A public schoolyard scrap between two prominent young Liberals in Toronto has left Liberal Leader Bob Rae literally cursing in public.
In a blog post published earlier this week, Liberal party member Max Naylor unleashed an avalanche of criticism at his "exceptionally close friend," Zach Paikin, the 20-year-old son of TVO host Steve Paikin.
Paikin is running for national policy chair of the federal Liberals at the upcoming convention in January and has secured the endorsement of Liberal MP and House Leader Marc Garneau, Liberal MPs Rodger Cuzner and Irwin Cotler and former Ontario health minister George Smitherman.
Naylor, the son of University of Toronto president David Naylor, says Paikin is actually far to the right of the Liberals on issues such as Israel and corporate tax cuts.
"If Zach Paikin is a progressive, then Rick Perry is an atheist," Naylor wrote on his blog, which features only the one post.
"Mr. Paikin represents a far right ideological position in this party. He has shown persistent ambition and a habit for policy crusades that would hurt a party in recovery."
Paikin called the post "childish" and full of "baseless allegations."
"If Max thinks he has nothing better to do in rebuilding the party right now than in engaging in this attack on my public image, my character and my integrity . . . then I think we've got a cultural problem in the party," he said in a telephone interview. "We've got to stop the political infighting in our party. What I want is for Liberals to come together to a build a brighter future."
Paikin said he was once "good friends" with Naylor, who he met in high school, but said they were never the "exceptionally close friends" that Naylor said they were.
Now Rae, whose frenemy relationship with Michael Ignatieff is well-storied, seemed less than impressed by the public infighting.
Rae curtly responded Wednesday morning to a Twitter user who said, "Young Liberals attacking each other in the press. Chrétien warning about hidden agendas. Rae, Gingrich, Kyoto... Um, what decade is this?"
"What bullshit is this?" Rae tweeted at Adam Goldenberg, perhaps hoping to gain some of that Pat Martin street-tweet cred.
Now that is not even the oddest part of this story.
A person claiming to be Zach Paikin's mother came to his defence in the blog post comment section.
A person claiming to be Zach Paikin's mother came to his defence in the blog post comment section, saying she was "deeply disappointed" in Naylor. But a spokesperson for Paikin later told CTVNews.ca that Paikin's mother never wrote the comment -- it was submitted by someone assuming her identity.
