The Terrible Trio of the Liberal Blogosphere

...have struck again. Today Kinsella, Cherniak, and Ted of Cerebus are attempting what seems to be a coordinated gang smear of Cheri DiNovo, NDP candidate in the upcoming Parkdale High by-election, which is being held to fill Gerard Kennedy's seat. Their accusations/insinuations against Ms. DiNovo are two-fold. The first is that--based on a couple of lines from her book Qu(e)erying Evangelism: Growing a Community From the Outside In--she appears to be soft on axe murderers. This accusation I will leave to one side, except to note that, if Ms. Dinovo comes out and "clarifies" her stance on axe-murderers, Ted for one is willing to let matters lie.

The other line of criticism concerns Ms. DiNovo's past; she has admitted to having once been a drug dealer. Not only that, according to Ted and Jason, during a recent address to students at an alternative high school called SEE (Secondary Experimental Education), she advised the boys and girls on methods of smuggling LSD. From her sermon:

I think I did a really good job and I spoke for quite awhile and I said, "Okay, your turn, questions?" There was this silence and then one kid put his hand up and asked, "What drugs did you sell?" And I answered, "LSD that I imported in hollowed out Bibles (the first introduction I had to the Bible) and back then it was the good stuff, not the kind of crap you kids do." That happened this week.

Now I, like Ted, do not see a problem with Ms. DiNovo's past as a drug dealer per se. In fact I think the NDP, if they ever want to be a credible Centrist party, absolutely must look to recruit candidates with some background in the world of Business, so their choice here is to be applauded.

And, unlike Ted, Jason, et al, I am not really disturbed by the "advice" Ms. DiNovo gave these young people. For one thing, she's right, the quality of Acid today is shitty, and the Youth oughtta know it. Back in the Golden Age, the mid-70s, a quarter hit of Purple Microdot from San Fran could induce visions of Jesus and all twelve apostles. But kids today are a bunch of punks with green hair, shaved chests, and rings through their noses. They wouldn't know a mystical experience if it came up and bit 'em in the ass. Good on Ms. DiNovo for telling it straight!

For another thing, the advise she's giving them doesn't seem very useful. Who would use a bible to smuggle hits, unless you disguised your stache as a single page or a fold-in insert?

Or maybe back then she was dealing in Tabs, and was hiding them in a hollowed out center of the Good Book. I don't know how things work in TO, but on the Left Coast the trade was done strictly via sheets of blotting paper, which you can hide just about anywhere. Mind you, this system had its own problems. I once spent $20 on some "Red Decal" that I bought off a drunk in a bar. It was a little red star on a square of paper that was shiny on one side, and when I ate it I noticed that the red star came off on my tongue. Not only that, many is the time I've bought little pieces of cigarette package for $5 apiece.

And the funny thing is, a few minutes later you can never find the guy that sold them to you!

Anyway, smuggling Acid in a bible is bulky and counter-intuitive. You can bring the stuff in a million better ways. I even knew one fellow that infused an old jean jacket, wore it over the border, then cut it up and sold the pieces as "Heavenly Denim".

So my only concern with Ms. DiNovo is that maybe she wasn't a very good drug dealer. Why else would she be running for office in the first place if she'd been able to make a real go of it? Why isn't she lounging around in swim trunks in a 100 foot yacht off of Cuba?

But what Ted, Jason, and Kinsella have insinuated... Man, I'd say it was snakey if I didn't like snakes.