You see, Twitter exploded Friday night when Sun News Network broadcast the story about NDP leader Jack Layton's adventures in a Dundas West rub and tug way back in 1996.
I follow about 300 people and the reactions to the story were fascinating. Blogging Tories and anyone associated with Quebecor (which owns the Sun chain of newspapers and Sun News Network) were doing victory laps, and pretty much everyone on the left were denying the obvious and contending that Layton was just having a regular old massage, which strains credulity when you put even a minimal amount of thought into it. A number of Sun personalities there were and are almost giddy about the Layton takedown, which actually serves to undermine the journalistic credibility of the whole story and makes it look like a hit job, regardless of its merits. Some people don't seem to know how not to overplay a good hand.
Ultimately, the story's out there and the voters get to decide what weight they give it tomorrow. If the NDP places first or second in as many ridings in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes as polls indicate they will, the story will have had either no effect or actually generated a sympathy vote for Layton. If their vote collapses in English Canada, we'll pretty clearly know why.
As for me, I don't think that Layton having his pud pulled is the interesting story here. Sure, it's hysterical and everything, but that's about it. I'm not as convinced that it will have the political impact that I initially did when the story broke Friday night. I love a freak show, and I tend to get carried away whenever I see the beginnings of one.
Now, the process story here is downright fascinating. And I don't think that just because it drives the Sun types up the wall, although that has a certain appeal as well. The way this story came together resurrects a particularly dark history involving the Toronto Police Service, their union, and local politicians. It also exposes, yet again, a terrifying axis involving cops, political hacks and journalists.
As soon as l'affaire Layton literally squirted into our collective consciousness, I knew that the federal Liberals were behind it for reasons that I explained in detail on Friday night. Given the logistics of the story being planted in the English Canada media; the fact that the Conservatives had a lot more to lose than to gain from their role being exposed later; and the tried but true concept of means, motive and opportunity, all roads of logical deduction lead to political team at Stornoway.
This was confirmed this weekend by Jonathan Kay of The National Post, who revealed on Twitter that a Grit operative pitched the story to him on October 12, 2008, which happened to be the home stretch of the the last federal election. Kay takes pains to point out that this happened before Michael Ignatieff's reign, but it stands to reason that if the party was willing to go to that well in the last campaign, they would try again in this one. And every single public poll in the last two weeks shows that they have an even greater motivation to do it again.
Having said that, one can hardly be surprised when sleazy political hacks act like sleazy political hacks. Just as you shouldn't blame a dog for licking its own balls, people become party operatives precisely because they're amoral and subhuman. That's why I love it so much when they get caught sucking a hooker's toes.
Besides Mr. Kay, Andrew Coyne of Macleans has said that he heard about this story two months ago and a former Liberal spin doctor associated with Michael Ignatieff has said that he was given the information two years ago. This story has gotten around quite a bit. The fact that Sun Media granted the source anonymity is routine, but not reporting the probable involvement of Liberal operatives in disseminating the story indicates that they're more interested in damaging the NDP politically than gathering news.
And surprise! It came from the cops. The source of the story detailing Jack Layton's extracurricular activities is a retired Toronto police officer from the Asian Gang Unit. The officer, who conveniently remained anonymous in the Sun story, illegally kept his notes for fifteen years and may have broken three laws - Breach of Trust, the Police Services Act and the Privacy Act - in handing those notes over to The Toronto Sun and Sun News Network. Yesterday, Police Chief Bill Blair asked the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate the Toronto Police end of the Layton story and it's publication in The Sun.
Do you think that Sun reporter Sam Pazzano and editor Lorrie Goldstein are willing to go to jail to protect their source? I don't.
In the absence of an arrest or criminal charges, the police are not supposed to be discussing their interactions with the citizenry, irrespective of their station. And that's doubly true when it comes to releasing that information to the media. There are police procedures and laws that specifically prohibit it.
There's a long history of this kind of thing happening in my city, although it hasn't been this flagrant. The cops here have long bridled against the idea that they're actually accountable to civilian oversight of any kind. And that phenomenon is even worse when the ideologies of their political masters don't match their own.
From 1996 until 2003, the head of the Toronto Police Association was a gentleman named Craig Bromell, and he had a rather colourful history of political involvement and resisting investigations by the province's Special Investigations Unit.
If you watch those videos from The Fifth Estate, it's noteworthy what Bromell was willing to actually admit in public and that should encourage you to imagine what he wasn't. Compiling dossiers of dirt against political opponents is a tactic made famous by J. Edgar Hoover, who was said to have used them to stay in charge of the FBI for almost a half century.
If the police can thwart the Special Investigations Unit and can terrorize not only the Deputy Chief of Police, but the elected councillors on the Police Services Board without consequence, the police are effectively without oversight and are accountable to no one. Members of the armed forces are precluded from public political involvement because anything else would undermine public confidence in the military, and the police should be no different. Section 46 of the Police Services Act is supposed to minimize the political reach of the police, but politicians are generally too afraid to enforce it and the media seems determined to ignore it.
Yes, Bromell is long gone, but there's no evidence that the culture he created ever changed in this city. If anything, the Layton saga indicates that it's alive and well.
By the way, tomorrow's election isn't the only game in town. There's an Ontario election this fall, and I'm pretty sure that the Ontario Liberals are taking notes on how the Jack Layton story plays out. I somehow doubt that Sun Media or any of the Blogging Tories would feel the way they do today if police notes about any of Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservative candidates started showing up in more liberal-leaning publications. As a matter of fact, I can assure you that they would very much want to make this a "process story" and be screaming from the rooftops about a "police state." It's never as much fun when it's your guy that takes the hit.
Well, I would be as outraged by such an eventuality as I am about this, mostly because I'm not a hypocrite. I understand politics better than most, and this only a primarily political story if you're an idiot. This is about the proper place of the police in the political food chain. Law enforcement has greater powers and resources than any political hack or news outlet ever will. And once you bring them into the process, you'll find that they'll very quickly take it over.
Today it's their guy that takes the hit, but eventually it's going to be yours. While you might think that you're riding the tiger, you just might find out that the tiger has different ideas about your destination.
Craig Bromell might be gone, but his political ghost haunts us still.
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