Just speculating, but does this have anything to do with her getting caught tweeting about enjoying the gay coffee at Satanbucks just days after John Baird reaffirmed Tim's as der coffee of der volk? Maybe. The Tories have been on high-Diva alert ever since the Jaffir/Guergis thing imploded.
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Well, at least she wasn't caught tweeting about enjoying Satan's coffee at Gaybucks. THAT would have been an outrage.
I think high "diva alert" is the likely explanation. Although in Raitt's case, it's more like "Ditz watch." She strikes me more of a crier than a hissy-fit thrower.
I'm actually missing Rona Ambrose. Say what you want about her, she has a certain implacability that strikes me as admirable. Although that probably comes naturally to the variety of fern of which she is a part.
All of that to say that the men are a complete write-off. They can burble and bibble and say whatever crap they want on Twitter and act out foolishly in public in any number of ways and all of that just doesn't matter at all to the Conservative rank-and-file. Because we liberals/lefties/progressives are the *real* sexists.
She's always had a little lock symbol on her Twitter account - I thought that was what that meant.
Anyway, it's not the first time she's done this. She had what was starting to look like a real live campaign blog - right up until I asked an awkward question (something about the number of daycare spaces the Conservatives had created). Then presto change-o, comments were banned and all previous comments disappeared.
Her Facebook page has suffered the same fate, ever since mean people like me became 'fans' just so we could post on her wall after the 'sexy cancer' debacle. Now nobody gets to post on her wall - so there! NYEH!
Now nobody gets to post on her wall - so there! NYEH!
A big difference from Garth Turner's blog. You had to pretty much be asking for it for Mr Turner to boot you off. I'm hoping he makes another run for parliament, as we need more like him in Ottawa regardless of party. Though for how open and independent minded he is, that sure won't be under the CPofC anytime soon.
Garth's big mistake with his blog was to leave the comment section as open as he did. The place was nothing but a dreary/defamatory troll fest.
If the intention of an MP's online forum is to replicate the experience of "town hall" meetings, then some of the constraints of a real town hall meeting should apply: only the presence of the MP's constituents really is appropriate and participants should be constrained to maintain a consistent pseudonymous persona.
Frankly, I thought Garth's blog set the whole "participatory democracy" initiative back a few steps.
It was an experiment, and it had its flaws to be sure. However, once you learned who the nutjobs were and got the hang of mentally deleting them from the feed, there was actually some intelligent, insightful debate going on there - largely due to the pan-partisan mix he attracted.
To me, the best thing about Garth and his blog was knowing that he really did read what you said and really did respond with more than just platitudes and talking points. Yes it got him into trouble, but it also got people engaged. It certainly got ME engaged, anyway.
"To me, the best thing about Garth and his blog was knowing that he really did read what you said and really did respond with more than just platitudes and talking points."
I'll agree with you there. But I still maintain we should be heading for zero-tolerance for trolls and people dialoguing in bad faith. We don't tolerate that in real life; I don't see why we should in virtual reality either.
Most dialogues in cyberspace are entirely pointless, but the conversation between the constituents and their elected officials is one in which democratic renewal has some hope of taking root for the majority of people who won't organise or engage in activism. For mostly good reason, I'll add.
At which point the question becomes, where do you draw the line? How do you, as an elected representative, make the distinction between mindless trolling and legitimate (if possibly incoherent) criticism?
I know where my line is on my own blog - but then again I only have a single solitary troll (bocanut) who BTW persists in posting personal insults and random non sequiturs even though he knows I've had him blocked for months. I'm also not obligated to listen to people just because they're my constituents. Yet.
I'm not sure its possible to block anyone from your twitter feed (other than going totally private but for invitees). They are pitifully easy to hijack.
How do you, as an elected representative, make the distinction between mindless trolling and legitimate (if possibly incoherent) criticism?
I think by ensuring that your commenters are your constituents only and by eliminating the ability to sock-puppet, you'd reduce the amount of trolling considerably.
If I were an elected official, my objective for having an online forum like that would not be "everyone gets to have their say" (a tedious bit of over-democratisation, if you ask me) but would be explicitly to encourage a discussion that has some substance to it.
I think by ensuring that your commenters are your constituents only
And how exactly would you do that? Delete anything from out of town IPs? What about people posting from work?
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