show, is a big fan. "Political expertise is what she brings to the show," said Stevenson. And it's true that Marsden was recently called upon to explain a reference to the Gulf of Tonkin to her slack-jawed co-hosts. "She has very passionate opinions," continued Stevenson, "she's articulate, intelligent, and we get a lot of favorable mail about her; I think the viewers connect with her." Stevenson also raved about Marsden personally, calling her "lovely, a team player who can't do enough for the show. From the bottom of my heart I like her very much, and I respect her." Stevenson confirmed that it would be fair to say that Fox is grooming Marsden.

Stevenson said she was "aware" of Marsden's history in Canada, and added that "we make no story selection based on her past or anyone else's past. I don't think I've ever seen her be unfair about any type of story that might tread near those waters. I would expect her to be as even and fair as anyone else. I would expect no less of her." Stevenson felt no compulsion to disclose Marsden's past experiences with regard to sex harassment stories. "I would not ask anyone else to disclose her past," she said. "And I think she's not the only woman who has had to deal with this -- it's a big problem out there in the world and if anything it has probably given her sharper insights on issues of gender." Later, when Salon followed up by clarifying that Marsden's past included more than her initial claims of having been harassed, Stevenson replied via e-mail, "I do not know every detail of Rachel's history in Canada, however I feel people should always be given the benefit of the doubt. She has clearly distinguished herself in the ensuing years and is entitled to move ahead with her future and the contributions she can make."

Big gamble

Marsden did not speak for this story. After two attempts to steer me to Fox News publicists who repeatedly informed me that they had nothing to do with controlling her press coverage, since Marsden is technically a contributor, not a Fox News employee, Marsden stopped replying to my e-mails completely. For two weeks, I made many further requests to speak to her both directly and through the network, with no luck.

It may be that even if her public record helped gain her the profile she needed to land her perch in punditry, Marsden feels no need to further mine her past exploits for ink. But it's not a realistic option for her: One need look only at Marsden's Wikipedia page to find reference to the Simon Fraser case. Nexis her name, there are hundreds of stories.

And after all, it is one thing to have a private past in which you behaved badly or got into youthful scrapes. It's another thing altogether when your misadventures result in institutional upheaval and someone getting fired and rehired, and when the scrapes culminate in harassment charges well into your adulthood.

And it's another thing again, knowing that these shenanigans have been documented by the press and the courts, to pursue fame by becoming a conservative noisemaker. Fair enough to leave someone's past alone, if they want to be left alone. But when you make it clear that you are dying to be noticed and now make a living attacking the kinds of ideological groups and institutions that were once your defenders: Well, that's downright impossible to ignore. To use a term that is infelicitous and inflammatory and offensive for a host of reasons with which Rachel Marsden should be all too familiar: It almost seems as though she is asking for it.

And whatever prompted Fox's willingness, or eagerness, to take a chance on her -- for her brains, or her legs, or perhaps even for the scandalous coverage they knew perfectly well she would eventually generate -- speaks to the kind of shifts in political coverage that these post-Coulter years have brought.

From Canada, Boyd speculated, "America loves redemption. It all depends on the spin you put on it."  [Tyee]

120  Comments:

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  • G West

    5 years ago

    Yeh! Sure was

    Already printed in Salon on March 29. Sorry I already read it there - and passed it on to several contacts, most with an SFU background.

    For anyone who didn't see the article there, it's worth a peek and you don't have to watch an ad either.

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    I read it in Salon first

    I read it in Salon first too.

    She's got quite a mark to live down. Poor thing. I hope this isn't another case of seeking attention in all the wrong ways. You just know it won't end well.

    But can she write, at least? This article makes no attempt to evaluate her body of work (whatever that may be).

    Too bad the Left can't come up with bombshells of its own. Instead they're stuck with dower scolds, un-mediagenic operators, clueless professors and shorn charisma-deprived lesbians.

    Actually, does Arianna Huffingdon count? Where exactly is she on the political map these days? I suppose Camille Paglia is a non-starter (even though she's an outspoken Democrat) - although I could see her cutting Coulter down to size in 8 seconds.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    nightbloom

    Quote:
    Too bad the Left can't come up with bombshells of its own. Instead they're stuck with dower scolds, un-mediagenic operators, clueless professors and shorn charisma-deprived lesbians.

    You must be joking! I don’t think you have a single clue about the left and you’ve mistaken it for a subgroup of lesbian academic feminists against whom you have an enormous personal grudge. It’s quite sad actually. You act as though you’re unaware of Marsden but she has a local media reputation that surely exceeds that of Bill Good and Ian Hanomansing combined.

    You really do lead quite a sheltered life don't you? But then, your idea of the left is about as crystalline and frozen as Terry Glavin's.

    Camille is definitely a non-starter. She's still stuck on exploding outhouses.

    Talk about a lame metaphor.

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    Gwest, i was being

    Gwest, i was being light....so lighten up.

    Yes, I know who Rachel Marsden is. How could I not.

    As for the paucity of left-wing bombshells, the author of the article remarked on it first. You gotta admit, leftward punditry doesn't lend itself to the kind of hit-and-run sass that these ladies are notorious for. Take it as a compliment and leave it at that. Sheesh.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    So was I -

    Talk about being tight assed.

    I think there are enough Rosie O'Donnells and Oprahs around as it is by the way. Not to mention that troll Dennis Kucinich.

    But the left also has much better comics. And as long as the right keeps self-administering high voltage hits of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly I don't think liberalism is in any danger.

    Did you read that Pew study I posted a couple weeks ago? And have you noticed that Obama is out-performing Hillary already? I didn't think that would happen for at least 6 months - I think she's toast and Obama is going to to cruise into the White House in 2008.

  • Booker

    5 years ago

    Fox

    Fox News....Rachel Marsden has found her level.

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    Actually, I knew some of her

    Actually, I knew some of her classmates during her second stint at SFU. So I couldn't help but hear about it at the time. You gotta admit, it couldn't have been easy wearing a mark like that, and being a pariah, even if she apparently brought it on herself. I'm trying to remember what Patricia O'Hagan diagnosed her with at the time. Something about compulsively searching for parental figures and an inability to set boundaries. It's sad, but only because it was so public. Something tells me her emotional problems are not unique.

    Along with everyone else, I judged Marsden pretty harshly at the time. As for the damage she may have inflicted on campus feminism, it was a perfect storm that was just waiting to strike. The whole system and mindset couldn't have been better constructed to enable someone like this. So it was bound to happen, and has probably improved campus feminism for the better. Other universities had been put through similar traumas. Around the same time, UBC was rocked by the Donald Dutton harassment allegations as well as the tarring and suspension of its prestigious Poli Sci graduate program following vexatious charges by some disgruntled students.

    Rosie and Oprah are left-wing bombshells?!? I might be queer, but I ain't clueless. I don't think there's too many young bucks who'd climb on top of either one of 'em.

    Obama is a neophyte, and much of his charisma has been carefully contrived by the complicit liberal media (Maureen Dowd being an outspoken exception). And he doesn't have the black vote, interestingly enough. They don't see him as one of their own. But I just can't believe those two are the cream of the crop, the very best the Democrats can put forward after Bush has virtually guaranteed he will be succeeded by a Democrat. There really seems to be a lack of quality all around.

  • Frank

    5 years ago

    Let's be fair

    Marsden is a loony. And I mean that in the best possible sense. She is absolutely stark raving mad. Oops, I think I just got a sexy photo of her at the Republican convention in my home email. Damn that woman!

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    ...So if Rosie and Oprah get

    ...So if Rosie and Oprah get to be "bombshells", can Nightbloom be the Tyee threads' own "conserva-babe"...? :-P

  • Frank

    5 years ago

    Okay

    You win nightbloom, it was between you and Bob Cole but I think you nose him out even sans photo.

    Lefty bombshells? Read 'em and weep gentlemen. The CBC's own Susan Bonner? Julie van Dusen?

    Hmm, I vote for Lynn, she's a babe :-)

  • puppyg

    5 years ago

    Miss Marsden - give her a miss.

