Watching the Detectives: Mike Brock Edition

Who’s Mike Brock, and who cares? Questions of absolutely no importance or interest to anyone, but for the fact he’s the central player in a droll little tale of sleazy political intrigue and hypocrisy…

You see, Mike is a member of “The Blogging Tories” (a group he amusingly describes as “Other Nutty People”), who generously invites commenters at his site to “Sign in to comment on this entry, or comment anonymously”… [Update: This invitation has since been retracted.] Surely, a fair enough proposition, one would think. Ah, but as marketing pros like me know, appearances can be deceiving. As indeed it turns out in this case, because when someone actually took advantage of the offer and commented anonymously to wonder “… how Brock can bear to seperate [sic] Harper’s dick from his mouth long enough to eat?” Mike got his knickers in a bunch about the remark. Galvanized with righteous indignation, he promptly sprung into action, determined to strike back with vengeful fury at the wickedly false suggestion he was unremittingly fellating the Dear Leader.

And who did Mike turn to for technical assistance in helping track down the identity of this villainous cad? Why, none-other than über-blogger Kate McMillan, that gallant freedom-fighter who last year shamelessly defended the rights of a self-proclaimed “full-time Nazi” inciting people to murder homosexuals in the name of God. A small dog breeder and vermin hunter of some renown in the backwaters of rural Saskatchewan, Kate recently teamed up with another would-be champion of “freedom” Richard Evans, a failed municipal politician in Calgary who, when he’s not barbecuing and preparing tasty stir fries, enjoys maliciously hijacking domain names and directing them to the websites of homosexual paedophiles. Together, this dynamic duo of douchebaggery, totally punked that awful Liberal meanie Warren Kinsella using the Holocaust as their blunt instrument of choice. But I digress…

Anyway, through a bit of no-brainer cyber-sleuthing, Kate helped Mike to quickly ascertain the identity of the “anonymous” commenter in question as being one Don Beemer, who… this is the juicy part, boys and girls… turns out to be an executive with the Liberal Party of Canada in Manitoba. Shock! Horror! Well, at least I guess that was supposed to be the intended reaction. Personally, I thought it was pretty yawn-inducing revelation. I mean, so what? First of all, while the comment was vulgar, it was hardly all that shocking or reprehensible. I’ve been checking out some of my newly discovered Bill Hicks videos of late and let me tell you this is pretty tame stuff by comparison. Don’t make me tell you about Barbara Bush’s labia…

Now where was I? Oh yes… So maybe Beemer’s snarky quip was uncalled for, but who knows… perhaps there was a good deal of truth to the suggestion, at least in a figurative sense; I really don’t know enough about Brock’s opinions to say one way or the other. It certainly seems like fair comment to me — something you can take or leave as you please, or in the case of Mr. Brock, simply have deleted, or here’s a stellar idea… blown off with some wittier come-back of his own.

But no… The compulsive urge to “expose” or “out” Beemer with the imagined result of causing deep and possibly harmful embarrassment to the Liberal Party was simply too tempting for Mike to resist, I guess. Well, that’s politics for you; after all, it’s a sleazy, cut-throat business at times. But where Brock really stepped over the line here in my opinion, was in providing details of Beemer’s employment. Disclosing that bit of private information quite unsurprisingly gave other partisan fuckwits (who, ironically go around Liberal blogs trashing site owners using assumed names like “Kai Wolf”) the opportunity to pile on and suggest contacting Beemer’s employer directly to complain bitterly about his extracurricular blogging activities. Look, I don’t care what your political affiliation is, but that really seems beyond the pale. You don’t start undermining someone’s livelihood just because of some petulant, insulting or vulgar thing they wrote anonymously on a blog. Geez. Get some sense of perspective here, folks.

Anyway, that’s my two cents on that matter. But here’s the really ironic gem that prompted this little diatribe in the first place. Keep in mind that in his exposé post, Brock graciously thanked Kate McMillan for her invaluable “research assistance” in tracking down Beemer’s IP number so that he could vengefully excoriate and publicly humiliate him, as well as create all sorts of personal difficulties for Beemer along the way as spiteful payback for his insulting and “demeaning” remark. Well, it turns out that just a few days prior to this incident, Brock had written the following:

“…you know what also pisses me off? People who use their computer skills as weapons.”

Yeah, you know what Mike… that really pisses me off too. Almost as much as deceitfulness, doublethink and flagrant hypocrisy. Maybe your moral compass needs a little adjustment there, bub. Perhaps a “self-awareness” upgrade might be in order too.