Sunday, April 27, 2008

When dishonest bloggers blog dishonestly.


As a followup to the previous post, I thought it was worth examining more intimately the rampant dishonesty of one Shane Edwards of The Politic, particularly his unseemly habit of -- how shall I put this delicately? -- making shit up. Specifically, I refer to his predilection for inventing alleged quotes out of thin air.

Starting here, we find Shane making shit up in the very body of his post, first with a quoted reference to the word "culture." But following the link under that word takes you here, where the only use of that word occurs in a trackback to the original article above, which I'm sure we can all agree doesn't constitute a valid quoted reference. In short, Shane insisted on "quoting" something which, in fact, did not exist. But it only gets better.

Immediately thereafter, Shane quotes the phrase "lifestyle choice," but the link underneath takes you, not to anything related to the issue in question, but here -- a piece that is not only wholly unrelated to schools in Toronto but which, amusingly enough, doesn't contain the phrase "lifestyle choice" anywhere on the page.

Being called on the above blatant fabrications, Shane responds unbelievably with (and I quote):

What would you call it when the position is “these children, because of their race, are incapable of learning in the public school environment”?

In case I wasn’t being clear, I categorically and fundamentally disagree with them AND the moronic McGuinty government that has consented to this “apartheid-style” educational policy.

Yes ... as hard to believe as it might be, Shane defends his fabrication of quotes by (ha! ha!) inventing more quotes that don't exist.


And as much fun as it might be to give folks like Shane enough rope to hang themselves by their nads, it might really be time for The Politic's head honcho Greg Farries to finally step in and discipline the children, and explain to them how grown-ups behave. And while he's at it, he might have a word with Matthew as well. One petulant fibber is trouble enough, but no one should have to put up with two of them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Calls to Greg Farries to step in and do anything are pointless, I've traded email with him concerning exceedingly racist statements some of his "authors" have come out with and his position is that he's essentially "hands off".

Disagreeing with something that has been written on the site has become pointless (this wasn't always the case) and, IMO, at this point they're better left out in right field where people of that ilk are happy with each other.

CC said...

stageleft:

That's an interesting position to take -- that everyone's responsible for their own content. That's akin to saying that you shouldn't use one person's writings to tar others, but these are the same people who absolutely delight in smearing "leftards" in general based on the most obscure discovery out there in the blogosphere.

What a fascinating double standard.