But a simple typo in the Vancouver Sun can be quite hurtful to Peter Mackay:
Green party leader Elizabeth May has blasted onto the national scene like a rocket. But she'd better check with Mission Control because, electorally, she's charting a doomed course.
May has put Peter MacKay on notice: She's aiming in the next election to take his Nova Scotia seat out from under him.
The high-profile foreign affairs minister, a bachelor who repeatedly gets voted sexist man in the Commons, doesn't look worried. Nor should he be. The decision on May's part is folly.
Oops. Sexist?
Six times has MacKay been named the sexiest man in the House of Commons by The Hill Times. Normally you would dismiss a typo like this one, but MacKay has been targeted because of a misinterpreted cliche involving knitting, and again for allegedly calling former girlfriend Belinda Stronach a dog.
So I think that just as Peter MacKay has to be particularly careful about missteps that could be considered sexist, the media ought to be equally careful about accidently accusing him of being sexist. Remember that though you and I know it's a typo, Google and the other search engines do not. They'll index the page, and a word like sexist, which is far more valuable than a word like "it" or "the" in defining the subject matter of the page, will be associated with "MacKay". It's the sort of mistake that could hurt MacKay more than other people.
