Vaughn Palmer - judging the Premier by her sex

[Fisher-Dude]

Judging a premier by her sex becoming a Vaughn Palmer specialty




The Vancouver Sun’s provincial political columnist seems bent on judging B.C. premier Christy Clark by her sex alone. This week his free pass to Clark’s male rival on a question of personal ethics brought into sharp contrast his steadfast unwillingness to acknowledge Clark’s political accomplishments when they happen. What’s up with that?

In a scorching critique of a kind that B.C. press gallery scribes almost never level against each other, Palmer’s fellow press gallery writer Tom Fletcher summarized a recent Palmer column about Clark’s former communications director Sarah MacIntyre in a way that was remarkably candid.


“Sad to report that after Global TV took out MacIntyre in a classic hit piece, the Vancouver Sun decided to drag her body through the street, Mogadishu-style,” wrote the Black Press columnist.

“The Sun’s eminent Vaughn Palmer retailed her plaintive e-mails, supplied by the NDP, in which she asked for a job description and length-of-stay expectations in the wake of her sudden transfer to a ministry communications shop.”

Palmer was the agent of a Dec. 4 NDP personal attack on MacIntyre, which made up the substance of his so-called Mogadishu column.

What Fletcher politely leaves out is some breathtaking hypocrisy on Palmer’s part, since only two months ago Palmer was hailing B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix’s “new” style of leadership in which Dix supposedly forbade the B.C. NDP from using material of a personal or personnel nature.

And that is why B.C. Political Reports is wading into this issue for the second day in a row. But don’t worry, fresh ground is being covered.

The leak of the the MacIntyre emails represented a total and transparent reversal of Dix’s fleeting dalliance with the art of respectful campaigning, dealing as they do with the former Clark communications director’s emails looking into her own employment status following what was obviously for her a difficult change of assignment.


The day after the column, Palmer popped up on CKNW radio to demonstrate once again that it is of no interest to him what Clark actually does as Liberal premier – or how low Dix and his NDP staffers are willing to stoop.

Host Philip Till’s chosen topic Dec. 5 was the gap shown in public opinion polls between men and women when it comes to Christy Clark – that apparently she does better with men than with women, by a wide margin.

Palmer: “Women don’t like that excessively aggressive, in-your-face style of campaigning, whereas men may actually enjoy that. So that’s a factor here too, Philip.”

The columnist said he has talked to women who think Clark is inauthentic, phony, and aggressive.

Palmer’s analysis: ”I think women like Adrian Dix’s more conciliatory style.”

So instead they prefer Dix’s slimy tactics of securing personal, personnel emails so as to attack female government employees? A conciliatory style consisting of cheap, deeply personal attacks? Amazing.

Pause for a moment to consider for a moment the actual job performance of Dix versus Clark on one key issue.

The most significant economic news in early December, and possibly all of 2012, was the Dec. 4 announcement by state-owned Petronas of Malaysia that it is going to partner with Canadian-based Progress to develop what may prove to be British Columbia’s first liquefied natural gas terminal.

Naturally, Palmer would want to analyze news of a $9-billion B.C. project moving ahead, right?

After all, he had flagged it as an important issue back in early October when he wrote:


“A year after first launching an LNG strategy, Clark continues to insist her government is ‘focused single-mindedly’ on bringing it to fruition. She’s also upped estimated benefits from the billions to an even trillion dollars and the number of potential terminals from three to five.”

Palmer wasn’t buying it. As far as he was concerned, Clark was spinning a pipe dream: ”Rather than indulging her penchant for hyperbole, Clark would be wiser to focus single-mindedly on getting even one terminal signed, sealed and delivered. Otherwise, B.C. risks being the chump on LNG, once again.”

Palmer’s entire knowledge base on LNG appeared to based on the single wire story out of a petroleum industry convention in Alberta that he cited.

Had he assembled a body of insight like, for example, that of his colleague the Sun’s resources reporter Scott Simpson, he might have brought a more valuable perspective. Here is what Simpson recently concluded in a broad-ranging analysis piece published just a few days before the Petronas-Progress deal was announced:


“B.C., even without the rest of Canada, could emerge as one of the world’s top five producers if its LNG projects reach full capacity.”

In his Dec. 1 2012 overview piece, Simpson quoted the B.C. operations manager of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Geoff Morrison: ”We need to get that infrastructure built. It’s new for us but there is an existing market right now.” Simpson reported that a Clark-driven change to the Clean Energy Act had given the LNG industry confidence that progress could be made.


Anything else? Well, she made it a centrepiece of her jobs plan, there is an LNG conference planned for February looking at the opportunity, and various provincial ministers and ministries have weighed in with contributions toward making a very complex set of conditions fall into place. These are conditions that the B.C. NDP could not possibly hope to deliver, as has been demonstrated in this past B.C. Political Reports post and hinted at by Palmer in this column about NDP policy on fracking.

