And then there's Margaret

It's hard to know where to begin with this one. The basic theme is that it's appropriate to be more interested about news stories about Tiger Woods' infidelity than those concerning the Copenhagen climate summit or the torture of Afghan detainees because only the former stories are real:
"I don't think my friend is superficial at all. She's simply conserving her attention for stories that are real." The reason she thinks the latter are unreal is because they have putatively become symbolic stories about morality and virtue:
"Like climate change, the detainee issue has turned into another symbolic story about morality and virtue. " (One might wonder, of course, why she doesn't consider stories about Tiger Woods' infidelity to be about morality and virtue, but that's another issue). Exactly why she thinks the Afghan torture story is merely symbolic is puzzling. She does offer up two reasons for this opinion. First, the problem of the torture of Afghan detainees was solved long ago, and the current story is about "the Harper government's obstructive tactics to hush it up," which "has been turned by all sides into political theatre." Second, most Canadians consider the decision by the Canadian government to allow adopt prisoner transfer policies that allowed detainees to be tortured to be a "snafu" rather than a war crime.

There are a number of responses one might give to her first argument. One might note, for example, that stories about government obstruction often are quite substantial -- remember Watergate -- and that it is the job of genuine reporters to see their way through the political theatre and get to the truth. And to the second argument, one might respond that, even if Margaret is right about the beliefs of most Canadians on this matter -- and I'm sure in a subsequent column she'll cite the relevant polling data -- this does not settle the issue of whether war crimes were committed (it's called the bandwagon fallacy, Margaret -- look it up). And a good reporter might find her way to the truth on this issue as well.

Note: the only people likely to be guilty of any war crime in this case are the politicians who approved the prisoner transfer policies and not the soldiers who carried them out.