Comment 122385

By Tybalt (registered) | Posted January 29, 2018 at 09:32:58

In the end, what matters about Patrick Brown is not any sort of legal test, and there is no universal standard of "burden of proof" that can satisfy everyone of particular facts. There will no doubt be some who wish to adopt a tighter standard than balance-of-probabilities before they believe some particular fact. There are some of us, who recognize patterns of conduct, and may require less evidence (although the testimony of two victims unknown to each other, plus other confirming accounts off the record as identified by the reporter, plus confirming accounts by contemporaries of the reported incidents at the time is a great deal of evidence, especially for something's first report in the papers... trust me, almost everything you read in the paper is more thinly sourced than this.)

It is important to remember that Patrick Brown resigned because he had lost the confidence of his caucus. This is exactly what happens to any party leader. Those elsewhere in the media decrying the haste of Brown's exit (which I'd just note is mostly a rogues' gallery of the very worst and arsiest voices our media has to offer) should train their fire specifically upon those MPPs, and the brains trust close to Patrick Brown who made him realize the untenability of his position. They were the proximate cause of the resignation, accomplished even before the public had a chance to evaluate this evidence.

Instead, most of the voices discussing the matter have chosen to blame us, the public, for some ill done to Patrick Brown when we had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

We now know the reason why, of course: the patterns of Brown's behaviour with teenaged women was an ongoing semi-public scandal, known to the whole of the Queen's Park media as well as vast numbers of locals in Barrie. It had been kept out of the paper due to the reticence of journalists and media to properly source the facts.

Yes, the state of political analysis in the Canadian media is truly dire.

Comment edited by Tybalt on 2018-01-29 09:38:02

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds