Bet
on Conservatives to always go against the crowd, trying to demonstrate
originality but always doing so in the most egregious way, and you’ll
never be disappointed.
And
this was the case with one of the National Post Full Comment columns
for today, titled “Layton’s death turns into a thoroughly public
spectacle”, where Christie Blatchford, a journalist some would describe
as ultra-conservative, lambasted the Canadian public for making a
spectacle out of Jack Layton’s death.
Whoa, oh no she didn’t! What did she just say?
Let’s review. She wrote:
“How
fitting that his death should have been turned into such a thoroughly
public spectacle, where from early morn Monday, television anchors
donned their most funereal faces, producers dug out the heavy organ
music, reporters who would never dream of addressing any other
politician by first name only were proudly calling him ‘Jack’ and even
serious journalists like Evan Solomon of the CBC repeatedly spoke of the
difficulty ‘as we all try to cope’ with the news of Mr. Layton’s
death.”
Now
I know conservatives see almost everything from religion to diapers
through a narrow moralistic lens, but what exactly is wrong with a lot
of people mourning the passing of a great civil servant?
I
would understand if people started to, say, sell “Union Jack” T-shirts
after his funeral, or mourn for a whole year, people who never even met
Jack Layton, or building a statue for him a month from his death. Yes,
that would be excessive and some of Christie’s arguments would have been
valid. Like this one:
“In
truth, none of that is remotely unusual, or spontaneous, but rather the
norm in the modern world, and it has been thus since Princess Diana
died, the phenomenon now fed if not led online. People the planet over
routinely weep for those they have never met and in some instances
likely never much thought about before; what once would have been deemed
mawkish is now considered perfectly appropriate.”
But
this is not the case. Jack Layton’s death happened twenty-four hours
ago, not enough time in my opinion to criticize the reaction of the
public to the news.
I
think the problem rests with the way conservatives look at their fellow
Canadians. Quick to criticize, they point out the moral relativism of
Liberals and blame them for almost every economic policy gone wrong;
they claim the NDP are a bunch of entitlement cry-baby socialists and
refer to the Greens as largely irrelevant. Let us not mention what they
think about the Bloc.
Fortunately,
there are plenty of comments on her article online to more than make up
for my modest response. People, both on the left and on the right,
spoke out against her narrow-minded tirade. In particular against her
criticism of Layton’s letter to Canadians. The criticism goes like this:
“The
letter is full of such sophistry as ‘We can restore our good name in
the world,’ as though it is a given Canada has somehow lost that,
bumper-sticker slogans of the ‘love is better than anger’ ilk and
ruthlessly partisan politicking (‘You decided that the way to replace
Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better was by
working together with progressive-minded Canadians across the country,’
he said in the section meant for Quebecers).”
“The
letter is vainglorious too. Who thinks to leave a 1,000-word missive
meant for public consumption and released by his family and the party
mid-day, happily just as Mr. Solomon and his fellows were in danger of
running out of pap? Who seriously writes of himself, ‘All my life I have
worked to make things better’?”
Really,
Christie, critiquing just for the sake of being controversial and
remaining relevant is not really a sign of good journalism. In fact it
only precipitates the reverse: irrelevance and writing impotency.
So
Christie can claw her way up the journalistic ladder if she wants, but
no matter how good her writing is, or how controversial, it will only
make Jack Layton even more revered and more respected and his demise
even more tragic.
The
mourning of his death should not be held as in contempt of decency, and
reverence of his person should not be compared with mindless religious
worship.
Jack deserves better than that.