Angry in the Great White North
Mike Duffy vs John Duffy: The Off-Camera Encounter
Wednesday, January 11, 2006 at 06:58 PM

Read other posts by Steve Janke published by the National Post
Leader

This afternoon on Charles Adler's program on CJOB, Mike Duffy appeared, and described what happened. Here is my transcript of the conversation:

[Starts with a replay of the "military" ad]

Charles Adler: That's the ad that implies that our soldiers are a bunch of thugs that intimidate the population. Mike Duffy on CTV Newsnet, his program is called Countdown. I'll happen to be on it later at 8pm Eastern time.

Mike Duffy, last night, had one of the Paul Martin "pantry boys" with him, a spokesperson for the prime minister, John Duffy, no relation to Mike.

Here's what happened.

[Plays the audio of famous confrontation]

Mike Duffy was scheduled to be on this program today, and I don't see any reason not to bring him on just because he had a confrontation with someone very close to Paul Martin last night.

Mike, we're going to talk about the election, but the audience needs to know what happened. A talk show host like myself are sometimes slagged as just being entertainers, tabloid, looking for a charge, confrontational for the sake of being confrontational.

That's not what you do. What did you do, and why did you do it, last night?

Mike Duffy: Well, I've sat and listened over the last thirty years to an awful lot of political BS, Charles, and for 99.99% of the time, I've been quiet, listened and let people do their thing, and trusted the judgment of the audience to make a decision as to who's right and who's wrong on the issues. But if you're not allowed to raise an issue, if you can't debate an issue because you're not allowed to raise it, you don't get a chance to put that issue in front of the Canadian public. In other words, it becomes a sin of omission.

And something that happened to me last night during the commercial break when I was alone in the TV studio with the studio crew. John Duffy ran in from the make-up room during the commercial break and began hectoring me. I was sitting down and he was standing up. He was putting the fingers in the eyeballs and saying "You will *not* raise this issue!" and blah-blah-blah.

The next thing they're yelling "Twenty seconds!" He runs out and I come back up on the air and try to do my job.

Later on, he comes on with the others and he starts at it again. And so that's why I gave the answer I gave. I don't want to be part of the news story but my philosophy is we put all the opinions on the table and let the people argue it out. The public is smart and they'll make their own decision. That's how it works in a democracy. But if you're not allowed to put an issue on the table because one of the participants physically threatens you then I don't think that's appropriate and that's why I said what I said and I really don't want to go down this road because I don't want this to be about me or John Duffy. We all have bad days in our lives and let's just get on with things.

Mike Duffy goes on to praise John Duffy as a skilled writer, thinker, and strategist. Mike Duffy clearly wants to put this behind him. John Duffy does too, I'll wager.

I suppose we should all do the same.

Oh well.

The audio file is available at the CJOB Audio Vault, January 11, 2pm. The Mike Duffy interview begins at the 44:10 mark.

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