Like the junior player who talks big but gets taken hard into the boards with a couple high elbows on his first shift on NHL ice, I’m back on the bench shaking the birdies out and reminding myself to keep my head up next time. Oh yeah, and I’ve taken down some numbers, too.
Peter O’Neil, Ottawa reporter with the Vancouver Sun, gave me a good face wash. Interviewing me for a story called “Pro-9/11 column may oust Green candidate,” he grew audibly distressed when I told him I am a journalist too, and I was in fact interviewing him at the same time.
The funny new-media/old-media exchange happened during our April 13 conversation when he repeatedly tried to lure me into saying something incriminating about my thoughts regarding 9/11 with his clumsy leading questions. (He’s not very good at it, at one point childishly stammering to me, “I interview senior politicians, you know!”). I replied by asking him if he is for or against corporatism and militarism. “I’m asking the questions!” he barked, before flatly refusing to answer anything further at all.
It turned out to be his boss, Vancouver Sun Chief Editor Patricia Graham, who was asking the questions: By the 17th, she was forced to print a correction explaining that the hapless and flustering O’Neil didn’t mean to fabricate the quote he couldn’t get from me: “Due to an editing error,” the correction on A2 states, “an April 14 story incorrectly attributed a quote to Kevin Potvin.” Editing error my ass.
In what he asked to be an off-the-record email to me, O’Neil tapped some poor unnamed copy editor: “The story was cut for length and in the editing process I assume a copy editor became confused,” he wrote me. “Just informing you of this, as a professional courtesy and hopefully off the record, as I would obviously not want to be known as someone who ‘fabricates’ quotes.” Don’t worry, Peter, I won’t tell anyone.
Oops, was that unprofessional of me? I must have got my training the same place Province columnist and CKNW talk show host Michael Smyth did. His show’s CKNW producer begged me to come on the radio to discuss Canadian foreign policy in light of 9/11. I made specific off-the-record comments to him that I wasn’t interested in being the butt of jokes if that was what Smyth had in mind. The precautionary request of course found its way into Smyth’s inflammatory over-the-top and libelous newspaper column in the Province called, “Greens must dump pro-al-Qaeda candidate.” Commenting on my rather benign request for a dignified conversation, Smyth ranted, “If there’s anything weirder than this guy’s behavior . . . .” Hold it, what? So it’s weird behavior now to insist on dignity? Yes, Virginia.
Like the Vancouver Sun, The Province was also forced to print a correction about me on April 17. They had exposed me to death threats by putting the name “Felix Potvin” under my picture. I’m totally suing.
In his story, Smyth writes, “Potvin refused to take questions from reporters” to substantiate his claim I was running and hiding. So far, his boss, Roz Guggi, has refused to take questions from me regarding the libel they printed in his article.
I’ve known Michael some time, and he knows me. He’s had me on his show before talking about important community issues I was involved with, like Gateway opposition, most recently, in my capacity as President of the Grandview Woodlands Area Council. What got up his nose?
I hesitate to bring up Brian Hutchinson from the National Post, he seems so vulnerable, like he’s still gaining points toward his Boy Scout Cub Reporter badge, and I don’t want to discourage him. “Some of Potvin’s supporters turned on waiting reporters” his frightened headline reports. Gosh! Could it really be that traumatic to face a couple of questions yourself after so gracelessly hounding me?
In a front page article, petulant Hutchinson resorted to name-calling, earning two demerits for his run for the Cub Reporter badge: “His ramblings about terrorism . . . show that he’s an unsavoury ignoramus.” This guy is so white-bread and west-side, he calls Cambie Street East Vancouver. A lovely woman, a citizen who took issue with his treatment of me, is dismissed as a “yelling” nut “with black and blue hair.” What’s he got against people’s hair? Dude, chill. See Smyth, he might have something to help you.
Here I thought I was stepping onto NHL ice, but this must be the Estonian B-League.
And here comes Lorne Gunter grunting down the boards skating on his ankles like the other National Post goons, a few days late but game to throw a hit all the same, no matter the whistle went long ago. “The malevolent rantings of Kevin Potvin,” Gunter steamed, “confirmed for most mainstream voters that, below its newly lacquered veneer of respectability, the Green Party harbours more than its fair share of Earth-worshipping, anti-American, anti-NAFTA, anti-war” types.
He said it like it’s a bad thing, as though I look just awful standing next to an Earth-abusing, pro-Bush, pro-NAFTA, pro-war type. I hesitate to go on, surely there is no comment necessary here.
Despite the Vancouver Sun’s printed correction of a crucial misquote, Gunter insisted, “There were no misquotes, just fanaticism being exposed to the light of day.” The National Post and the Vancouver Sun are published by the same company, CanWest. Communication breakdown, like the Led Zeppelin song goes.
Gunter, whom I admit to reading but with the same anticipation in mind I have while watching the beginning of a Nascar race when all the terrific car smash-ups happen, signed off with his best shot: “So, Mr Dion, what do you think of Kevin Potvin’s theories?” Yeah, Mr Dion, are you pro-war like Gunter and the National Post, or against war? Are you for the Earth, or do you, like Gunter and the National Post, see all that environmental “flakey” stuff as shameful “Earth-worshipping”?
Speaking of “flakiness,” Gunter, in his March 12 column in the National Post, admitted grudgingly that global warming may be happening, but blamed Jupiter and even Pluto for it, and dismissed any possible role in CO2-emitting industrial activity back here on Earth. Oh yoo-hoo, Lorne, back here on Earth, I said. Gunter must smoke way better stuff than Smyth and I. Hey Hutchinson, forget Smyth, go see Gunter.
As my Grade Two teacher used to say on days like this, “Lord, give me strength.”
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