Something in this CBC story caught my eye and I thought I'd share it here. David Hale, the lawyer who's been charged with investigating WaterhenGate made this comment:
“'We just need to do this for Mr. Lingenfelter; we need to do it for Ms.
Higgins; we need to do it for Mr. Pedersen; and we need to do it for
Ryan Meili,' Hale said.”
Notice anything? The use of the more formal Mr/Ms construct for all the other candidates and the full name for Ryan Meili probably means nothing from a lawyer who, by all accounts, will be impartial and is well-qualified to handle this investigation. But you wonder if, on a subliminal level, that familiarity in how he used Ryan's name versus the other candidate's means anything deeper? I mean, it's a small detail but possibly quite telling.
Of course, don't break out the tinfoil hats yet. I know a detail like that is roughly on the same level as counting Facebook friends to determine popularity (660 Link, 434 Meili at this moment! Though probably, if I went through and once again counted only those identifiable as actual Saskatchewan residents, I expect it'd be something like 130 Link, 431 Meili 
)
[Edit: someone mentioned it and I alluded to it in this last paragraph but just to be absolutely clear, Lingenfelter is getting a very large amount of support on Facebook from people from Columbia, his wife's home country, who are ineligible to vote in the leadership race. Nothing wrong or illegal with this other than the fact that it could create a misleading impression if someone only looked at the raw numbers without digging a bit deeper.]
Actually, this is a good chance to do some momentum math.
In my last post on Facebook support…
Link was at 543 and is now at 660 = 117 new supporters which is 18% growth since March 22.
Meili was at 290 and is now at 434 = 144 new supporters which is 33% growth since March 22.
Another interesting thing I noticed poking around on Facebook…
Ryan Meili (as an individual) is friends with Deb Higgins and Yens Pedersen but not Dwain Lingenfelter
Deb Higgins is friends with Ryan and Yens Pedersen but not Dwain Lingenfelter
Yens Pedersen is friends with Ryan and Deb but not Dwain Lingenfelter.
See a pattern here? I mean, a lot of the Link defenses I've seen coming out since WaterhenGate say that if you're a good NDP'er, you shouldn't call Lingenfelter out for this screw-up because it's bad for party unity or it reflects poorly on the party. Guess what? It appears that's already the case and there's a big divide between three of the candidates and the other one. (It's harder to wade through the hundreds of people on each candidate's fan pages so I didn't check there but I would imagine you might see something similar.)
Oh, and still with Facebook. Before they created the option to make Fan pages for politicians, celebrities, organizations, etc., some organizations would create profiles as if they were individuals. That worked well for the most part but can lead to some embarrassing or confusing situations for organizations, especially those that you would expect to remain neutral or equally support all candidates who may be one day responsible for their funding.
So it's pretty surprising to see that the profile for “Saskatchewan Arts Board” is “friends” with Dwain Lingenfelter and Deb Higgins but *not* with Ryan Meili and Yens Pedersen. The SAB profile is a “supporter” of Ryan on his fan page (I didn't check if the same holds true for Yens) so I don't know whether this was intentional or more likely, just a mix-up/misunderstanding about the different meanings that may be implied by being someone's “Friend” on Facebook versus being a “Supporter”.
Finally, another small detail similar to the subliminal Hale comment I listed above. The Jurist has already pointed out that the provincial NDP has done a really good job of remaining neutral with their coverage of this race but may have slipped up by allowing Lingenfelter space to post his own explanation of Waterhen Gate without providing the same space to the other campaigns. But I wonder if the NDP itself has sent a subliminal message with how they ordered the candidates on the official leadership page? In pretty much any situation where you are treating people as equals, you would refer to them alphabetically by surname. So the order of the headshots in the page's header I'd expect to see would go: Higgins, Lingenfelter, Meili, Pedersen. Instead, we get Meili, Higgins, Pedersen, Lingenfelter.
Again, I'm probably reading *way* too much into this but you wonder if this was another subliminal nod – perhaps to a preferred order of finish? Or perhaps someone at NDP HQ was already familiar with the type of attitude Mr. Lingenfelter can show to his own party?
“NDP Leadership Candidate, Dwain Lingenfelter, today expressed concern
that the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party has decided to ignore the
Far North in its series of Leadership Candidate Public Forums next
month, and says he has decided to organize his own public forum in the
region and invite the other leadership candidates to take part.” So he can call out party staffers for their lack of organizational skills yet anybody criticizing Lingenfelter for Waterhen Gate is endangering party unity? Right…
Anyhow, I'm very conscious that this is really small, off-the-radar stuff that most people probably don't even pay attention to or notice. And that individually, none of these examples probably means anything. But I also can't help wonder if seeing more and more examples of these little things adds up to something bigger?
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