Ottawa

And a good metamorning to y’all, too.

While we wait not so patiently for Ekos to release this week’s tracking poll — oh please, please, please let there be some sort of movement to wildly overanalyse, if only so ITQ doesn’t have to hit the thesaurus to come up with more ways to describe utter stasis — a few notes from the morning newswanderings:

  • The Globe and Mail would seem to agree that the recent race to the very bottom of the political barrel in Barrie was, indeed, just plain awful, which, somewhat counterintuitively, actually makes ITQ  feel the teeniest bit better about the whole appalling interlude,  simply because … hey, everyone! Look! We found The Line! Or a line, at least. Baby steps, right?
  • Now that Stephen Taylor has officially denied any involvement in Republicans For Ignatieff, can we move on to the other, no less intriguing theories behind its origins? I knows, I know: Why expend so much mental energy on an anonymously-created site? Because it’s going to drive ITQ quietly — or not so quietly — crazy until she, or someone else, finally figures it out, that’s why — and yes, to answer the question posed to her by press gallery colleague — and fellow Hot Room Denizen — Deborah Gyapong on her blog, we would be just as freakishly obsessed by “astroturfing on the progressive or liberal side of the spectrum”. In fact, if she had read what we’ve actually written about R4I so far, she’d know that, at the moment, ITQ’s best guess is still that the site is, in fact, a jab from the left, not the right.
  • On the other hand, notwithstanding what certain prime ministers have suggested, ITQ just isn’t buying the claim that Wafergate was a sinister plot to sow dissent between Catholics and Protestants, and finds the evidence assembled to back it up to be somewhat wanting. The prime minister was in the frame for the Communion shot because he’s the prime minister, for heaven’s sake — and the camera didn’t even stay on him for more than a few seconds.

Oh, and coming later today, ITQ reveals deep, dark journalistic secrets in her far-too-long-and-indulgent-to-inflict-on-the-comment-thread response to yesterday’s post on Memetracker. Whee!

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