Gerry Nicholls snaps the ball. NCC prez Peter Coleman punts. Hilarity ensues. UPDATED

(Scroll down for scrumptious update.)

Here’s the first assignment for the Globe & Mail’s new Public Editor Sylvia Stead. Explain to non-partisan Canadian citizens why the venerable grey lady is publishing a Conservative loyalist like Gerry Nicholls who regularly spreads his right-wing propaganda in rags like the Sun empire, National Post and the Frum/Worthington Huffington Post Canada?

Stead, tell us why it is allowing a Conservative agent to give free publicity to the National Citizens’ Coalition (NCC) ? I guess it’s all part of ‘free speech’. More like granting carte blanche to advertise freely for the Conservatives and other far-right causes.

Everyone has a right to publish what it wants. It’s a free country. But the Globe & Mail needs to tell us why it continues to publish what amounts to free advertising for wingnut causes by a hyper-partisan like Nicholls, who claims without a whiff of irony to be past partisanship.

Nicholls, who Brian Lilley once asked if he was ‘too hard on Conservatives’, hates everything Liberal, the left and everything that smacks of real freedoms, you know the personal kind. But he loooves anything that smacks of authoritarianism, governmental secrecy, unethical behaviour and especially that do-whatever-it-takes-to-win philosophy.

Want to read about how wonderful Stephen Harper is? Read Nicholls. Want to know how filfthy the Occupiers are? Read Nicholls. Want praise for the iffy NCC? Read Nicholls.

Post-partisanship? More like National Post-partisanship. The Globe & Mail has some ‘splainin’ to do. Gerry Nicholls is not a journalist. He is not a writer. He is an advertising agent and operative for Conservatism and specifically the Conservative party. End of story.

Canada’s liberal media, my ass.

UPDATE: Oh. Oh. Oh. In an especially disingenuous and unintentionally hilarious bit of hackery , the head of Nicholls’ NCC actually said the following as reported in The HillTimes, with a straight face I presume (emphasis mine):

National Citizens Coalition President Peter Coleman, who was treasurer when Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) was its president from 1997 to 2001, say his lobby group was not acting in support of Mr. Harper and the Conservative Party when it launched the attack against Mr. Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.) a week ago

And—even though Mr. Harper, when he was the NCC president , went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to fight election law limits against campaign spending by the NCC and other third parties in federal elections—Mr. Coleman recently told a radio interviewer “there has never been any proof” that money influences elections in Canada .

And the pièce de résistance:

Mr. Coleman, in an interview with a conservative talk-show radio host at Calgary’s CHQR, said his organization’s You Tube attack ad against Mr. Rae was i ntended to help the Liberal party by swaying party members against choosing Mr. Rae as their permanent leader, not to lend support to the Conservatives and Mr. Harper .

Who says Conservatives don’t do teamwork? You can’t make this stuff up, folks. Oh my.

UPDATE II: I must admit my critique of Nicholls and his connection to the NCC may have been a little harsh. His followers take special pains to separate him from the NCC, Conservatives and Stephen Harper. They say he truly is non-partisan. Stephen Taylor’s not fond of Nicholls , it seems. Seems Nicholls is also a hot topic of contention at Taylor’s Blogging Tories. If Nicholls is on the outs with NCC, why is he still pushing the organization? Furthermore, why does Nicholls’ writing almost exclusively appear in the far-right Sun Media and right-leaning National Post and not regularly in more progressive outlets like The Star, The Straight or The Tyee? Just askin’.

X-posted at Let Freedom Rain .