Dispatch from the culture wars

I tried to file this post earlier, but all the boomtastic artillery barrages convinced me to hunker in the trenches awhile and picnic on delicious, delicious Spam instead. We coyotes like our bushy tails (and their attached asses) and are not above saving 'em by sittin' on 'em... I digress. It's a trademark. Deal with it.

Anyway, the big guns wheeled out a couple weeks back when an independent pollster interviewed on CBC was asked what he'd advise the Liberals to do in the face of recent government actions. He dropped the catchy soundbite, "Culture War!"

Conservative reaction was a collective howl to lynch - well, really, anybody not conservative - for even bringing the idea up.

Not long after, a conservative senator felt the need to tell pro-choice aid organizations to, quote, "Shut the fuck up" before they lose (even more) government support. Meanwhile, others in another quarter felt no such need for prudent silence - they held a big anti-abortion rally on Parliament Hill.

In the followup sideshow, CBC struck a panel to investigate itself for anti-Tory bias. This although pretty much every major private electronic and print media chain is currently held by proprietors much more conservative than not.

This speaks to semi-mythical coyotes of the onset, proper, of witch hunting season in the hamlet of Ottawa. The PM's backlog of spite and venge, and his unusual enthusiasm for blunt instruments wielded fast and capriciously, has a lot of semi-important, formerly semi-independent, people in this hamlet cowed. The truth of what "arms-length body" actually means in the face of a determined attack is sinkin' in.

Social conservatives everywhere seem to have gained a grandiose sense of aggrieved entitlement to an unbalanced concept of redress. Even in power, they plead that they're victims. The cognitive dissonance must be truly crippling.

But us coyotes, even with our semi-mythical tin hats jammed firmly down, don't have any trouble seeing who's pulling the firing lanyards on the heaviest cultural artillery in a generation. It really does look like a cultural war from out here in the trenches - just not the quite the one toward which the party in near-power is trying to misdirect your attention. It is well to remember that no matter how big the lie gets, ya gotta always pay attention to that guy behind the curtain... and not shut the fuck up about it.