Bad Mercer! Bad!

IT'S NOT SO funny when you see the other side now, is it?

You may have heard what happened to ACORN, a controversial national anti-poverty organization with a chapter in Arkansas that lost its funding after a video seemed to depict some of its employees advising undercover filmmakers on running a child prostitution ring. The recent release of the unedited footage paints a different picture - the filmmakers obviously spliced and diced the video to promote exaggerations and falsehoods. But the firestorm had already forced ACORN to shut its doors.

It recalls memories of an experience I had in the late 1990s, when I was a naive ex-newspaperman working on Huckabee's communications staff. One day, a Canadian film crew arrived at the door and made a vague request for a quote from the governor congratulating their country about some igloo that had been found there. I assumed it was an important archaeological discovery and, trying to be accommodating, notified the governor, who agreed to make a quick comment on his way out the door. And that's what happened.

Only it's not all that happened. It turned out that the nice reporter actually was Rick Mercer, host of "This Hour Has 22 Minutes," which fills up part of that 22 minutes by ridiculing Americans for their lack of knowledge about Canada, much to the delight of Canadians.

The article gets more interesting from there.

For my part, I remember clearly the Canada Day Globe & Mail story from about three years ago where they showed that only 65% of Canadians could identify a picture of Sir John A. MacDonald.

Americans, by contrast, recognized George Washington 95% of the time.

It's a terrible thing when you seek out only the information that speaks to your biases.  That's why it concerns me when I see the reality that Republicans now largely refuse to do critical interviews -- Rachel Maddow has a litany of names that she asked to appear but declined; they prefer to only do the interviews on FOX 'News' where they know they'll only get softballs.

The direct result of that is no-nothings like Sarah Palin becoming national figures with ... credibility.

That's why things like blocking Ann Coulter when she comes to Ottawa is so spectacularly wrongheaded. The antidote to speech that's outrageous or inaccurate is more speech.

And writers who tackle a subject, or a theme, should never be afraid to really explore both sides. Don't put your finger on the scale.  If your cause is just, let people make up their own minds.

After all, you should be focusing on the story anyway, right?