    This chick is bonkers, pure poison.

    A good read on how psychopaths operate and how we can protect ourselves from them is "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Absolutely

    Oprah and Rosie are Bombshells in the real sense of the world – they’re always exploding in one way or another. Why do you think I picked them - they're both 'bombshells' with the female afternoon TV crowd - or hadn't you noticed?

    Any man who gets within 30 meters of Rachel Marsden is mad. Moreover, no, I think you're completely wrong about Obama...MoDo to the contrary - he's the genuine article and he's going to be the most popular candidate with the black voter (and white voters) no question....

    I thought the big fight at UBC was a sponsored by a magic Christian who didn't like her mark in a graduate seminar.

    UBC has a 'prestigious' Poli Sci program?

    That's news to me. I thought the place for politics was UVic?

    The only people who think UBC is prestigious are the people in its own public affairs dept. Once upon a time they had a good student newspaper at UBC, from recent reports even that’s gone to seed as well.

  • zalm

    5 years ago

    Quote:Too bad the Left can't

    Quote:
    Too bad the Left can't come up with bombshells of its own.

    What's Naomi Klein? Chopped liver? My dreams would be awfully restless with her as subject. I make no further comment about women who use their cleavage to hide their paucity of grey matter. It's an old tradition in journalism, (Lisa Fitterman et al) and Fox is welcome to her.

  • dave49

    5 years ago

    Re-inventing herself

    An SFU graaduate, I followed the whole Marsden-Donnnelly fiasco at the time. I even wrote now-deposed SFU president John Stubbs encouraging him to review how the harrassment case was being handled.

    A fellow SFU grad commented, "You don't have to follow this story for very long to conclude that Rachel Marsden is a very sick girl".

    In a way, it is fascinating how she has managed to re-invent herself. The reality is that network television is in a death struggle to maintain a viable audience. Much of the content that passes for journalism is simply catchy drivel. Calling Rachel Marsden a journalist rather sullies the profession.

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    Okay, Naomi Klein for sure.

    Okay, Naomi Klein for sure.

    And now that you've got me thinking about it, Linda McQuaig is pretty good too.

    Both of them have earned their pips irrespective and their good looks. I'd place them on a much higher level of journalistic achievement (and I.Q. rating) than the others. So they might be too good to rate as the sort of "bombshells" we're talking about.

    Yeah, the need to place a head and torso on the tube that people want to stare at has damaged the profession, no doubt about it. Flipping the channels through network news today now shows how the anchor chairs formerly filled by the grey haired veterans of the profession have been repopulated by youthful, chesty, collagen-lipped, chirpy, could-be-a-model career queue-jumpers. Walter Cronkite would never make it today.

  • James Burns

    5 years ago

    Talking heads

    Quote:
    "Something tells me her emotional problems are not unique."

    Of course Marsden's emotional problems aren't unique, they are a regular feature of the right-wingnut crowd. They're all a whole pile of severely damaged goods, and she's finally found a home with a huge crowd of them at Fox News.

    Personally I find most of the moussed, blown-dry, pancaked, fake bake, TV talking head crowd physically creepy as all hell. American news anchors in particular must be bred in a people mill somewhere.

  • freebear

    5 years ago

    Celebrity Crap!

    Leonine good looks!

    What the F.....

    Thankfully the scroll wheel made quick work of this !

    Belongs on that pap Entertainment Tonite! LOL!

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    Quote:Personally I find most

    Quote:
    Personally I find most of the moussed, blown-dry, pancaked, fake bake, TV talking head crowd physically creepy as all hell. American news anchors in particular must be bred in a people mill somewhere.

    Yeah. The only other place I've seen meat that prepped and presented is in a funeral home.

    Anyway, anyone else ever check out the Beyond Robson blog? This tidbit caught my eye:

    http://www.beyondrobson.com/theatre/2007/04/remember_raves/

    Is it true raves are coming back in? Were they ever 'out'? It's funny how things that seem like only yesterday become the subject of nostagic revival in no time. The '60s took 30 years to make a mod come back...now it's like we're going in 5-10 year cycles.

  • ubiquitous

    5 years ago

    right wingnut bombshells

    I think that your typical right ringer looking for thought provoking news needs a little eye candy. It's a hypnotizing effect: "you will be a racist", "you will blindly follow the tenants of capitalism", "you will deflect arguments from the left and ignore facts when presented to you”….(tongue planted about half way in cheek)

    Ah, the Marsden clan. I remember Mr. Marsden’s grade 11 science class all too well.

  • clo3

    5 years ago

    Don't judge all conservatives because of this

    I hate to see people like Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coultler and Marsden representing the conservative view. We're not all racist nutcases like these guys.

    Judging the right based on these people is like judging the left based on Joseph Stalin or Rosie O'Donnell. Crazy extremists don't accurately represent the vast majority.

    As for Fox News luring her out of Canada: It just goes to show that one man’s trash actually can be another man’s treasure! They can have her, no objections from me!

  • Yammer

    5 years ago

    Creepy subject

    What year is this? Do we really need to fight bombshells with bombshells?

    I mean, I like Janeane Garofalo's face a lot but, cripes -- the whole point of being progressive is that you don't have to be a babe to have a valid opinion.

    As for Marsden's abilities, I have no idea, but the excerpts don't sound very interesting. Ann Coulter is a talented, ascerbic satirist. Heck, the White Aryan Resistance site has good writing on it. These Marsden clips just seem trite and nyah-nyah.

  • anarcho

    5 years ago

    Marsden = psycho

    Marsden - One more proof that the authoritarian right is filled with psychopaths. And for sure Clo3, she does not represent conservatives, just her Moonbat sub-group of radical, war mongering, racist, hateful, corporate-apologists. Certainly not the old-fashioned conservatives like Rafe, or libertarian conservatives.

  • BC Mary

    5 years ago

    A wee bit of Canadian news ...

    At the risk of revealing an utter indifference to U.S. ... um, er (cough) TV news ... I'd like to mention a good Canadian book written by a lawyer and based upon the Marsden case.

    Trial of Passion by Bill Deverell. You know ... Bill Deverell ... the guy who invented Street Legal ... oh, sure you know it ... aw heck. I give up.

    Foxx News it is. Anne Coulter, Oprah, Obama ... Holy sufferin' jaysus. Talk about weird.

  • southdeltawalker

    5 years ago

    Sweden leads the way

    In Sweden they treat Fox News and it's commentators like Marsden as a comedy show.

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    Quote:What year is this? Do

    Quote:
    What year is this? Do we really need to fight bombshells with bombshells?

    In an ideal world, perhaps not.

    Actually, I've commented before about this dynamic in soundbite media: men tend to fall on the losing end of most cut-and-thrust verbal exchanges with women. It's actually very hard for a staid well-spoken be-suited male to walk away with his nuts intact after an exchange with this new breed of "Nancy Grace-style" barracuda media woman. Pay attention the next time you have the opportunity to observe this. Men who cross swords verbally with women do so very gingerly - you can almost see them covering their groins with their other hand. I've seen gay men pull it off with a touch of bitchy sass, but as a general rule men who render fair return to feminine sniper fire always come off as cads or worse. F. Lee Bailey gave Coulter a very magisterial smack down on Larry King when Coulter was just starting her career as a newshour provacatrix, but he did it obliquely, dismissively, scarcely even acknowledging her presence. Generally, that's the only way guys can get away with it.

  • Yammer

    5 years ago

    Hm...so we need a leftie fembot

    Wanted: articulate, funny, mean-spirited, blithely insulting thin, attractive blonde willing to show legs and cleavage on television, to deliver feminist, progressive, utopian socialist perspective on chatshows. Must not be bothered by inherent cognitive dissonance of such a request.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Not on all your points perhaps...but

    As far as I can tell Heather Mallick qualifies very nicely and did an admirable slice and dice of Bill O'Reilly a few years back as I recall.

    She's so much smarter than a marsden or a coulter that it's a sin to actually mention them in the same breath too.

