No place for hate (or anything even remotely resembling it) in political discourse

Regulars readers of the Canadian political blogosphere may already be familiar with the name Robert McClelland. He is the defacto NDP blogging head, and is responsible for facilitating the Blogging Dippers blogroll (please let me know if you know otherwise).

He is also famous (infamous?) for some close to the edge of respectability comments on those of the Jewish persuasion. I won't sully this blog by linking to his past posts on the subject. Suffice it to say that Robert is not known as a friend of the Jewish religion in the blogosphere.

After the last "incident", involving a scenario of spray-painting something nasty on a wall, Robert seemed to take heed of the outrage, and had not gone off-colour for some time...until last weekend, when this happened:

(update: I didn't like seeing Roberts commentary here, so I removed it. If you want to see it, visit Jason Cherniak's site)

Already woeful, the NDP's online blogging presence is certainly not enhanced by having Robert linked to their party. Even if the NDP does not actively support Robert, their silence on these issues, well, that is their comment on the issue.

Sure, sure, you can say this is a snapshot, it is taken out of context, blah, blah, etc...

If it was the first and only time, ok, but it is not. I'm all for free speech, and I'm certainly not calling for Robert's site to be shut down...but the NDP brain trust knows about this and other incidents, or at least one would hope they do. And if they are aware that their name is being sullied by association, then why does a national political party allow themselves to be linked with such an individual?


(2nd update: See comments)
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