Update, 2 September, 2009: Coast listings editor Holly Gordon has discovered Duffy’s “raped by a ghost” columns archived, here.
I often dream of doing an April Fool’s Day all-satire version of The Coast, with utterly ridiculous articles throughout. Problem is, reality trumps anything we could come up with. Today, there’s this news:
A former columnist with The Chronicle Herald will soon be working for Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly.
Peter Duffy is to start a six-month contract as a community liaison co-ordinator for the mayor’s office on Sept. 14.
“When I left the Herald on that . . . day on March 19, I didn’t think of it as a retirement,” Mr. Duffy, 66, said in an interview.
“I’m still energized. I’m not ready to sit home yet with my slippers on watching daytime TV.”
Mr. Duffy said his responsibilities will include writing speeches, news releases and reports for the mayor.
“I’m putting words in someone else’s mouth,” he said. “It was a chance to use my writing skills, such as they are, maybe to put back into the community, and to try something completely different. I’ve never worked in the public sector.”
Neither he nor the mayor would divulge his specific pay, although Mr. Duffy said it’s at the lower end of a scale that ranges between $42,000 and $70,000.
Yep, this is the very same Peter Duffy who claims to have been anally raped by a ghost, and who won over the blue hair set with such groundbreaking journalism as a trip to Hooters and a positive interview with racist Jared Taylor.
Such brilliance will now be putting words in the mouth of Peter Kelly.
Beyond the stupidity of that hire, just how many communications people does the city need? I put that question to Shaune MacKinlay, HRM’s manager of public affairs and herself a recent hire to the city, and she went into a long explanation about how the dozens of “communications” personnel employed by HRM have a variety of job assignments, from writing recreation brochures to stuffing your tax bill envelopes to, well, all sorts of shit. Good enough.
But, I ask, “what about Peter Kelly?”
“You mean Peter Duffy?” she asks.
“Right, sorry.”
“Don’t mix up your Peters.”
“Um, thanks.”
In any event, MacKinlay explains that Peter Duffy works directly for Peter Kelly, and Duffy’s salary comes out of the mayoral office budget, not from the budget for HRM communications.
Kelly may in fact have a communications problem, but it’s not in the style or formation of his words. Kelly’s speech impediment is part of the appeal that gets him reelected, and I certainly don’t think he should hide from it—good on him for achieving what he has with it.
No, Kelly’s problem isn’t the style of his communication; it’s the substance of it—or lack of it. Until he can rise above the knee-jerk reliance on secrecy and finger-in-the-wind politicking, all the ghostly help in the world won’t help him.
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This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2009.
This is the most depressing news I have ever read.
I gagged when I first heard. Should provide for some entertainment, though.
a match made in ? and hey duffman don’t give ghosts a bad name….
BTW, I’m the one that submitted that story to Gawker
Was he actually anally raped by a ghost? This job would be anticlimactic after that, I owuld think.
Your property tax dollars at work. Just another example of HRMs out of control spending problem. Peter Duffy isn’t the only one who got raped; we taxpayers are getting the same treatment from HRM.
I’m not sure which of these two Peters is the biggest masochist.
I can’t wait to read Duffy’s style explaining the sewage treatment problems.
BM
This makes me want to vomit. Peter Kelly seems to be doing everything within his power to make our city appear to be a backward, absurd, joke. He needs some PR help so he hires a bigot with limited journalism skills who made himself an international laughingstock when he wrote an article where he claimed to have been sexually assaulted by a ghost. We should all rise up, march down Barrington street and collectively hurl our pathetic, bumbling mayor out of office before he turns the whole city into the same sort of shit show he turned our sewage treatment plant into. You bring the torches, I’ll bring the pitchfork.
This news makes me want to have a BM, BM….
All levlels of government have their claws into all levels of our Media. Newspapers, radio, television & magaznes. Brian Mulroney’s BFF-Conrad Black.
Cutting funding to CBC. It’s obvious-persons in and associated to our government control the news. You only think your living in a free, democratic country. The CONS had this planned even before losing to the LIEberals after Kim Campbell. (Look outside the box.)
Heh, the PC’s wanted to hire Dale Madill (CH political reporter) back in the mid-late 90s (or maybe they actually did, I can’t remember).
Sooooooooo, what happened to the other story on Peter Duffy and Peter Kelly?
Found it.