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Monday, April 11, 2011

Twitter is the "no zone defense rule" of the gaffeometer.

Is the basketball reference too obscure? How about "Twitter is the removal of the red line"? Twitter makes scoring more likely, is what I'm saying right here.

Anyway, an attentive reader notes another Tory twitter dimwittery, this one from an Ontario incumbent. Stephen Woodworth insensitively uses the word "crippled" in the punchline of a joke, leading to much faux outrage and a faux apology, and then the deletion of the Twitter account. The joke was not funny, not because of the insensitive language but because it wasn't funny, so overall it seems like a big waste of ink (well, electrons) to me. If you want to see actual insensitivity married to actual comedy, may I suggest Gilbert Gottfried's recent twitter work?

Anyway, another 1 x 1 for the CPC.

4 comments:

Ted Betts said...

The AG report is not a gaffe. But wrongly misrepresenting what the AG says is. The Tories quoted Fraser in support of their rebuttal to the contempt motion, claiming she said good things about their efforts. Problem was, the quotation was about the Liberal's post 9/11 security spending!

Now, this took place in the week before the election but we all knew we were heading into an election. And Stock Day's apology is clearly during the election. The rebutal itself has no prominence but the AG rebuke them with such a stern letter and former leader Day apologizing ups the prominence quotient. It was all over the news all day long and followed reports on her report. We'll see what kind of legs (my guess not much because of the report issue at the same time and the debates tomorrow, it'll get lost), but at least a Prom 2 x Sig 2 I would think. (even though that means my guess at the Cons # will be wrong.)

Ted Betts said...

The AG report is not a gaffe. But wrongly misrepresenting what the AG says is. The Tories quoted Fraser in support of their rebuttal to the contempt motion, claiming she said good things about their efforts. Problem was, the quotation was about the Liberal's post 9/11 security spending!

Now, this took place in the week before the election but we all knew we were heading into an election. And Stock Day's apology is clearly during the election. The rebutal itself has no prominence but the AG rebuke them with such a stern letter and former leader Day apologizing ups the prominence quotient. It was all over the news all day long and followed reports on her report. We'll see what kind of legs (my guess not much because of the report issue at the same time and the debates tomorrow, it'll get lost), but at least a Prom 2 x Sig 2 I would think (even though that means my guess at the Cons # will be wrong.).

Unknown said...

I'm inclined to agree with Ted above. It might be too early too assign the proper number of points, but the quick and false AG-attribution defence which was then apologized for made the issue even bigger.

Don said...

I want to quote the Calgary Grit blog on the subject of misuse of tghe Fraser quote, because he says it better than I could:

"I know it sounds weird, but I almost want to give Harper the benefit of the doubt here. If only because I can't imagine anyone intentionally doing something so stupid, and expecting to get away with it.

"But I think we're long past giving anyone in this government the benefit of the doubt on these kinds of issues."

I tend to agree with Dan. Call me partisan if you must, but this looks like a ham-fisted attempt at intentional deception, not an honest error. So even if the misquoting came during the writ period, which it did not, there's no way I'd call the misquoting a gaffe.

The apology for it has a chance, but as a standalone event, there's nothing particularly gaffeish about it. So, I'm not sure there's anything to score.