Wednesday, July 09, 2008

So The Goal

...was the headline. Those were Paul Well's thoughts when Kady O'Malley's sleuthing turned up how little was actually contained within the Dona Cadman affidavit that inspired "Cadman's widow denies author's story", in which Dona Cadman disputes some painfully trivial aspect of Zytaruk's alleged claims re the Cadman tape.

So does that mean "mission accomplished", as Paul seems to think? Well I don't know. The Tory braintrust has managed to generate a few favorable headlines in gullible Canwest papers that nobody reads, plus Kady's various debunking posts, and then this piece in today's Star in which Zytaruk claims never to have written what Mrs. Cadman disputes in the first place.

And that is pretty much it in the way of coverage, two days in. The Tories have hardly managed to defuse the Cadman Affair as a possible election issue; if anything, they've put the story back into circulation.

Frankly, this sounds like a "war room" with too much cash and time on its hand.

Note: Read this update from Kady where several of the players discuss at great length their positioning on the stairs outside the Cadman home when the now infamous Zytaruk/Stephen Harper interview took place. Or go out and frolic in the sun. That's probably better for your health and state of mind.

BCer was onto this one too.

PS. changed the above a bit based on 1st comment. One day I'll learn how to use that correction feature thingy.

3 comments:

ch said...

It was more successful than a single headline in a newspaper no one reads. The National Post did their part, of course, with the headline "Author's claim false, Cadman's widow says".
The most blatantly false headline was in the Times Colonist with "Journalist did not meet Harper".

Ti-Guy said...

Lot of crappy headlines today. The Mop and Pail has "George W. Bush's carbon conversion."

Dennis (Second Thots) said...

I still don't understand this theory that suggests it's the Conservatives who are desperately trying to run away from this story. The RCMP closed the case having found nothing. The Liberals are on the hook for calling Harper a criminal. And the Tories are pulling no punches in pursuing their case all the way. How is this bad for them?

Lawyers will tell you that obscure details about who was standing where end up being very important in court. They can poke all kinds of holes in a person's testimony.