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Edited version of Marjaleena Repo's "On being yaffied"
Vancouver Sun
, Friday, Friday, January 25, 2008

Shafting by Yaffe based on factoids, canards

by Marjaleena Repo

Re: Maverick Orchard finds a new party to tangle with, Jan. 11

Barbara Yaffe coins a new term, "orcharded," to describe the shafting of an individual.

I'm now coining another term for the same phenomenon, and that is being "yaffeed." It means a person being shafted by someone who writes about them without knowing much.

Yaffe builds her column with so many factoids and canards that one does not know where to begin.

David Orchard is not an "organic produce businessman;" he is a farmer. He is not a "social conservative," as Yaffe claims, by any stretch of the imagination.

She also casually calls Orchard an "oddball," a "nuisance," not a "comfortable fit for the Liberals," leaving the reader to imagine what she might mean with these derogatory terms.

Yaffe also writes that Orchard is "critical of any Canadian alignment with the U.S.," but fails to explain what she can possibly mean by that, unless it is just a code word for another media cliché that Orchard is "anti-American."

Yaffe writes that "on becoming a Liberal he [Orchard] declared his intention to run in the northern riding." In fact, Orchard joined the Liberal party in January 2006 and declared his willingness to run in the northern riding in October 2007, after being repeatedly asked by the leader and both national election co-chairs to run for a seat in Saskatchewan.

Not only was he encouraged to do so, but he was assured that there would be a fair nomination race with no appointment in that riding.

I hope that Yaffe never has an occasion to write about me, as I don't look forward to being "yaffeed."


Marjaleena Repo is a senior adviser to David Orchard.

mrepo@sasktel.net


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