    Even coulter's nominal allies seem to have deserted her since the faggot slur at the Mitt Romney shindig. She's been dropped from many of the rags that had been publishing her as well.

  • James Burns

    5 years ago

    Sure men who approach a

    Sure men who approach a Coulter-clone with a desire to engage in actual debate are going to come-off looking pathetic. The point of those women's media presence is all about scoring sophmoronic points. Cheesy insults are their stock and trade. The most sensible return to such assholery is to simply repeat it in a dumbass imitation of the insulter's voice, followed by a guffaw. It's all just a slightly more verbose version of "I know you are, but what am I?" This foolishness is all about dumbing down public debate to pointlessness. Just more circus for the plebes to keep them from looking too clearly at what's really going on.

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    It's about mass appeal.

    It's about mass appeal. Gotta play to the goundlings, JB, not spit on them. The 'humps and lovely lady lumps' of hoochy pop culture are a delivery system for an attitude that is resistant to the musty, professorial arguments of the scolding, moralizing, hectoring, censorious, sexually deconstructed, conformist Left. It's not about truth or rational debate, it's about coolness. And the Left started that silly game, btw. The neo-cons are simply turning the tables for a while. Don't worry, it's a transient thing that will get old in no time.

    Not saying it's right, or that it's good for political discourse...but true discourse was never really possible when anyone defending the status quo was immediately labelled with an "-ist" word and shouted down henceforward. Conserva-babes are an innovative (though likely short-lived) trendy way to neutralized the talking heads of the liberal media.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Evidence please?

    Quote:
    And the Left started that silly game, btw.

    You're forgetting Ronald Reagan apparently.

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    What are you talking about?

    What are you talking about? I'm talking about a pop culture assertion of ownership over "cool" and you answer back with Ronald Reagan. It doesn't even correlate.

    You know, Gwest, it isn't necessary to answer every single one of my posts, especially if that's the best you can do.

  • James Burns

    5 years ago

    Cool?

    NB, you think right-wing rant shows are cool? LOL!

  • bob the cat

    5 years ago

    Marsden

    nightbloom

    My son was in a class at S.F.U. with Rachel Marsden...you say you were or was that friends of yours were?

  • G West

    5 years ago

    This is what you wrote:

    Quote:
    It's not about truth or rational debate, it's about coolness. And the Left started that silly game,

    The Left did not start the move away from a rational and reasoned debate and replace it with upper garbage about a city on the hill, a nation as the light and savior of all others. An avatar who called the Soviet Union the evil empire and spouted nonsense at least 90% of the time.

    That was Reagan, a B-movie actor who, while he was decrying the sins of the Soviets was subverting elected governments in Central America, establishing a working relationship with a certain Saddam Hussein and using Israel to sell arms to the Contras. He's the model for the Rush Limbaughs and the Ann Coulters and the Rachel Marsdens and, truth to tell the Pee Wee Rambos too.

    Now tell me again who started the foolishness, I'm all ears. Are you on auto pilot when you write this stuff?

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    Gwest - you've clearly

    Gwest - you've clearly missed the point, and are off in your own world. You're connecting dots that have no interrelationship with each other - clearly a sign of a delusional mind. You're the last person who should be making fun of obssessives and stalkers.

    James Burns - you're deliberately missing the point. As I said, it's about mass appeal. I never made a value judgment.

    Bob-the-Cat - friends of mine.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    So you're saying Reagan

    So you're saying Reagan is an avatar of rational debate then? Because he is clearly the idol of Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Rachel Marsden et al.

    I can pull out literally dozens of quotes from each of these worthies about how they are following in Reagan's footsteps.

    I'm not going to stoop to your level of debate, but, clearly someone who thinks all this foolishness started with the LEFT is pretty far out on an ice-floe of their own.

    The truth of the matter is, as I see it, that you have a 'personal' problem with radical campus feminists and certain others from your own community (whatever that is) that have made you blind to the realities of the world.

    If Ronald Reagan isn't the hero of the looney right wing, nightbloom, who is?

    Enlighten us, please?

    And try to do it without calling people names if that's possible.

    I'd throw you out of a class of mine if you ever tried to support an argument with that kind of response. And I bet Andrew Leslie would too.

  • anarcho

    5 years ago

    What mass appeal?

    Since when do psychopaths like Marsden, O'Reilly etc have "mass appeal", Nightbloom? They might appeal to the 25% who are to stupid to come in out of the rain, but do they really appeal to the average person who is a bit more complex than these hate-spouters?

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    I was talking about the

    I was talking about the "conserva-babe" phenomenon generally....and I suppose you can toss the shock-jock schtick in there as well, to round out the point. Mass appeal. They all play to the same market group. The same people listening to Howard Stern probably listen to Coulter too. This is all pretty obvious stuff that I'm saying. I'm surprised you guys are having trouble getting it. I'm not endorsing the material itself, but I think I'm right about the dynamic at work here.

    Btw, notice that it's apparently all men who are commenting about this on this thread. You can't resist her, even if it's just to slag her. It sorta proves my point about the base appeal of the whole thing. You're probably all rivetted to the latest Coulter scoop too, even if you can't stand her.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Still no evidence of this:

    Quote:
    And the Left started that silly game,

    No, I think the silly game started with the crazy idea that conservatives came up with the Ronald Reagan could do no wrong; that Chicago school supply side economics would make everyone rich as Croesus with no losers. That affirmative action wasn't fair to white boys and girls and that it didn't matter if you lied about everything because if you yelled it loud enough and often enough people would start to believe it. And that America was somehow ‘better’ by definition than any other country. When you start off whatever you’re doing with that kind of a lie at the core of your being it’s not surprising you end up like Rachel Marsden: both compromised and clueless.

    You may be riveted to Ann Coulter, but I can assure you I'm not and I find the fact, as Anarcho points out, that about 25% of the population of the US thinks she's worth more than an instant channel change, is really, really troubling. In fact, as I pointed out earlier, the evidence is simple and clear that Coulter is losing whatever loathsome appeal she did have for much of the reflexive right in the US. Thank God.

    The left has lots of warts and has frequently been loathe to confront its own shortcomings but in the end it usually manages to do so because most of the people on the left really do care about the consequences of their actions. The folks on the right, the folks who like Ann Coulter and fail to reject her and her lies and obfuscations, are the ones who ought to do the explaining. And they have a lot of it to do.

  • lynn

    5 years ago

    Devolving with Rachel

    Quote:
    Marsden bit back, "Let's give it 10 years and see if their lives were ruined."

    wow....how the pain of others trips so lightly off her tongue - flippant, shallow, narcissistic - she perfectly reveals the deplorable sociopathic mantra that now rules the world.

    She's just plain creepy....reminds me of the Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction.

    P.S. mucho thanks, Frank. ;-)

  • IAMC

    5 years ago

    No hot babes on the left

    Jealousy? Who are the hot babes on the left?
    This thread sounds pretty petty to me.
    She is better to watch than Rosie O', and way more intelligent.
    Maybe she can get on The View, with Ann Coulter, Hasselback, facing off against Rosie. I would love to see that.
    How long before the success of conservative talk show radio, finds itself on to TV?
    Are you ready for " fair and balanced " CNN?
    CNN is already the loser against FOX, big time.
    Bring it on Rachael.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Hey Lynn

    I was hoping you'd see that.

    LOL

    Happy Easter.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    who'd a thunk it? rachael

    who'd a thunk it? rachael marsden bringing together the right and the left. how could anyone deny that she's a nutjob? you have to wonder about the dynamic in that family.

  • James Burns

    5 years ago

    Attraction...

    NB, ghouls like Coulter and Marsden only have an attraction for the audience they pander to. They are damaged people who destroy those around them.

    But what is important in commenting on them is in drawing attention to the fact that promoting them as voices worthy of being heard damages society. Their anger, viciousness, and hatred is the epitome of what is wrong with what is rapidly becoming mainstream opinion on the political right, or at least what Fox promotes as mainstream.

