I am still alive, conscious, and coherent!
One book manuscript is done, and I am taking photographs for it. The other book is over a quarter done, and should be done in a couple of weeks.
After that, I will need a bit of a rest and recalibration.
Lots of garbage passing off as journalism and politics, but most have not compelled me to break my hiatus.
I came across this two-part knee-slapper about the murder of a Dundas couple from the Hamilton Spectator and it is pure delusional and arrogant bullshit.
It is typical of journalistic stenography when Establishment types who want to intimidate a target — regardless of innocence or guilt — by using a media campaign against them. Journalists, like good little puppets, always comply.
When my family sued the city after what paramedics did to my grandmother, all of a sudden, our case was slapped on the front page, even though it was not actually newsworthy. There were and are other cases of paramedics being sued in Ontario (I know because I went down to the courthouse to have a look) and for the exception of one, most never made news.
But the Spec drooled over the stronger and wealthier side, of course, meaning City Hall. Our lawyer advised us not to talk to the paper, but I wouldn’t have anyway. I know who these people are because I wrote a column for them and saw everything up close. The paper quoted one source who also went on to defend some shady criminal characters as well, which I have written about here previously.
The reporter pretty much got everything wrong, of course. The article did nothing but rely on authorities and parrot them brainlessly. It was free advertising about how grand, glorious and hard-working paramedics are, as if we were lazy do-nothings.
No, assholes, we were working 24/7 looking after a woman whose catastrophic injuries made her completely disabled and bed-ridden. They are just paramedics, not saints. They also have cushy government jobs and often make the Sunshine List. My mother and I weren’t living it up changing my grandmother’s diapers and feeding her because she could not feed herself. She was a prisoner in her own body, but fully alert and aware.
My mother was upset by the coverage. I knew what the city’s gambit was, and also knew that the Spec cannot give away their newspapers; so I took it in stride.
But my mother, months later, got in touch with the reporter and gave her side and wanted to show the results of what happened to us. Needless to say, they never bothered with a follow-up.
We weren’t the Man, after all.
So back to the articles of pure trash about the Dundas double homicide.
This passage is pure deceptive doublespeak and arrogance:
In recreating the night of the fire that killed Alan and Carla Rutherford, the search for a suspect in their deaths and the ripple effects the fire and the killings had on others, the Hamilton Spectator spent months speaking to multiple sources with knowledge of the family and the case, along with experts.
Some sources are confidential because they fear reprisal.
The Spectator independently verified all details.
The Spectator has also examined public financial, property, court and employment records and sifted through social media posts.
No, you didn’t. How are you exactly qualified to “independently verify” it? Are you trained or licensed? What empirical methods did you use? Are you police? Forensic psychiatrists?
No?
The fact that you needed to puke that passage out tells me everything I need to know. This is a ruse to sound as if you did something different and were authorities whose word meant something, and it doesn’t. This is a manipulative tactic and a feint, nothing more.
And how did you define “independently verify”? Talk to a second cop? Read a press release? That is an empty, garbage term. I do not recall you doing that when discussing what happened to my grandmother.
Did you see the photographic evidence we had? Did you read the hospital reports or spoke to experts on the matter?
Nope. You interviewed irrelevant parties who had no knowledge or expertise on the matter. They were there as cheerleaders to the men who dropped my grandmother, and you never once independently verified a thing.
But the faux authoritative babble of the Rutherford murder is cringeworthy. You looked at social media posts? Any motherfucker can do that. That is not an actual thing.
The purpose of articles such as this one is simple: put the pressure on the target, in this case the man arrested for the murders. You try to taint public perceptions in a bid to isolate that person and make them do what you want them to do. It is a strong arm psychological siege and the press always dutifully complies. You will always notice that everything is from the perspective of the Authority’s narrative, not the facts, and certainly nothing presented that ever refutes the theory.
The Spec is not an actual investigative body. It is just a few writers who suck up to police or government sources and then puke out whatever will make the source happy. When it is criminals involved, most people don’t care, but they should because this practice is deceptive and makes the press sound as if they are something they are not or have any business of being: Authorities who determine what narrative is socially acceptable.
I can talk about the glaring flaws and holes of both those articles, but I won’t. I will save those inconsistencies for another day, and even another book. The Spec cut my pay check in the 1990s. I wrote about them for Presstime in the early aughts. My family was traumatized by them a few years ago when they kicked an old, diasbled woman as she lay dying. I know who these people are and they do not impress me or have one grain of my respect.
I do not buy their self-serving decrees. It is a ruse, and one that is easily deconstructed. Real experts frown on using journalistic sources for a reason.
