I wrote this over at Ben’s this morning about the relative hugeness of the refusal of Federal finance minister Ralph Goodale to step aside while the RCMP conducts a criminal investigation into a possible leak of information from his department:
It really should be the only thing so far that is huge since the writ dropped. “Beer and popcorn” and a blogging fool were personal stupidities. This is a criminal investigation of a cabinet minister. Is there a problem with the non-stop accusations of the blogosphere that we can no longer tell the difference? Hey – I am going to make a post about that…gimme it back…gimme…it…back (pop!). There.
The dangers of blogging this time is to those invoved in the all scandal all the time crowd that cannot tell a big problem from a little one. So far the GOTCHA moments have been, first, an unkind (but technically correct) comment by a high placed government-side staffer about another party’s proposals on child care and, second, a resignation over a really, really stupid series of blog postings by a slightly less well placed government-side staffer who actually jumped on his sword fairly quickly. These two gotchas add up to zippo.
But Ralph’s situtation is different. For the background of the story, read Stephen Taylor’s post of 15 December. What is being alleged is some sort of leak to the marketplace allowing certain investors to make a bundle before an official announcement. Didn’t Martha do jail time for just saying something like that didn’t happen, regardless of the findings of whether she participated in it?
Lesson for blogosphere: this is what big looks like.