    There are damaged people throughout the political spectrum, and they all do damage with their intolerance, whatever flavor it comes in. But it is only with the Coulters, and the Limbaughs and their clones that we find them given vast sums of money and a prominent big corporate media platform on which to spew their hatred. No one on the left who has expressed a similar sort of viciousness has ever had such media access and corporate support. It's unhealthy, and it is a means of distracting their target audience from many of the root causes of the problems they face.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Would it be too controversial

    TO post something here from a source nightbloom has often quoted himself, as a kind of coda to this little meditation upon left and right?

    Pope's book accuses rich nations of robbery
    · Benedict hails Marx's analysis of modern man
    · Publication planned for 80th birthday

    John Hooper in Rome
    Thursday April 5, 2007

    Guardian

    Pope Benedict appeared to reach out to the anti-globalisation movement yesterday, attacking rich nations for having "plundered and sacked" Africa and other poor regions of the world.
    An extract published from his first book since being elected pope highlighted the passionately anti-materialistic and anti-capitalist aspects of his thinking. Unexpectedly, the Pope also approvingly cited Karl Marx and his analysis of contemporary man as a victim of alienation.

    (snip)
    "If we apply [the story of the good Samaritan] to the dimensions of globalised society we see how the peoples of Africa, who have been plundered and sacked, see us from close-up," he wrote. "Our style of life [and] the history in which we are involved has stripped them and continues to strip them."

    The Pope wrote that the damage was not just material. "We have wounded them spiritually too," he said. "Instead of giving them God - and thereby welcoming in from their traditions all that is precious and great - we have brought them the cynicism of a world without God in which only power and profit count."

    His judgment is bound to be seen as a condemnation of colonialism. But it could also be read as a confession of the failures of the Roman Catholic church's own missionary activity, which often followed in the wake of conquest and colonisation.

    Pope Benedict went on to say that the poor of the developing world were not the only people who could be regarded as victims in need of help from a Good Samaritan. He said narcotics, people-trafficking and sex tourism had "stripped and tormented" many, leaving them "empty even in [a world of] material abundance".

    Describing humanity's alienation, Marx had "provided a clear image of the man who has fallen victim to brigands". But the Pope said he had failed to get to the nub of the issue "because he only developed his thoughts in the material sphere".

    The emptiness of modern life is a theme to which Benedict has warmed. He told a congregation at a Palm Sunday service that "earnings, success and career must not be the ultimate scope of life". He used the same sermon to warn of damnation for those who took backhanders in business or politics, saying that only those with hands not "soiled with corruption" could expect to reach God.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    whatever one thinks of him,

    whatever one thinks of him, he most certainly has had a very interesting short history in office. g; my apologies for accusing you of being bob. his latest comments on the hotel thread prove that could not be true.

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    James Burns - as I said

    James Burns - as I said repeatedly, I don't endorse their content. I'm addressing the reasons for their mass appeal. I think I've hit the mark closer than anyone else here.

    Gwest - That's totally off topic.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    No it's not

    You are totally off topic. Coulter and Marsden have NO mass appeal.

    Benedict's quoting Marx and decrying globalism - when the opposite is what Coulter, Marsden et al are spouting is so bizarrely ironic that even you can't avoid the conjunction.

    As to marking your own work - I don't think so; that's just another indication you live in an isolated little world, bereft of understanding of what really goes on around you and fascinated and fixated on your own redundant maunderings. To suggest that the lunatic fringe who pays attention to or is impressed by these Fox News foxes is in any way a measure of anything meaningful is totally absurd.

    I’m no fan of Benedict’s as you know. However, he appears to be far closer to having his finger on what’s wrong with modern culture and the decadent West than anything you’ve ever written indicates you are. You might want to buy the book and read it.

  • Capitalism

    5 years ago

    Ok now

    Marsden, from what i've seen, is not nearly as right as Coulter. Coulter has her following, but in my opinion, is rather offending.

    I never insult people with different viewpoints. I'll insult people, who choose to ignore the facts. Some people make the facts fit their opinions. Right and Left, both sides are equally guilty.

    However, somebody has to stand up to the absolute foolishness of the ACLU.

  • Capitalism

    5 years ago

    Nightbloom

    Quote:
    But I just can't believe those two are the cream of the crop, the very best the Democrats can put forward after Bush has virtually guaranteed he will be succeeded by a Democrat. There really seems to be a lack of quality all around.

    What the world needs is Rudy!! He turned New York city from danger to dazzle. He literally revitalized the city. He proved that he is an incredible leader through 9/11. He knows how to bring results.

    He is a true progressive conservative - pro choice, pro gay rights, pro gun control - though believes, and rightly so, that prison time must fit the crime. Rudy wouldn't stand for this homelessness problem in Vancouver!

    He is capable of returning America to greatness!!

  • Capitalism

    5 years ago

    Nightbloom / G West

    Nightbloom:

    Quote:
    Gwest - That's totally off topic.

    That is his game. Every time you write something - he writes a response, usually seconds after you've finished your post, telling you you're wrong - and then spending a couple of paragraphs on some totally unrelated topic.

    You start to read it, then stop - because it in no way relates to what you were trying to say. You choose not to respond, and he tells you he wins.

    I'm convinced he's a college student. Far too immature to be real adult.

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    Thanks Cap - I've noticed

    Thanks Cap - I've noticed that. I also notice that he twists others' arguments in order to better fit a caricature he's constructed of them.

    Take this, for example, where he seems to insert words in my mouth and totally redefines what I was actually saying:

    Quote:
    To suggest that the lunatic fringe who pays attention to or is impressed by these Fox News foxes is in any way a measure of anything meaningful is totally absurd.

    I suggested no such thing. I clearly stated that it's not about "meaningful" dialogue or open political discourse, but rather it's all about mass appeal, "coolness", and using boobs and sass to sell an attitude that is resistant to convoluted, intellectualized arguments and debate. So what is Gwest on about folks?

    Ditto for JB, where he similarly reacts as though I were defending their content, which I repeatedly disavowed. This was his response to my argument:

    Quote:
    NB, you think right-wing rant shows are cool? LOL!

    Note how my point is twisted and personalized, while my actual argument is sidestepped entirely.

    Then what usually happens is that the 'reconstructed' invented renditions of their oppenent's agument are used to make personal judgments about their opposition, hence this typical broadside from Gwest:

    Quote:
    ...you live in an isolated little world, bereft of understanding of what really goes on around you and fascinated and fixated on your own redundant maunderings.

    My point regarding the new conserva-babe phenomenon, in a nutshell, is that neo-conservatives have found a formula that has proven to be effective in soundbite media. It can alter the course of debate, grab headlines on any given day, and neutralize other talking heads, usually to the detriment of real political debate. This forumula is a trend that will quickly run its course and get old. That's the nub of what I said - everything else is just JB, Gwest and a couple others chasing their own tails (tales).

  • G West

    5 years ago

    And that formula

    And that formula is based upon a series of lies and obfuscations, misrepresentations and cynical calculations that began with Ronald Reagan and found its apogee in the BUSH Administration.

    Marsden, O'Reilly, Coulter, Fox News and, truth to tell, George Bush himself are the shock troops of a campaign of lies that is rapidly being exposed both by the real facts on one hand and the growing disenchantment of the public with that sort of discourse on the other.

    In fact N/B you're the one who stated above here, that this sort of thing began with the left when you wrote this,
    And the Left started that silly game,

    Remember? And now you conveniently deny it and try, as usual to shift the subject.

    That's been your game from the beginning, not just of this thread, but of everything you've ever posted on this site that deals with political or moral issues.

    I'm not surprised that you and Capitalism would find comfort in each other. You're the ones who are both trying to defend essential lies. His about the democratic and humane values of a hollow robber baron system in its death throes and yours about your personal problems with an 'imaginary' left.

    When confronted with interlocutors who don't stoop to ad hominem name calling - which is at bottom what you are both forced into in the end - you're both helpless. When all else fails, trot out the old backyard bully tactics. As illustrated so concretely just above.

    Some argument. Some case.

