The source material is obviously lost in the ether and as a general rule, double hearsay is not particularly reliable, but that is what is out there.

Again, nothing personal, but I find that the taxpayer-funded CBC has a particuar viewpoint which – intentionally or not – you appear to have expressed.

Tod replies: Ah, thanks for the source link. That does indeed look like the kind of joke I’d do. In fact, the “strikeout gag” is used by at least two many, many bloggers.

If I really meant to delete the reference to the Conservative party, I’d have deleted it. Leaving it in with a strikeout is meant to be satirical. Usually I put a smiley after those things so Conservative party members the general public get the joke.

However, it appears that during the CBC lockout in 2005 the Globe and Mail had a poll regading the relevance of the CBC and you suggested that Conservatve Party members were driving the No vote and that was a bad thing. From the different ways I have read it, you inferred that the conservatives were not part of the general public, or that the conservatives “overwhemled” the poll, although that term may have been attributed to you.

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Tod’s reply:

Hi Clark,

Thanks for the reply.

Actually the Globe and Mail article you referenced was a misquote — and a pretty egregious one at that. If you read the comments on that specific article, you’ll find that even the reporter himself who did the interview agreed it was inaccurate.

Sadly, Globe executives refused to make a correction either in the newspaper or in the online edition, so that error (again, even admitted by the reporter) stands in the public record.

That is why I no longer do interviews with the Globe and Mail.

One enterprising blogger (a left-leaning one, for the record) somehow discovered that I gave money to the NDP during the last election, and inferred that I am an NDP supporter. What she failed to realize was that I donated $5 to each of the four leading parties, as part of a technology column to see how well their e-commerce donation web sites worked. All is not what it seems, eh?

Please cite where I used “democratic expression” or any similar headline?

I’d have called it a takeover regardless of political leaning.

But there is no need for that name to be real. Try doing a search for “anonymous.” I got 39 names including “Anonymously Anonym” and “Tee-Tee AnonymousZ.” (Maybe they know the slew of “Joe Schmoe”s.)

I don’t put a lot of stock in these kind of social barometers for the same reason that Darren mentioned: they are easily hijacked. Frankly, I consider it to be a waste of time.

Unlike many web polls where you can vote repeatedly and/or anonymously, this one requires you to put your name on the list.