The Trifecta Of Bounce And Pout

      Rex Murphy's column in today's Globe and Mail is a chuckle-inducing exercise in Canadian mock irony, and is well-worth the read. What, you might logically ask, is "mock irony"? It's the name I give to that-- almost particularly Canadian-- tendency to write with a civilised, critical tone of irony, all the while subverting and mocking that tone by casually letting out airs of pretension with subtle self-rejoinders. The major rejoinder doesn't come until the end of the article, but it's there, and it's a typical self-subversion of the article's critique. It seems we've now made, though, a discomforting karmic trade, one bubble-bodied bimbo for one occasional Irish visitor who comes by now and again to float Canada's humanitarian boat. If we were going to trade for an Irishman, we should have gotten Van Morrison-- or at least Seamus Heaney. Or perhaps we should have gone for an equal trade of one bimbo for another? If we'd traded for Jessica, we'd at least have been able to say we went in for a newer model, even if it possessed the same carriage capacity.