  • Capitalism

    5 years ago

    Nightbloom

    Quote:
    My point regarding the new conserva-babe phenomenon, in a nutshell, is that neo-conservatives have found a formula that has proven to be effective in soundbite media. It can alter the course of debate, grab headlines on any given day, and neutralize other talking heads, usually to the detriment of real political debate. This forumula is a trend that will quickly run its course and get old. That's the nub of what I said - everything else is just JB, Gwest and a couple others chasing their own tails (tales).

    I agree and I disagree. I spend a fair bit of time in the U.S. While - the MSM that we pick-up in Canada is biased towards the Democrats - things are slightly differernt.

    America is not about New York, Boston and San Francisco. The growth in the USA is in the "red states". Texas, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Colorado, Oklahoma, the Carolinas - Booming! These states are only become more influential.

    There is no such think as labour law in these states! In fact, much of the labour is illegal. One day, by virtue of birth right citizenship, the poor (primarily hispanic) will have a voice. They estimate that there are 900,000 illegal immigrants in Atlanta alone, far more in Dallas and Houston. 30+ states have banned gay marriage in their constitution.

    There is little urbanization in these states. We will see a period of Conservative consolidation. Maybe in 25 years - will we start to see change. This formula is only getting started......

  • Capitalism

    5 years ago

    G - ???

    What are you arguing with Nightbloom about??

    Quote:
    And that formula is based upon a series of lies and obfuscations, misrepresentations and cynical calculations that began with Ronald Reagan and found its apogee in the BUSH Administration.

    Marsden, O'Reilly, Coulter, Fox News and, truth to tell, George Bush himself are the shock troops of a campaign of lies that is rapidly being exposed both by the real facts on one hand and the growing disenchantment of the public with that sort of discourse on the other.

    Do you read what he says? He said 50 times over, he doesn't agree with the formula - he's only said it has worked - isn't he right????

    I've never seen Nightbloom defend Bush or any other neocon for that matter. He's attacked the left, and rightly so, but does that mean he and Bush attend church together??

    Seriously - read what people write sometimes. He's trying to add his input and you turn it into something its not - force him to explain himself....

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    speaking of fox, david

    speaking of fox, david berner posted a wild exchange between o'reilly and geraldo on his blog today. is this acting or the real thing? either way me thinks it's a little absurd.
    http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/04/05/bill-oreillys-head-practically-explodes-as-he-screams-at-geraldo/

  • Bobb999

    5 years ago

    The US can have her

    I say let Marsden become a permanent fixture of American wingnut media - so long as she simultaneously "forsakes" Canada entirely.It's too bad she continues to have a Canadian platform too, a regular Sun column.

    Same thing with David Frum. I've always thought, let the U.S. have him! As a Canadian, I'd be happy to be rid of folks like him, or Marsden.
    Unfortunately, he too continues to maintain a Canadian media presence, compliments of the CanWest mafia, mostly.

    I have a theory that Frum takes after Mom, the much over rated Cdn. media "icon",Barbara, in certain unsavoury ways.
    I hope others besides me noticed Barbara Frum had an ugly side.
    She wasn't above, at times, demonstrating extreme ridicule toward, or intolerance of, certain interview guests who apparently offended her narrow sense of what constituted acceptable beliefs or behaviour.

    I would have been quite happy to have seen Barbara abandon Canada entirely too, and join some U.S. network!

  • James Burns

    5 years ago

    Doth protest too much

    Yes NB you observe a phenomena but you are consistent in the way you speak glowingly of a practice you claim you don't agree with, while in the same breath heaping scorn on your personally constructed "Left". To wit:

    Quote:
    Too bad the Left can't come up with bombshells of its own. Instead they're stuck with dower scolds, un-mediagenic operators, clueless professors and shorn charisma-deprived lesbians.

    and

    The 'humps and lovely lady lumps' of hoochy pop culture are a delivery system for an attitude that is resistant to the musty, professorial arguments of the scolding, moralizing, hectoring, censorious, sexually deconstructed, conformist Left. It's not about truth or rational debate, it's about coolness.

    In fact, going by that scorn, your attitudes toward a particular group appear almost pathological. Women in general and feminists in particular appear to be an obsession with you that you attack without hesitation with your focus being on intensely personalized and bitchy negative characterizations. I've noticed that behavior is fairly consistent in other threads, especially when any issue of women's rights come up. It's creepy.

  • anarcho

    5 years ago

    My Fantasies Are Real says Cappy

    Quote:
    There is little urbanization in these states. We will see a period of Conservative consolidation. Maybe in 25 years - will we start to see change. This formula is only getting started......

    You want to bet on that?

  • SayBlade

    5 years ago

    Desperate failures

    Ah, poor Rachel Marsden! She desperately wanted to be like Ann Coulter and failed miserably because of her Canadian accent.

    Ann Coulter desperately wanted to be like Barbara Amiel and failed miserably because of her American accent.

    Barbara Amiel desperately wanted to be a journalist and failed miserably because of her aversion to vermin.

    Bill O'Reilly desperately wanted to stop the world from spinning and failed miserably because he likes to hog the merry-go-round.

    Fox News desperately wanted to be entertaining and funny and failed miserably because it hired O'Reilly, Coulter and Marsden.

    Whither Amiel?

  • Chris H

    5 years ago

    Who you spend time with ...

    Who you spend time with, or associate with, says a lot about you. Anyone that has Marsden on their program is just making themselves a joke. I wish Rachel Marsden a happy life, but by putting herself in the spotlight, she is just openning herself to ridicule. She shouldn't be shocked when that happens.

  • Capitalism

    5 years ago

    Anarcho

    Sure. I think we might see the Democrats hold the Presidency for one term - and only because the Republicans have done such a bad job.

    People aren't voting for the Dems, they're voting against the Republicans.

    The growth is in the South - and much like Alberta, in Canada, the power shift is on....

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Cappy

    This is what n/b wrote:

    Quote:
    And the Left started that silly game,

    You have to be able to read critically to understand an argument my friend.

    It's just another variation on the same thing he always writes; he's not interested in discussing the lying irresponsible right wing that husbands and nurtures Coulter Marsden et al any more than you are interested in actually defending the indefensible when it comes to the record of globalizing capitalism.

    I'm afraid you're the one who hasn't observed that Nightbloom is just doing another riff on his pop culture biased critique of the so-called sins of an imaginary and monolithic 'left'.

    You clearly aren't aware of the position he occupies in such matters. The problem is that neither he nor you seem to have enough self-confidence to base an argument on data, knowledge and ideas instead of personalities and low blows.

    It's a common tactic among the insecure and those who have few facts on their side.

    Now, what do you have to say about these rightwing vampires and where they came from?

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    This is funny. JB and Gwest

    This is funny. JB and Gwest seem more intent on discussing me than they are Rachel Marsden. And now JB is seeing patterns that he finds "creepy", Can't help you with that, JB, but I know all about that ploy.

    Earlier on this thread I discussed formulas or scripts some people use to neutralize their opposition. JB just tried one of the Left's favoured formulas to silence criticism. It's an indirect way of slapping an "-ist" label on opponents. Case in point: a male who offers a sound and consistent critique of liberal-Left gender politics is "obssessed" "creepy" "misogynist" yada-yada. These labels are meant to pathologize his viewpoint and invalidate anything further he has to say on the matter. It's just that easy. No rational debate required. These pinko-boyz are no better than the conserva-babes. In fact, they deserve each other.

    But notice that neither Gwest nor JB have refuted my interpretation of the conserva-babe phenomenon. They're simply exercising their own "creepy" obssession.

  • James Burns

    5 years ago

    Poor NB

    There's no label for you necessary NB. Unlike the labels you so readily apply to anyone you place in your mythical "Left" (you are after all the one who pathetically capitalizes it), your words and behavior speak for themselves. Whenever an issue about women comes up, instead of dealing with substance you lace your comments with crass stereotypes, such as "shorn charisma-deprived lesbians".

    As for Coulter and clones, I could care less about your interpretation. As I said earlier in the thread, the phenomena is simply a base appeal to a particular audience. It's not cool, or suave; it's simply the use of plastic sex appeal and vicious anger.

