Klandernacht

In the world of the blogs Paul Wells kicked it off Christmas day, revealing a High Powered Liberal insiders racist blog attacking other party candidates of colour. By the end of the weekend it resulted in the shutting down of his blog and his resignation for offensive racist comments and pictures of both an NDP candidate and a Conservative who were NOT white folks. Mike Klander resigned according to the Globe and Mail butLiberal spokesman Stephen Heckbert said: Mr. Klander, who could not be reached for comment, has a strong record of inclusiveness, he said. Yep he included people of colour in his attacks and only people of colour.

His intention was to have a humorous site with some biting humour that he and some fellow Liberals could [read]. He recognized there's a couple of things that crossed the line."

Well his blog was PUBLIC, he had not made it private, dummy, and even if he had made it as an inside party joke well its still racist and offensive. For a cross section of responses from the right and left in the blogosphere check here.

The Globe and Mail header is also misleading; Liberal resigns over vulgar blog

Vulgar denotes common, or bad taste, which is make light of what Mr. Klander really did. His blog was Racist, in the extreme. And aimed so. Against others. Comparing Olivia Chow with a Chinese Chow dog, with pictures is not vulgar, it is obscene and racist. If any thing wit was certainly not an off colour joke, but a joke at the expense of people of colour running in this election. But then what do you expect from the Globe and Mail with their connections to the Liberal campaign.

What was vulgar was Scott Reids remarks about Beer and Popcorn. Mr. Klander went even further over the edge. And got caught. So far the blogs in this election have had quite an impact contrary to comments made by Warren Kinsella.

The word vulgar now brings to mind off-color jokes and offensive epithets, but it once had more neutral meanings. Vulgar is an example of pejoration, the process by which a word develops negative meanings over time. The ancestor of vulgar, the Latin word vulgāris (from vulgus, “the common people”), meant “of or belonging to the common people, everyday,” as well as “belonging to or associated with the lower orders.” Vulgāris also meant “ordinary,” “common (of vocabulary, for example),” and “shared by all.” An extension of this meaning was “sexually promiscuous,” a sense that could have led to the English sense of “indecent.” Our word, first recorded in a work composed in 1391, entered English during the Middle English period, and in Middle English and later English we find not only the senses of the Latin word mentioned above but also related senses. What is common may be seen as debased, and in the 17th century we begin to find instances of vulgar that make explicit what had been implicit. Vulgar then came to mean “deficient in taste, delicacy, or refinement.” From such uses vulgar has continued to go downhill, and at present “crudely indecent” is among the commonest senses of the word.


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