Did Palmer see in the Petronas-Progress announcement an opportunity for himself to get up to speed with what was happening? Maybe he could even spin it as Clark saying: ”Hey, great idea from Vaughn to stop it with the hyperbole and actually do something for a change on this issue!”

Apparently not – the deal seems to be of no interest whatsoever, on any terms. Palmer remained content to let stand his unfounded slagging of Clark two months earlier for having harebrained ambitions, with no willingness at all to bring his readers up to date with his take on things.

Maybe that’s because something far more significant happened in Palmer’s world to supply a topic for his column following the Petronas-Progress deal: Adrian Dix had a brain fart.

As the week continued, it appeared that Palmer had an iron determination to judge Clark by her sex. In his next column he offered a lame rationalization for why he is quick write about a male politician’s policies but steadfastly ignores an obvious policy accomplishment when it comes from a woman. Writing about “the data” from polls showing Clark’s evident trouble with women voters (nearly a week after it was news), it is a classic piece of self-justification:


“I raise them as part of an effort to better understand one of the defining concerns of Christy Clark’s 21-months and-counting tenure as premier, namely her troubles with women voters.”

It seems that when it comes to the analytical framework of B.C.’s leading political commentator, there is but one lens for considering Clark – that of her sex.

[George+]

SOURCE??

Oh...BOO HOO!!

[Urbane]

We've certainly seen the sexism on here and it's been brutal. There sure are a lot of people on the far left who have trouble with the concept of women in leadership roles. It's particularly disappointing to see a female poster being the most sexist of all.

[Logitack]

LOL @ Fisher

http://bcpoliticalreports.com/2012/12/0 ... onsistent/

still using the liberal spin blog site eh....
notice these cowards wont even reveal who is writing this piece....

considering that palmer has been writing on behalf of the *bleep* party for the past 12 years, now they are turning on him? typical liberal tactic...do what we want or else....trait of the *bleep* bully

[George+]

And Boo Hoo for C.C., too

On CKNW she was one of the biggest carping critics ever.

[NAB]

LOL @ Fisher

http://bcpoliticalreports.com/2012/12/0 ... onsistent/

still using the liberal spin blog site eh....
notice these cowards wont even reveal who is writing this piece....

considering that palmer has been writing on behalf of the *bleep* party for the past 12 years, now they are turning on him? typical liberal tactic...do what we want or else....trait of the *bleep* bully

LOL. There is no "Us", "We", "Our" or "these cowards" behind the bcpoliticalreports site. Just one highly biased blogging pretender with no proven public credibility or credentials pushing an anti NDP agenda. Still, it is always fun to speculate who might be anonymously feeding him material and paying the freight ;-) I rather doubt it is the NDP or the unions though.

Nab

[George+]

The Liberals are into a massive feed of their spin on everything criticized, in any way.

They would be much better off to take the high road and accept some responsibility.

From the TV ads,...that ain't going to happen.

[logicalview]

The Liberals are into a massive feed of their spin on everything criticized, in any way.

They would be much better off to take the high road and accept some responsibility.

From the TV ads,...that ain't going to happen.

Responsibility for what? I Am still waiting for the NDP to accept responsibility for running BC into the ground in the 1990's. Even though the Nutless Wonder forged a memo and was fired for it, he won't accept any responsibility either.

[George+]

Nothing.
According to the Fiberals.
But not anyone else.

[Urbane]

Responsibility for what? I Am still waiting for the NDP to accept responsibility for running BC into the ground in the 1990's. Even though the Nutless Wonder forged a memo and was fired for it, he won't accept any responsibility either.

I was just thinking about the story of the guy who kept telling his girlfriend that her cooking was almost as good as his mother's and each time she cooked a steak for him she tried harder to get it just right. One day she burned the steak but before she could throw it out he grabbed it, tasted it, and proclaimed, "Finally, just like mother used to make." Well, that's the way with the NDP'ers on here. The NDP will once again run our economy into the ground and then the leftists on here will tell us that the golden years are back.
:dyinglaughing:

[George+]

We are pretty much into the ground from the last 10 years.
Billions in deficit. WITH balanced budgets!

[Urbane]

We are pretty much into the ground from the last 10 years.
Billions in deficit. WITH balanced budgets!

Wait a minute. You've said you're in favour of borrowing more money to pay for higher teacher salaries etc. Have you changed your mind? You're okay now with no teacher salary increases for a few years to help pay down the debt?

[George+]

Not borrowing....taxing.
Back to pre liberal levels.

[NAB]

Not borrowing....taxing.
Back to pre liberal levels.

Hmmmm, maybe you have just convinced me to change my mind and vote Liberal again after all George :-)

Nab

[Urbane]

Not borrowing....taxing.
Back to pre liberal levels.

Yes, I know that you want taxes to go way up but you also said that the government owns lots of stuff and that they could borrow more money. Are you saying now that you want to see balanced budgets? And are you saying that you want to see us pay down our debt? Even if that means no salary increases for teachers? Or do you want us to borrow more money? If you don't want us to borrow money how much do you want to see taxes go up? I'll eagerly await your answers.