  • IAMC

    5 years ago

    Ratings

    It's all about ratings, and the liberal left isn't getting the ratings ( Move On . Org }
    Rush Limbaugh has a growing audience of 20 million listeners. There is nothing even close to this.
    FOX is way more popular than CNN, CBS, NBC or ABC
    Sean Hannity is leading the afternoon radio talk shows with his conservative message.
    Katy Couric is dying on the vine.
    The conservatives are communicating better. Their message is what people are listening to.
    The MSM, drive by media is liberal and losing.
    I couldn't be more correct, show me your ratings, show me something that shows liberalism is winning.
    It's not.

  • James Burns

    5 years ago

    Wishful thinking IAMC

    Progressive political commentary isn't allowed on the US networks, it's against their corporate interests. As for progressive political satire, well the ratings of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report blow all the right-wing rant shows out of the water.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Here you go Ron - Proof and a lot more respected than fox too.

    It's long and complex but you should be able to get through the first six pages of this extensive survey of Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes for the period 1987-2007.

    I think it shows quite clearly that - and especially among the young - liberal values are winning and that's probably at least partly why folks like Rush and Hannity, Coulter and Marsden and papa bear O'Reilly are so testy these days.

    Here's the link, it's a pdf so you'll have to have Adobe reader on your system.

    You know what Adobe reader is right?

    http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/312.pdf

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    Quote:As for Coulter and

    Quote:
    As for Coulter and clones, I could care less about your interpretation. As I said earlier in the thread, the phenomena is simply a base appeal to a particular audience.

    No, JB - that's what I said. You haven't actually managed to say anything yet. We're still waiting. Your actual substantive commentary on these threads is quite thin.

    Re. the gender issue, I think you're missing it. My main focus is and always has been gay politics. Women are incidental to me. They're great colleagues & drinking buddies & confidantes, and occasionally they're even my rivals for male attention. Beyond that, I'm totally indifferent. Don't apply straight paradigms to me. That's "heterosexist' of you (now there's a nasty echo, eh JB? - you never thought you could be reduced to an "-ist" word too, did you).

    I've been up, down, in and around this road so many times. Liberal-left gender politics are just as phoney as the neo-con rendition of gender politics, and almost as destructive to genuine human relationships. You're sniffing your own gas if you actually believe any different. You're a stooge, JB. You can't even acknowlege that I've hit the conserva-babe phenomenon on the head. I can't detect anything vaguely original in your viewpoint. Everything you say is as canned as it gets.

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    Quote:As for Coulter and

    Quote:
    As for Coulter and clones, I could care less about your interpretation. As I said earlier in the thread, the phenomena is simply a base appeal to a particular audience.

    No, JB - that's what I said. You haven't actually managed to say anything yet. We're still waiting. Your actual substantive commentary on these threads is quite thin.

    Re. the gender issue, I think you're missing it. My main focus is and always has been gay politics. Women are incidental to me. They're great colleagues & drinking buddies & confidantes, and occasionally they're even my rivals for male attention. Beyond that, I'm totally indifferent. Don't apply straight paradigms to me. That's "heterosexist' of you (now there's a nasty echo, eh JB? - you never thought you could be reduced to an "-ist" word too, did you).

    I've been up, down, in and around this road so many times. Liberal-left gender politics are just as phoney as the neo-con rendition of gender politics, and almost as destructive to genuine human relationships. You're sniffing your own gas if you actually believe any different. You're a stooge, JB. You can't even acknowlege that I've hit the conserva-babe phenomenon on the head. I can't detect anything vaguely original in your viewpoint. Everything you say is as canned as it gets.

  • mopled

    5 years ago

    Do you suppose...

    Is it possible that JB is another persona of that old self-cloner GW?

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    of course it's possible.

    of course it's possible. how do you trust someone who has previously deceived and then tried a cheap cover-up by saying he was researching a book? give me a break. i'd have been more forgiving if he had just come clean. this entire website loses credibility by not banning him, especially since they have done so before.

  • James Burns

    5 years ago

    mewling won't help nb

    NB your claim that those who disagree with you are missing the point, is a simple distraction from the argument. You cry wolf, but there isn't one, poor baby.

    As for the Coulter clone phenomenon, you dust off your tired cliche of a mythical "Left" (a straw man). You then claim the "Left" is unable to respond to the phenomenon (a red herring). You give the reason for that lack of response as the "Left" being solely populated by "musty" or "charisma-deprived lesbians" (ad hominem). Your arguments are pathetic.

    The Coulter clone phenomenon is a marketing tactic. There is no need, in fact, no good reason, to respond in kind. Crass behavior isn't hard, as you routinely demonstrate. Resorting to the gimmicks of plastic sex appeal and vicious rage will simply result in spectacle. That's not engaging with the issues, it's simply cheap entertainment. It's just another distraction, just one more act in the corporate marketed circus.

    As for your attitudes toward women. As I've pointed out, your words speak for themselves.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    n/bllom

    Quote:
    Everything you say (nightbloom) is as canned as it gets.

    Can't think of a better review of your work on gender politics dressed up as a critique of the left?

    Mopled
    Are you as dumb as elliot? We've been through this ending with you writing that you couldn't care less - or words to that effect - remember this:

    Quote:
    I really don't know what you are talking about, and I don't care.

    Mopled/ Iran's Feminists thread - 6 days ago.

    I think you and Elliot are the one's who've gone bananas, my friend.

    You're now entering the same pathological area that nightbloom was some days ago - except you're coming at it from the opposite angle.

  • bob the cat

    5 years ago

    Shapeshifter

    That ole wily shapeshifter G.W...who knows where he might be lurking..and what form he`s taking.

    Nightbloom...c`mon man show some class
    ..you`ve been schooled dude schooled..whupped...

    Sometimes it can be so bad even your best friend won`t tell ya.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    James Burns

    If you're not too busy, send me an email

  • nightbloom

    5 years ago

    Quote:...this entire website

    Quote:
    ...this entire website loses credibility by not banning him, especially since they have done so before.

    That's interesting - is there something I don't know about his history here? Have there been previous "incarnations"?

    Too bad we can't get around the personalities here. It's really ruining these threads. This could have been an interesting discussion about everything from campus politics to trends in media/info-tainment, to the overt disintegration of political commentary/analysis into a partisan puppet show.

    Instead, we get the same people (person?) acting as the de facto Thought Police over & over again. They follow people around on these threads like a little swarm of gnats, placing their perceived "opposition" on trial for their viewpoint and their presumed personal failings rather than arguing rationally about the subject matter itself.

    Anyway, I've given my take on the conserva-babe phenomenon, which is all I came here to do. The gadflies can take it or leave it as they choose.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    as usual nightbloom

    Elliot doesn't know what he's talking about.

    The person who posts as GWest has only ever had one letter from David Beers asking him or her to do or stop doing anything - the exact same letter you got delivered at the same time.

    My view you should button up or we'll reopen the reason behind that letter.

    I concur it's too bad you can't get over your personality problems, deal with your own issues privately, and move on to some intelligent discussion about concepts and ideas instead of pushing the same agenda on every article you address.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    nightbloom; i wasn't

    nightbloom; i wasn't intimating that gwest has been banned before, only that others have, i.e. coyote, sleepswithangels etc.. gwest should have been though.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Thanks for the clarification el - I think

    Since I haven't broken any rules, I can't imagine why I should be banned for anything El. I actually try to address the topics at issue and do it without calling individuals and identifiable categories of people nasty names.

    On the other hand, you break the rules here all the time and have never even been cautioned as far as I'm aware; I've always kind of assumed the only reason you were still here is that you're related to someone in the editorial office.

    Is that the case?

    Furthermore, I know nothing about anyone called sleepswithangels so you have the advantage of me, however, as far as I know Coyote has only been banned once.

    Your ad hominem attacks and childish attitude, acting something like a textual Judas goat in fact, may well have drawn others into a response which elicited some discipline from on high.

