On counterweights

It only took a week's wait along with three scathing blog posts. But yesterday, Murray Mandryk became the first mainstream media opinion columnist to bother mentioning the Sask Party's 9/11 exploitation - albeit in a rather surprising context:

(M)ake no mistake . . . each side is gunning for the other in ways we haven't much experienced in Saskatchewan. The Sask. Party is using its vast coffers for American-style TV campaigns that have been used by Stephen Harper's Conservatives. NDP caucus communications are using friendly bloggers to wage a guerrilla campaign by throwing everything at the Sask. Party in the hopes that something will stick. New Democrats certainly scored when they managed to elevate Nancy Heppner's tacky and stupid fundraising poster (advertising a constituency fund-raising pig roast over the images of the burning twin towers on 9-11) to the status of a supposed international incident.

That's right: the fact that people were eventually informed of the Sask Party's efforts to raise money off of 9/11 (despite the best efforts of Saskatchewan's media) is just a case in point as to how terrible it is that the NDP has supportive bloggers. And what's more, our existence is apparently a direct and equal counterweight to the big-money attack ads that have been flooding Saskatchewan's airwaves thanks to the Sask Party.

Of course, it's tempting to dismiss the equivalence as another example of Mandryk's inability to present a valid criticism of the Sask Party without inventing some misplaced attack on the NDP in the name of "balance".

But let's look on the bright side. If Mandryk is right in implying that the progressive blogosphere is in fact a no less significant factor in shaping Saskatchewan's political scene than the Sask Party's bottomless pit of corporate ad funding, then that would seem to reflect a seismic shift in the ability of ordinary citizens to influence Saskatchewan's political process. And if that influence meets Mandryk's apparent expectations, there's plenty of reason for hope both that we'll see far more of a focus on policy in the next year an a half than would exist based on mainstream coverage alone, and that the NDP will indeed be able to put some lasting dents into Wall's public perception in time to make the NDP's new ideas a reality starting in 2011.