I think it's called "projection"

I think the weakest phrase in political debate these days is "mean-spirited". When they call you mean-spirited, you know they couldn't come up with anything else better.

I refer to this column in the Globe and Mail by Lysiane Gagnon. It's her criticism of the Conservative Party's ads targeting Michael Ignatieff's record. You can see the comprehensive website at Ignatieff.me, which includes not only the ads, but dozens of other facts, including many newspaper clippings and even video clips.

Gagnon doesn't like them, for reasons of class and taste. I say that because she hasn't been able to find a single factual error in them. Like the rest of the press gallery that, three weeks after they were launched just can't seem to stop talking about the ads, Gagnon senses they'll persuade people -- people who, unlike her and her circles, don't have a Portuguese housekeeper and a place in France.

Fine. Negative ads aren't pretty, but Canadians are smart enough to judge for themselves. I think the Ignatieff ads are effective, because they bring to light facts that would startle most Canadians -- like that he has been away from the country for 34 years, and that he told Harvard he wants to go back there if he doesn't get to be Prime Minister. I think Canadians will find that information useful, if ugly. By contrast, the Liberals' laughable attack ads in 2006 simply made the Liberals look desperate and condescending. Remember this beauty? 

I think part of Harper's success in 2006 and 2008 was that he managed to ignore the echo chamber of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, and connect with severely normal Canadians -- even those who don't have Portuguese housekeepers. It was the Starbucks vs. Tim Hortons thing, and it will be again this time, too.

But there is one thing in Gagnon's column -- and in Susan Delacourt's jubilant repetition of it -- that ought to be responded to. Gagnon implies that the choice of the word "cosmopolitan" to describe Ignatieff was chosen deliberately by the Conservatives, and that it contains anti-Semitic undertones.

Delacourt goes further, and says it's a Stalinist term of denunciation.

Oh, those Conservatives! Scratch Stephen Harper -- the most pro-Israel, pro-Jewish prime minister in our history -- and you'll find an anti-Semite! Who else would choose the word "cosmopolitan"?

Well, Ignatieff did.

That's where the word comes from -- from Ignatieff's description of himself. Page 7 of his book, "Blood and Belonging", to be precise. "If anyone has a claim to being cosmopolitan, it must be me," he wrote. That's not hard to find -- it's sourced right there on Ignatieff.me.

It's fair game to call that criticism of Ignatieff undignified, something designed to appeal to Canadian who are -- how does Gagnon put it? -- "small minded". Could be. We'll see.

But it's not fair game to impute to the Conservative Party anti-Semitism in choosing that word, as both Gagnon and Delacourt have implied.

If I followed their lead, I'd call their commentaries "mean-spirited" and "negative attack ads". But I'm not -- I'll just call it par for the course for the liberal media.

Of course, as one astute commenter noted, Gagnon has used the phrase "cosmopolitan" herself, when trying to make a slur by euphemism. In this column, she used it as a code word for gay. Now she sees it as a code word for Jew. I think the liberal ladies do protest too much.