Back here I wrote about how climatologist Mark Tushingham got muzzled by his boss at Environment Canada for intending to discuss his novel, repeat - his novel, about global warming at a National Press Club luncheon. Despite the book jacket making no mention of his day job at Environment Canada, the press release did announce him as an "Ottawa environmental scientist", and this was reason enough for his boss Rona Ambrose to scuttle his appearance.
When asked to comment, Harper threw in an unattractive veiled threat about loyalty.
That was 11 days ago. Today via CBC his publisher announced that "Hotter Than Hell" has gone into an unexpected double-sized second printing due to public demand. Elsewhere a film deal has been mentioned.
(Smuggies : and didn't I predict that film deal? Why yes, yes I did.)
Despite almost no press coverage and author Mark Tushingham's refusal to make any public statement about it, this story never died down. And how do I know this? Because every single day since I wrote about it on April 13, my inconsequential little blog has continued to get dozens of hits a day from people typing "Mark Tushingham" into Google/MSN Search. Now imagine what the big blogs must get.
It bears remembering that the big progressive issues of the last century like feminism, equal rights, and the environment were actively suppressed by both government and industry until individual people collectively forced them to take note. In muzzling Tushingham, Rona Ambrose hoped to distance Environment Canada from any mention of global warming, even in a novel, and in so doing she also offended against free speech. People noticed that and they started buying the book. So now she has a free speech controversy and possibly a movie about global warming to deal with.
Rona, quite a lot more people go to movies and read controversial books than would ever have attended that luncheon.
See how this works now?
3 comments:
Hmmm. Actually, Alison, your 'inconsequential little blog' is in the top two of any searches I tried for this story.
Funny how that works, isn't it? You'll be getting hits from those searches next Christmas.
You should not, however, give away secrets to Rona, or Stevie for that matter. I would rather they continued to look like complete asses in their attempt to hide under the covers.
Yes well this is all very nice but citing a book with the word hell in the title does not make up for you not doing the Sunday Papers this week.
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