The cone of silence

Russell Wangersky — he's not even one of the Newfoundland Wangerskies — takes long-overdue stock of the Premier's many outbursts:

There’s any number of opposition politicians who have been publicly jeered and derided. There are judges who dared to make rulings in cases, only to have their measured and considered verdicts dismissed as being the result of waking up on the wrong side of the bed.

There are private citizens who have been phoned directly after they had the audacity to exercise their freedom of speech and write letters to the editor criticizing government policy.

Such is the behaviour of Tim Powers' old pal Mr. Decency, to which catalogue, CFA Wangersky could easily have added the Wade Verge Friendly Fire Incident of 2009.

However, isn't it a bit odd — more than a bit odd, in fact — that other than in this and another elliptical editorial reference two years ago, there has been no follow-on coverage, and no attempt to hard-report, that curious phenomenon of phone calls to private citizens.

In the nine provinces of Canada where such Duplessistic tactics have not, in the 21st century, become tacitly accepted through the silence and acquiescence of the media, civil society and the public at large, that kind of thing, from any of their provincial premiers, would attract hard-news attention from their corresponding local political press galleries and elected opposition.

And lots of it.