You can't fault evangelist Faytene Kryskow for not knowing the ways of the media, even if they technically aren't "allowed" to cover her without first asking "Mother, may I?"
Want to bury something? Release it on or just before a holiday weekend. And it is the Victoria Day stat holiday up here in Canada.
She has a notice up on the front page of her website. It reads like this:
Regarding the Armeggadon Factor by Marci Macdonald: I was going to post a video regarding AF because it was in my heart to pray for Marci and video is a great way to spread that love. I was also considering addressing some of the errors, biases an misrepresentations in her book, however, the national media seems to be addressing them pretty well on their own with the many articles being posted exposing this. There is no need for me to add my voice to the mix. I do want to say however, "Bless you Marci and bless you Random House. God's love for you fills us and we do pray for you to be lead into that love, sincerely."
If she doesn't want to respond, that's her business. But if she wants to take the high road, why not only pray for McDonald and the publishing company in a video and leave it at that?
The Faytene brains trust has probably decided this about Marci McDonald's book. Progressives in the regular media who would like the book would probably not like Kryskow anyway. It can be made much more difficult to allow them to get things that will help them with their stories by using Faytene's media rules against them. And those conservatives in and out of the media who find Faytene's theocratic extras to not be a problem? Well, they are probably listening to the various conservative critiques of the book, so much so, that it all is discredited to them.
As long as Faytene's support base on Parliament Hill and elsewhere is not paying attention to the book, a blanket "This book is hooey" as Faytene has posted would work fine. "Let sleeping dogs lie, for who wants to rouse 'em."
I, however, would have liked to see a detailed response from Faytene Kryskow myself. About a tenth of The Armageddon Factor is devoted to her alone, and if she had been able to cite 20-30 factual errors of the sort we are keeping track of in our special post, it would be helpful for allowing more neutral observers to judge the veracity of the book.
If someone were to say "Do you have a list of these errors? Please pass it on to me, so that I can use it to decide for myself how good the book is," what would she say? It would be a good idea for her to have one ready, as reporters are going to start using the book, or McDonald, in stories about her.
There is one regrettable feature of her statement though. Now she can use it to say that she is not commenting on the book or McDonald at all. And the regrettable thing about that is that McDonald cites some things that the average person might be wondering about.
Faytene's statement may fool people into thinking that everything about her in the book is incorrect when it may not be.
And Faytene may never apologize for some things that she has apparently done in public that McDonald reports, such as using the infamous "Hitler youth analogy" sweeping it under the rug of "The entire book is bad!"
"Pay no attention to the youth evangelist behind the curtain. I am OZ!"
(BD here - This is dated May 15/10 and is on the 4MyCanada site. This came in a google alert dated 27/05/10)
