"The journalist always gets the last word!"

Good Day Readers:

Found this interesting article reproduced by The Public Eye on Truth To Power (www.accesstoinfo.blogspot.com; vicpopuli1@gmail.com). Over the years we have met Mr. Lett on a few occasions, talked with him by telephone and exchanged many e-mail. He is quite knowledgeable on the ways of the Manitoba Metis Federation and it's lawsuit against CyberSmokeSignals.Kevin Engstrom has some very sage advice for Mr. Toews about getting into it with Dan Lett - "The journalist always gets the last word."

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk
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28 January 2010
Canadian Federal Member of Parliament/Public Safety Minister Vic Toews Toews rips into Free Press columnist
by Kevin Engstrom

As originally posted on: The Jerk
January 26, 2010

If there were any questions about Vic Toews' feelings towards Dan Lett, all doubt was removed last week.

Manitoba's senior MP and Canada's public safety czar took a strip out of Lett last Friday after the Winnipeg Free Press columnist criticized St. Boniface Tory MP Shelly Glover on his blog for not knowing who Tom Flanagan is (long story short: he used to be Stephen Harper's right-hand man). In an e-mail entitled "Who is Dan Lett?" that was presumably sent to many people, Toews pulled no punches as to what he thinks of the guy.

"In this column, after tripping through the cerebral jungle of trying to determine the winners and losers in the recent cabinet shuffle, and giving another colleague of mine a gratutious slap across the side of the head (in order to hopefully advance the career aspirations of a Liberal friend of his in that riding), he then turns his attention to the colleague who didn't know who Tom Flanagan is or was," Toews wrote.

"A more nonsensical analysis of that topic by Mr. Lett is hard to imagine. But I guess we should be thankful that Mr. Lett focuses his attention on matters that simply don't matter to the people in the street who do not share the concerns and indignation of the chattering classes that he identifies with. His comments are harmless and scattered, and as one prominent writer once noted, well-suited to wrap yesterday's leftovers on the way to the dump."

One word: wow.

Not since the days of Glen Murray declaring an unholy war against Tom Brodbeck and Charles Adler has a local politician taken such public umbrage with a journalist. I'm not about to join the normally affable Toews in a public lynching of the guy from the other paper (something about glass houses prevents me from doing so), although I'll agree Lett's assertion Glover committed "one of the great live-TV boners of all time" is a bit off, especially when you consider this, this, this, and this.

That said, here's some free PR advice for Toews: it's probably not to your advantage to get into an argument with a journalist who, by nature of his job, always gets the last word — even if that journalist angers you. Because when you give in and blast that person, you only validate that their opinion matters in the first place.