Angry in the Great White North

We now know that the CBC is satisfied that the allegations against Krista Erickson are true.  She did indeed write questions that Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez repeated at the Commons ethics committee hearings, forcing Brian Mulroney to answer a reporter's questions while under the power of the committee charged to investigate Karlheinz Schreiber.

It certainly made the CBC look like a partisan partner of the Liberal Party, out to get the Conservatives. Doubly so when you realize the questions Erickson wrote out for Rodriguez to deliver had nothing whatsoever to do with Karlheinz Schreiber, and were specifically designed to direct the attention of the committee to Brian Mulroney's relationship with the current government.

For this, Krista Erickson has been identified publicly, and she has been pulled from her Ottawa assignment and sent to Toronto.  No doubt her career will suffer for quite some time.  Indeed, she might never completely recover from this.

As for Pablo Rodriguez?  Even if he admitted to the truth, there is not much that could be done.  He doesn't work for the CBC.  Partisan Liberals would forgive him in an instant.  Conservatives would ridicule him, but they'll do that anyway.

So for Pablo Rodriguez, maintaining this fiction that he wrote the questions achieves nothing.  Being honest, though, might help Krista Erickson.

But still Pablo Rodriguez won't come clean about dealing with Krista Erickson:

Rodriguez, however continued to insist that he wrote his own questions.

"One thing is sure, we get information from a lot of people and at the end of the day we choose what we ask as questions and that's exactly what I did," he said.

"At the end of the day I wrote the final questions. We get information from a lot of people, from a lot of sources and that's what we do all the time."

He refused to comment on the CBC's disciplinary action.

"I really don't know the details. That's really within CBC."

So let me get this straight.  Pablo Rodriguez won't admit to being Krista Erickson's sock puppet.

Fine.

He's insisting that he wrote his own questions.

Fine.

So is Pablo Rodriguez calling this a travesty of justice, and that Krista Erickson is innocent of the charges?

No.

So is Pablo Rodriguez demanding that the CBC reverse the actions taken against Krista Erickson?

No.

So is Pablo Rodriguez promising that he will take action as a member of parliament to see that Krista Erickson is not made to suffer for a transgression that she did not commit?

No.

Pablo Rodriguez refuses to acknowledge any action taken by the CBC, and claims to have no interest whatsoever in what happens to Krista Erickson as punishment for having allegedly worked with him to ask questions of Brian Mulroney.

For Pablo Rodriguez, this is an internal CBC matter of no concern to him.

Can you imagine anything slimier than this?  Pablo Rodriguez is happy to let Krista Erickson take the fall.  He won't lift a finger in her defense.  He won't even take the time to say that what is happening to her is unfair, given that he is still refuting the allegations for which she has been punished.

Why?

Because Pablo Rodriguez wants this to go away.  Pablo Rodriguez really couldn't care less if Krista Erickson's career goes down the toilet.

Pablo Rodriguez got his questions.  Pablo Rodriguez got his five minutes in front of the cameras.

And now that the attention has gotten a tad uncomfortable, Pablo Rodriguez has got his patsy.

He's a coward.  Maybe it seems old-fashioned and even sexist, but hiding behind a woman?  Letting her take the lashing while watching from a safe distance?  Refusing to mitigate her situation even slightly by at least admitting that he bears a part of the responsibility?

Pablo Rodriguez is a coward.  Worse yet, Pablo Rodriguez is a coward who hides behind women.  Pablo Rodriguez is the antithesis of a gentleman.

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