Angry in the Great White North

Everyone recalls the disastrous interview between Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion and ATV's Steve Murphy.  During that interview, Stephane Dion seemed unable, or unwilling, to answer the question of what he would have done differently if he was prime minister when the big market slide took place just a week before the vote.

CTV aired that segment on Mike Duffy Live, and Mike Duffy too a lot of heat for it.  Andrew Potter of Maclean's got particularly personal:

Mike Duffy is a despicable human being

For Shame.

The only saving grace is that James Moore refused to be drawn in. Good on him. Mike Duffy is disgusting.

UPDATE: This is worse than the Chretien face-paralysis attack ad. CTV just won Dion the election.

UPDATE AGAIN: Here’s the clip, for those who missed it.

AND AGAIN: And as for the Tory spindorks, have their brains completely fallen out? How on earth do they think this is going to play in Quebec? Quebecers don’t much like Dion, but to have a bunch of rubes mocking the man for his poor grasp of English — yeah, they’re going to love that in Repentigny. They’ll be slapping their thighs in the Gaspe.

Honest to god.

Two points.

First, it is obvious Andrew Potter now that utterly misread the effect the video would have.

Second, Potter was vicious.  Despicable?

Interestingly, the posting is now gone.

Of course, it is still in the Google cache.

Did CTV get in touch with Maclean's and tell them that the posting crossed the line?  Or did Maclean's management have second thoughts, perhaps about the suitability of the language?  Or perhaps management had doubts that Andrew Potter was even right on the issue of airing the interview from a journalistic point of view.

Maybe Andrew Potter himself had second thoughts.

Right now there is no way to know.  All we can be certain of is that Maclean's is no longer hosting a post in which CTV's Mike Duffy is called despicable.

Infer from that what you will.

Update: Kady O'Malley "concurred entirely" with Andrew Potter's post.  Kady's blog posting has also been removed, and only remains in the Google cache.

It would seems that Maclean's is pulling back from the criticism, or at least the personal tone.  Cooler heads prevailing, or a threat of legal action?  Who knows, but I'm going with cooler heads for now.