    Other than that, I defer, with the exception of the point about Coyote, as to which I am quite certain I'm correct, to your greater knowledge and experience.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    'do it without calling

    'do it without calling individuals and identifiable categories of people nasty names.'
    'Your ad hominem attacks and childish attitude, acting something like a textual Judas goat in fact,'
    and you don't see a contradiction there g?
    the reason that you should be banned is twofold: you were posting under AT LEAST two handles without informing anyone, often using one alias to support the other, and, you badger every poster on this site who disagrees with you. in fact i would wager that without your presence here we would see more civilized and reasoned debate.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    there are no rules about posting under 2 lablels

    If you'd read the rules you'd know they only specify each label must be registered to a valid email address. Mine are, and always have been - as James Burns found out when he responded to my message to him earlier today. Try it yourself - any time; or try

    .

    You'll find both addresses work equally well.

    I never hid the fact I posted under two labels and I never once denied it. As I've told you at least a dozen times. You and nightbloom are the liars when you imply I've ever posted as anyone else, and, furthermore, both of the labels represented exactly the same views and philosophy. However, you knew all that Elliot, long ago and you were just playing your usual dog in the manger tricks today weren't you?

    Proud? You shouldn't be.
    Or are you kind of slow?

    I challenge people whose opinions I disagree with to defend their views and opinions with facts and logic, reason and common sense. I do not call them names and condemn them as a group - as you do ALL THE TIME.

    Now, can you say the same about your approach? Can you say, as I can, that you're proud of the way you've behaved as a contributor here?

    I think not.

    And, you were behaving the way you have done long before I ever posted here Elliot, so it's not as if your childishness has anything to do with me.
    Because, early on, you seemed to be able to have a reasonable discussion with me about sports I concluded that you must have some redeemable features under that carapace of rudeness and bad manners you always effect and I even tried for months in the most obvious way I could to encourage you to behave like a civilized human being by trying to satirize your behavior until you would catch on.
    Lots and lots of people read Tyee who never contribute, as I did, for the first several months that I read the journalism and learned about the kinds of people who posted here - and how they behaved. So, I knew all about your MO before I made my first contribution.

    People who do contribute ought to do it in a constructive way - without breaking the rules - the way I do.

    Why don't you do the same instead of calling people names and acting like a bully?

    I still think you must be related to someone here or you'd have been gone at least a year ago - as I said, the rules don't seem to apply to you. And I'm not the only one who has come to that conclusion Elliot. Far from it.

    When you know the facts, El, your whining is nothing more than that, whining.

    Good night.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    'I never hid the fact I

    'I never hid the fact I posted under two labels and I never once denied it.'
    absolute bullshit. you're a deceitful liar g, and you're trying to cover your ass. hard to believe that beers fell for this crap. or maybe it isn't.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    'I even tried for months in

    'I even tried for months in the most obvious way I could to encourage you to behave like a civilized human being by trying to satirize your behavior until you would catch on'
    oh yeah, you're also delusional.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    And you're breaking the rules again now

    I have never denied what I did; I did it for a good and valid reason and I've owned up to it completely and been accountable - something you, apparently, know nothing about. Now you even accuse me of lying when that, in itself, is completely untrue and not reflected by the facts. It’s almost as funny as flattax on the aboriginal story claiming to be respectful in his arguments.

    If anyone is responsible for what's becoming of civil discourse on this site my friend, it is you and not me.

    Furthermore, you just posted two more examples of comments so outrageous they don't even need satirizing.

    I still think you must be related to the management or you couldn't get away with it. I was clearly wrong about you. You know absolutely nothing about civil behavior.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    you never lied about what

    you never lied about what you did AFTER you were caught g. how stupid do you think we are around here anyway? this is a very simple issue: you were posting under AT LEAST two aliases and using them to support your own arguments. you never told anyone about it until you were caught dead-to-rights, and since then you have been weaving stories in order to cover your ass. you're a disgrace, as is management for not banning you from this site.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Only two - ever

    And they always took the same point of view.

    Not a single lie, not once. Unlike you Elliot who’ve just posted a few more. And not a single story. Moreover, as I said, when the book gets published, if it does, you will definitely rate a whole chapter. You've become a priceless avatar of ad hominem criticism.

    I was never caught, never denied anything and never planned to use both labels for more than one year. Exactly what I did and exactly what I told David Beers. As I said before, I agreed with him not to post either my letter to him, or his to me and I keep my agreements.

    Your continual nonsense about there aver having been more than GWest and Alcibiades is just further evidence of your own slim grasp of the truth.

    Your own insecurity about feeling gulled by the experiment is just another excellent example of what's wrong with your kind of ctitique.

    Unhinged by the facts and the reality of a system which is demonstrably failing, you revert to the same old schoolboy bully tacics of your youth.

    Sad, really.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    blather all you like g.

    blather all you like g. anyone with half a brain knows you're full of shit with all this talk of a strategy and a plan and a book. you're a liar who was caught red-handed and there's nothing you can do to change that now, except maybe come clean with the truth. the real truth g, not the coverup lie bullshit that you've been propagating since your exposure.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    That is the truth Elliot

    And your continual pathetic resorting to exactly the same kind of egregious rule-breaking behavior here just further underlines the fact that you seem to have some special dispensation to do and say things here that no one else would, or could, get away with.

    I have never lied on TYEE not a single time.

    That is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and it's quite sad that you can't handle it.

    As to the exposure, I'm more than happy to have it and, in consequence, I'll post once again the address of the thread where anyone can go to read the TRUTH about the lies you're telling.

    http://thetyee.ca/Views/Teacherdiaries/2007/02/27/BoyTrouble/

    Perhaps you should go back and refresh your memory one more time El.

    Love the publicity by the way, THANKS!

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    'you seem to have some

    'you seem to have some special dispensation to do and say things here that no one else would, or could, get away with.' good sleuthing gwest/alcibiades/?/?/?. you figured it out. i'm the editor's brother. moron!

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    how about this g; rather

    how about this g; rather than go around in circles, let's make an arrangement. i'll ignore you and you ignore me. i'm sure all the other posters will be appreciative. can you live with that?

  • G West

    5 years ago

    I suggested that some time ago

    You're the one who brought this whole business up again Elliot - with this:

    of course it's possible.
    Commentor
    Elliot
    1 day ago

    of course it's possible. how do you trust someone who has previously deceived and then tried a cheap cover-up by saying he was researching a book? give me a break. i'd have been more forgiving if he had just come clean. this entire website loses credibility by not banning him, especially since they have done so before.

    Remember that set of lies?

    Relevance and originality certainly isn't your strong suit is it?

    And, you're still breaking the rules today with ad hominem references - the point is, as someone else observed about you the other day, you are the absolute worst offender on Tyee and I still don't understand how you get away with it.

    I have never seen you contribute anything more than a desultory attempt at a constructive contribution. Why do you bother? Most people with nothing remotely interesting to say have enough sense to keep it to themselves.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    you didn't answer the

    you didn't answer the question g. ignore each other or not? you don't comment on my posts and i won't comment on yours. make sense to you?

  • G West

    5 years ago

    NO

    If you make sense, there will be no problem. Try behaving like a civilized interlocutor and we'll see what happens.

    I'm not the one who does nothing but curse and call people names El.

    I've nothing to be ashamed of. You do.

    I have no problem with views that disagree with mine. I do have a problem with a bully - you drop the bullyboy routine and we'll get along just fine.

    That’s been the whole point from the very beginning…as I’ve told you at least fifty times.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    i'm not interested in

    i'm not interested in getting along with you g. i'm going to ignore your posts from now on and i won't reference you. if you do the same this nonsense will end. if you don't it will continue. the ball's in your court.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    DOn't post ad hominem nonsense

    Don’t post ad hominem nonsense and don’t break the rules with impunity and you'll have no problem with me.

    Keep up your usual blasphemous ad hominem contributions and I'll center you every chance I get.

    I have nothing whatever to be ashamed of, nothing about my contributions violates any rules. You, for whatever reason seem to be able to get away with ignoring the rules.

    If you continue to ignore them, I'll be pointing that out whenever I happen to see your pathology on display.

