War of words... between reporter pools?

Looks like there's a little bit of healthy rivalry going on between the reporter in each of the campaigns... take a look at this "Press Release" the Tory campaign reporters put out:

Nick-naming the planes... a campaign tradition
Updated Fri. Sep. 12 2008 9:04 PM ET
Robert Fife, Ottawa Bureau Chief

It's a campaign tradition for reporters to come up with a nickname for the leaders' plane.

Reporters on Stephen Harper campaign have named their Airbus A-319 Sweater-Vest Jet.

Reporters covering Liberals named their ancient Air Inuit plane ProfessAir. An obvious nickname for the academic Stephane Dion.

And the NDP plane is called KitchenAir because Layton is always going about kitchen table issues.

Grumpy reporters on the Grit plane were sniggering at their colleagues on Harper's plane. They thought the nickname Sweater-Vest Jet was silly.

So Globe and Mail scribe Steven Chase, the Toronto Star's Bruce Campion-Smith and Canwest's Andrew Mayeda fired off war room response from our side, which I'm happy to post on this blog.

JUST THE FACTS: WE'RE BETTER OFF WITH SWEATER-VEST JET
Sept. 12, 2008

ABOARD SWEATER-VEST JET: Picking a party's campaign plane nickname is a choice between common sense or risky experiments and between funny or kinda lame, reporters on the Tory election aircraft said today.

Canadians want prudence, not risk, in a campaign plane nickname. And what is more prudent that a sweater vest? (Not the 100 per cent acrylic ones that fuzz up after three washes. We're thinking more of the lightweight wool ones that you dryclean. And we're thinking slate blue, the kind that's been focus-group tested to look good in campaign ads with tinkly piano music.)

"Our name is sensible. Our name is tested," one journalist aboard the Tory campaign plane said. Our name is not actually tested per se, but we'll accuse anyone who questions it of being a closet partisan. Or we will sic a puffin on them.

The choice in this election campaign nickname game is clear:

1) A "-jet" ending means moving in new direction. Canadians are tired of 13 years of "-air" endings for campaign plane nicknames.

2) Professair is not even a real word. Journalists following the Liberal leader are clearly elitist urban intellectuals who are completely out of touch with ordinary Canadians. More and more Canadians are questioning the Dion campaign plane's nickname.

3) Sweater-Vest Jet is a stable, certain choice. "We could have opted for a risky name like Air Force Already Won -- or Fruit Fly -- but we chose the far more staid name of Sweater Vest Jet," one veteran reporter on the Conservative campaign plane said. "We chose certainty over risk, steady hand at the wheel over half-baked ideological names that no one can understand." Think of Ward Cleaver -- the Dad -- in Leave It To Beaver. He'd wear a sweater vest. He's not risky like that professor on Gilligan's Island who was always building things out of coconuts. Nice guy, but how come he never invented his way off the island? Ward and his sweater vest would never have gotten stuck there in the first place.

So, to recap. It has come to our attention that reporters on the Dion plane think our aircraft's nickname sucks.

We have one thing to say to them:

Reporters following Stephane Dion: Not witty at all. Not worth the risk.