Yeah. It's a new show coming to Rogers Cable really soon.Actually, it's the result of Danny Williams threat to "sue the ass off" opposition leader Gerry Reid. Reid managed to get under the Premier's extremely thin-skin during the legislature's Question Period on Tuesday.
If CBC television reported the comment accurately, Reid was needling the Premier about one of several business deals Williams or Williams' companies cut with the Brian Tobin administration.
There have long been rumours about the sweetheart arrangements, but thus far nothing solid has popped up into the public domain.
Except for The Dan's exploding head.
That was a pretty good indicator that whatever Reid was talking about must strike just a little close to home for Danny's taste. There's no other reason for a smart operator like Danny Williams to threaten lawsuits in vulgar language over such a comment.
Nope, Danny, you protest too much. Way too much.
As for Danny Williams' irritation at being questioned, he should get used to it.
Any questions being raised about this cable deal among friends pales in comparison to Williams own scurrilous, unfounded and entirely personal attacks on anyone who opposed him since he entered politics in 2001.
If you can't take it, don't dish it out.
Don't try your usual tactic of bully-boy bluffing, either. When you threaten to sue someone's ass off - someone who likely has a nice stack of documents on the projects in his desk drawer - well maybe you better hope the guy you threaten doesn't call your bluff.
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Addendum [0930 hrs]:
Just to be perfectly clear: rumours aren't facts and around St. John's, rumours are notoriously inaccurate. The only thing - the only thing - about the exchange in the legislature that drew attention to it was Williams strong reaction in vulgar language in the legislature.
From a public relations perspective, Reid's attack was surprisingly effective in getting the Premier off message. Message in this case would typically be about the merits of the deal and a factual rebuttal of criticism.
For Williams in this instance, though, the message has lately been about the supposed trashing of reputations of people who Williams rightly contends are respected business people. That's still a relatively weak portion of the whole argument, though, since the deal should stand on its own merits.
The people involved - as respected and able as they are - are irrelevent, or at least they should be irrelevent. If the opposition try and make it an issue, the Premier should be speaking to what should be the strongest argument in favour of what the government approved: the technical and financial benefits of the deal.