    The ball is, as it has always been, in YOUR court.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    can't do it eh g? i thought

    can't do it eh g? i thought there was a chance you were big enough to pull it off but i guess i was wrong. i guess you're hooked on this shit after all.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Nope El - that's your tactic and your language

    That's your tactic, your style and your language, as it has been from the beginning and as you've just demonstrated once again.

    Merci.

    It's not me who's acting like a foul-mouthed bully Elliot, it's you - as always.

    Nevertheless, keep it up, eventually some editor will notice and your charmed life here will be over.

  • kaybertoss

    5 years ago

    Is there a correlation ?

    “Marsden grew up in a suburb of Vancouver. Her father, Claude, was a high school teacher who in 2000 had his teaching license suspended after admitting to an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old student.”

    Is there a correlation between her father’s actions and her behaviour? I think if one were to examine the relationship between Rachel and her father you would probably see what makes her tick.

  • Capitalism

    5 years ago

    Elliot - I'm with you

    Let's boycot G West. We're just playing into his games. Read through his posts on this forum. Few have anything to do with this article.

    He (Alci/G West/Anarcho - who knows whatever handle) has wasted enough of my time. He looks for you, and responds to you post.

    I did a quick CTRL F - looking for the words "wrong" "nope" "no" - over 1/2 the time, it came from a G West comment.

    He started to get a little better after he was outed as a fraud! He comes here for little more than a cyber-fight.

  • Capitalism

    5 years ago

    kaybertoss

    I don't know much about civil litigation. Though, if I were Ms. Madsen and this crept into mainstream discussion, I'd consider a lawsuit. This is nothing short of slander.

    This article (I recognize not written by a Tyee contributor) undermines what she has gone through. For example, how does this writer get off making conclusions (or implications) about what happened at SFU??

    Anyway - this is mudslinging at its finest.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    capital; very interesting

    capital; very interesting that i offered a truce of sorts to g and he outright refused. he's obviously more interested in slinging mud, even though he accuses everyone else of doing the same.

  • ov

    5 years ago

    Boycot

    is that what the scouts sleep on when they're in camp? But yes I think it would be an excellent idea if you boycott G West by not making any posts in topics in which he posts.

    There is one group that hangs out on this site that consistently provides useful information that I wouldn't have found out about otherwise, which makes the time spent on this site worthwhile for me. On the other hand, there is a group that has nothing to say except to try and persuade people not to listen to the first group. Kind of affirms my feelings on who has value.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    A truce of sorts?

    Hardly, You didn't offer anything El - neither you nor cappy has ever won an argument with me and you never will. Because neither of you has even the slightest bit of real knowledge and understanding about the way the world actually works and you're both full of hatred and bitterness.

    Instead of actually discussing and defending your views (which would be difficult enough considering what they are) you both immediately resort to the old schoolboy bully routine.

    Too bad you're both too self-absorbed to realize it.

    Three weeks ago Cappy you agreed that there would be no more name calling, since then you’ve been wrong about another four issues and now your back to your usual pathology and name calling. Would you care to have me post what you said then Cappy, as a kind of memento mori for you.
    Quelle surprise!

  • Latarnik

    5 years ago

    Marsden felon

    How could anyone take that female hooligan, committing perjuries seriously. She must be a masochist and she should get what gives her pleasure.

  • greengreen

    5 years ago

    gwest/elliot

    Perhaps the two of you should exchange emails and chat back and forth in a non-publilc space. Your above arguing is even less appealing than Marsden/Coulter diatripe. Well, that may not be possible, but you get my point. Don't destroy this sight for the rest of us.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    i agree green, and i

    i agree green, and i apologize. i've offered a truce, albeit of sorts, but he refuses to comply. i'll be completely ignoring him from now on, since it's obvious he finds pleasure in the haranguing.

  • fixedave

    5 years ago

    gwest/elliot

    First, utter gobsmack to read about Rachel Marsden's reincarnation from lying manipulative student to journalist. Horrible and facinating.

    Then the commentary. Great stuff, I thought that NB connecting this with Howard Stern was inspired - then read on in amazement as the whole debate spiraled down the toilet. Also horrible and fascinating!

    Although I'd agree with you greengreen, I can't help but also feel that the whole gwest/elliot/nb/cappy badminton birdy (the harder they hit the shorter they fly) - was also completely appropriate to the subject.

    Pathalogical liars, or over - enthusiastically aspiring student atheletes, or rude right wing commentators... or anonymous (cloned?) readers, all of whom "win" arguments and opinion by cheap shot, slur and slander.

    Couldn't have been a better performance if it was scripted. hmmmm...

  • G West

    5 years ago

    fixedave and greengreen

    What cheap shot was that? I'm unaware I've ever leveled one - certainly none as unfair as the blanket ones I’ve just read.

    Just curious.

    For all those who think I enjoy this stuff, I'd be interested to know how you'd handle Elliot's juvenilia and ad hominem remarks - most of which are clearly over the line and in violation of the rules here.

    I do agree that ad hominem tactics are right at home on a discussion of Rachel Marsden though.

    Others have been censured and/or banned for less.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    since i'll be ignoring you

    since i'll be ignoring you from now on and not referencing you anymore, you should be able to ignore me too g. it's the only way this nonsense will end. hope you can manage to do that.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    I've already answered that Elliot

    If you post ad hominem bully boy nonsense I'll point it out whenever I see it.

    That was the whole reason behind Alcibiades in the first place although the initial incident in March 2006 didn't involve you.

    So, carry on. It isn't me who has been posting nonsense and tripe during the time that I've been reading Tyee.

    This is in your hands - not mine.

    Behave like a civilized human being and I'll treat you like one, otherwise, you'll just have to live with consequences of your own actions.

    Nothing to do with me.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    i'm not sure why you think

    i'm not sure why you think you should be the editor on this site g, but ultimately i'm learning that you're too small to pull this off. you'll be the one looking foolish here guy, as i've offered a perfectly reasonable arrangement to solve this problem. you need to think a little harder on it.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Already answered.

    If you post ad hominem bully boy nonsense I'll point it out whenever I see it.

    That was the whole reason behind Alcibiades in the first place although the initial incident in March 2006 didn't involve you.

    So, carry on. It isn't me who has been posting nonsense and tripe during the time that I've been reading Tyee.

    This is in your hands - not mine.

    Behave like a civilized human being and I'll treat you like one, otherwise, you'll just have to live with consequences of your own actions.

    Nothing to do with me.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Dave 49

    Apparently NBC has decided to drop Don Imus....while Coulter is still in vogue.

    Unless of course, Fox News is the difference.

    The situations aren't directly comparable and I'm not exactly sure what Imus's politics are.

    In short, you may be right. Some women get a free pass.

  • BLONDE PITBULL

    5 years ago

    free pass?

    Where do I find one?... I haven't had a freebie in years...LOL

  • G West

    5 years ago

    I think you have to walk the other side of the street

    If you want that free pass my friend. I actually don't really accept dave 49's analysis. Sounds too much like nightbloom to me - but, at least relative to the right wing, women seem to be able to get away with more than men. Although I suppose, now that I think of it, the O'Reilly/Limbaugh thing doesn't 'really' support that either.

    Maybe it's right wingers that get the free passes.

  • BLONDE PITBULL

    5 years ago

    right wingers only you

    right wingers only you say.... As for Marsden, maybe she'll get her karma and one of the dumb and dumber crowd she's catering to will become obsessed with her. Nothing like a little of the shoe on the other foot to educate a person, right quick, dontcha think?

  • G West

    5 years ago

    Hehhh heh

    Can you imagine her and Bill O'Reilly stalking each other?

    Didn't he arrange an out-of-court settlement over alleged sexual harassment of a former producer a couple or three years ago?

  • BLONDE PITBULL

    5 years ago

    out of court settlements...

    Sounds like a match made in heaven to me ;)

  • BLONDE PITBULL

    5 years ago

    Ooops, screwed up that

    Ooops, screwed up that winking smiley face but I think you know what I meant. Cheers.

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