No, he's not actually irony-impaired

A very strange third attack on our very own Fern Hill has emanated from the keyboard of one Warren Kinsella. Suffice it to say that we all know that his irony-impaired act is totally disingenuous, and this is hardly the first time he's used this sort of tactic. You can rest assured that he knows that "good friend" is uttered in irony, and that he's playing some sort of game.

My theory is that he thinks that he's responsible for giving Fern some credibility from the whole Hudak business, and that he thinks that Fern is somehow basking in pleasure from his attention, and now that DJ has not proven a reliable ally to a Liberal buddy, he feels obliged to take away what he hilariously thinks he's given. And, likewise obligingly, the tedious Liberal authoritarian followers unsurprisingly follow suit. Couple that with Dawg's awesome act of totally sucking the wind out of WK's sails, and now it's personal, about his ego.

These sorts of tactics might work with buffoons who care and who live and die by what other people think of them, like Stockwell Day (nice takedown, guy), but for us at DJ, this is mainly rubberneckishly instructive, though admittedly less so than the actual megafail trainwreck that was the ProgBlog response to M312. Warren is a bright and very successful guy, but ultimately he too is limited by the things that brought him success, of which he is a clear product.

But DJ comes from another place and has another end. I have been a part of the Canadian political internet since the time when babble, the grandmother of the Canadian progressive internet, was itself young, and, in fact, quite a bit before that. This was also before FD, a site of whose "qualities" and "character" I am intimately familiar. I know very well what sort of loathesome little toads inhabit it, that disingenuous enabler git Connie Fournier included, I know that they mean people like me no good, and worse than no good.

Our Fern comes from the selfsame political culture that existed before Warren was ever any kind of player on the Canadian political internet and will probably exist after he retires from it. She too is well aware of what is at stake, is not a child on the interwebs, and can handle herself thankyouverymuch.

But, as I said, we should all take this as an instructive moment when the political culture of the traditional media and Parliament Hill meet the culture of internet debate and are shocked to discover that it is full of ordinary people with ordinary human relations. Thank you, Warren, for obligingly providing us this little reminder. Have fun with your quixotic little campaign. All of us, Fern included, will sit back and enjoy our popcorn.