12.08.2010 01:11 AM

Kid Kodak, klown

“And then, speaking of laughable, there was the performance by the Ombudsman himself.

Marin’s report contains some useful information. Not a ton, really, when it comes to the government’s role, because most of it had already been reported. But it’s a helpful documentation of everything that went wrong, with a little new information on police conduct thrown in, and it passes judgment on some things that need to be judged.

But it would be a much better report, and easier to take seriously, if Marin wasn’t busy establishing himself as the Pat Martin of ombudsmen. His thirst for attention appears to be insatiable, and like the federal NDP MP he delivers a sort of dialed-up outrage via an endless string of sound bytes – his every sentence a Hail-Mary aimed at getting quoted.

This was most pronounced at the end of his press conference, when Marin spontaneously pronounced that the G20 weekend will “live in infamy” as “the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history.” But pretty much the whole thing was like that, and so (to a lesser extent) is his report.

I can’t really do either justice, but you’ll get a sense if you read the thing. Enjoy the subheads. And if you like the line about the government waking a “sleeping giant,” you’ll be pleased to know that at his presser he also accused it of poking a “hibernating bear.”

If you’re not familiar with Marin, you might think he just got really worked up over flagrant civil liberties violations. But this is how he responds to pretty much everything, so it becomes impossible to tell when he’s actually outraged, and when he’s just putting on a show – and the whole thing turns into a circus, in which any hint of nuance goes out the window.”

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