Even though he hasn't been leader of a political party for more than two years, the media can't stop looking for ways to bash Stockwell Day over the head with a cudgel. The latest whack: this wire story -- versions of which are in today's papers -- suggesting, quite tenuously, that Day didn't offer condolensces on the death of Yasser Arafat because he might have had AIDS.
Day is the foreign affairs critic for the Conservative Party.
Cited in the story is an email Day apparently sent to caucus members, which included in it this David Frum article, first published in the National Post.
In the article, which was an op-ed on Arafat's disgraceful record of support for terrorism, one paragraph out of 12 mentions the curious silence about the cause of Arafat's sickness, and repeats a claim that Arafat has AIDS -- a claim that originates with a former Romanian intelligence chief, not Frum.
For the Canadian Press to turn this into a "story" containing the lede: "Stockwell Day is pointing to a published report that includes the suggestion that Yasser Arafat had AIDS in explaining why he didn't send condolences on the death of the PLO leader" is a giant stretch, not to mention unprofessional.
This drive-by shooting ranks up there with Paul Hunter's disgraceful "documentary" on Day that appeared on CBC's The National during the 2000 federal election, in which years-old innuendo about Day and his religious beliefs were recycled to scare voters away from the Canadian Alliance.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 11:25 AM
