23 November 2006

Country Matters

    Does anyone else remember that scene from A Christmas Story in which the kids stand around the frozen flagpole, daring the one kid to stick his tongue against it? 
 
    Of course you do. 
 
    Amnesiacs remember that scene. 
 
    Everyone remembers that scene. 
 
    Except, of course, the Prime Minister. He evidently didn't learn that you don't take the bait of the triple dog-dare.  Aw, fudge....    
 
    (Those of you looking for the Not-So-Good Doctor over the next several months will be able to find him drinking by himself and singing Ray Charles' "Here We Go Again" in a tragic stupor.  Or kneeling in the snow, screaming furiously at the sky, "You maniacs!  Ah, damn you!  Damn you all to hell!")

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not clear about your drift, as the icecube said to the snowflake. If you just mean that you don't much care for Fudgeface, I agree; but even Fudgefaces can sometimes do something seriously clever, if only by accident. This was brilliant, and the best part of it is that it will get him hated by all the possibly-right people for all the definitely-wrong reasons. It is not remotely easy to wrong-foot and/or short-sheet G*lles D*c*ppe, but Fudgeface did it. I can't wait to see GD's stuffed head as a trophy on the Wall of Fame.

Dr J said...

My drift (or waft?) was more that the PM was profoundly unwise to engage, even in the slightest way, in the nation debate that the BQ and the Quebec Libs, via Ignatieff, had idiotically ramped up. Sure, it may play a bit in Quebec, but in TROC (The Rest of Canada) it threatens to turn DISASTROUS. No one in TROC wants to go through that argument again, esp. since there's no way anyone will be happy with its results. This "nation/pays" discussion is just "distinct society" in less committal language.

Fudgeface took the bait; he got suckered into involving himself in something he didn't have to, and now it's going to be part of the national agenda. And every one vote he gains in Quebec for his stance, he stands to lose three in TROC, esp. in those provinces most fed up with this sort of thing: BC and Ontario. (Alberta too, but its constituents won't even for a a second consider embracing the Libs or the New Timidcrats in response.) These are also the provinces key to any party ever getting a majority government.

The PM, had he been wise, would have just let the pretenders argue among themselves. They don't control the agenda. But the PM decided to give the third rail, or the frozen flagpole, of Canuckistani politics a big, wet, sloppy lick.

It was to be expected that the BQ would encourage such debate; it was stupid for Ignatieff and his acolytes to play along; and it's stupid-after-stupid for Harper to join that conga-line for lemmings that seems to form every dozen or so years. In BC, Ontario and Alberta, esp., NOBODY wants to do that dance again. We're still sore from the last pointless trip over that cliff.

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