06.05.2011 08:44 AM

In today’s Sun: Benedict Baldy goes international

In one cable, we now learn, Rossi was dishing to the Yanks about what was going on in Ignatieff’s office. He kvetched that Ignatieff wasn’t listening to super-smart guys like him. Instead, Rossi whined, the Grit boss was much more preoccupied with his wife Zsuzsanna Zhosar. “The only person whose opinion he really cares about is his wife, Zsuzsanna,” the WikiLeak cable reports in one Rossi-related dispatch. (If you ask me, things might have ended a lot better for Ignatieff if he’d listened more to his wife and a lot less to the likes of Donolo or Rossi.)

If we’d been in government, Rocco’s penchant for disclosing secrets to a foreign power might have landed him in court. When you are a government employee, there’s a name for that kind of duplicity. It’s called “treason.” But because we weren’t the government, Rocco’s secret briefings with the Americans can only be legally categorized as “dishonest” and “sleazy.”

17 Comments

  1. Paul R Martin says:

    Leaked reports indicate that Bob Rae also talked a lot with the US government.

    • Ed says:

      Leaked reports indicate Iggy and Rae sat down to dinner with US diplomats and the diplomats drew conclusions from the meeting. That’s a big difference compared with slinking across to the US embassy to spill trade secrets about how people don’t want your crappy advice. Rocco was just mad the Libs didn’t take him seriously after seeing his work. Now that all of Toronto has seen Rocco’s Bocce ball ads, I think they agree.

      • Paul R Martin says:

        Hell hast no fury like a Liberal scorned.

        • “Now I am proudly … a Progressive Conservative.”

          -Rocco Rossie

          Special to National Post Feb 5, 2011

          • Paul R Martin says:

            As far as I know, the Ontario Party is still called the Progressive Conservative Party rather than the Conservative Party. I do finnd it interestiong that when fine outstanding Canadians switch from the Conservatives (Brison and Stronach) that Liberals rarely call them traitors. The most important traitor who ever switched from a Liberal Party to a Conservative Party was Winston Churchill.

          • You’re leaving a little history out there Paul. And nobody would call WSC a traitor, perhaps in his own words a ‘rat’.

            Churchill was a Tory initially, he crossed the floor in ’04 to join the Liberals. He didn’t re-join the Conservatives till the mid or late 20’s.

            I hope you’re not equating Mr. Rossi’s actions with those of Mr. Churchill.

          • Paul R Martin says:

            Hello Cameron. I was simply pointing out that it is not unusual for people to switch parties. After all, the interim leader of the Liberals was once an Ontario NDP Premier.

    • Attack! says:

      Hmmm. Yes, WK DOES make a living, not only in PR, but also in political communications and strategizing, as well as in writing poltically oriented columns. And as such, he’s getting paid — doubly, plus once more in terms of personal satisfaction to exact revenge on someone he believes has exploited and betrayed him — to write critical items which damage Rossi’s prospects as an ON PC candidate.

      But you, an avowed Conservative?

      You take the trouble to write a comment on the Sun article (‘twould appear*), a comment on your blog, and a comment here… as well as a series of other comments about him on your blog, about his blog and columns, which you also apparently monitor regularly … all for free.

      So who’s the real loser, here? The guy who commands professional rates to dish the dirt on pols, and who uses his real name, and has an audience which numbers in many thousands, if not millions, to do so… or the one who spends just as much time, but who does it mostly anonymously and for free, to a tiny audience, kvetching about the first guy?

      * http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/06/03/rocco-rossi-loose-lips-sinking-ships#comment-218546461

  2. allegra fortissima says:

    quando un altro grido: “Che hai tu, Bocca?
    non ti basta sonar von le mascelle,
    se tu non latri? qual diavol ti tocca?”

    “Omai” diss’io “non vo’ che tu favelle,
    malvagio traditor; che alla tua onta
    io portero di te vere novelle.”

    (La Divina Commedia, Inferno, Canto XXXII, 104-110)

    • Winston Higgs says:

      Because I got nothing better to do and because it was bugging the bejeebus outta me, I offer this translation with much thanx to the Princeton Dante Project….really, I need to get a hobby or something:

      When another cried: ‘What ails you, Bocca?
      Isn’t it enough, making noise withyour jaws,
      without that howling, too? What devil’s at you?’

      ‘Now you no longer need to say a word,
      vile traitor,’ said I, ‘to your shame
      shall I bring back true news of you.’

  3. Iris Mclean says:

    Thanks Allegra and Winston. I’m now enlightened. 🙂

  4. Pedro says:

    Still looking for any evidence anyone in Wahington read or cared about the memos Re: Liberals fighting amongst themselves.
    Bueller? Bueller?
    Bleeding’ Canadian navel-gazers!

    • Attack! says:

      Yeah, like that’s the important takeaway about a story about how someone betrays his employers with loose lips… whether it’s ACTUALLY sunk any ships, yet. (And you, the supposed internationalist, have the temerity to say this on the anniversary D-Day, of all days?)

      Why, just the other day, MRS. Pedro was trying to tell anyone who would listen about about how _little_ Pedro wasn’t really keeping up his, er, end in the connubial bliss dep’t these days, but fortunately, no one was really listening, so I guess it’s no harm done…. But, say, have you heard about Cialis?

      • Pedro says:

        And my connubial bliss issues have anything at all to do with whether the movers and shakers around Barack Obama paid any attention to the memos? I was asking a journalistic question yet you seem to take everything as an attack on your politics! Have you or Susan Delacourt or anyone have any evidence that these memos were taken up in any meetings in Washingtom that resulted in any action? Do you honestly think anyone in Washington even knows who Rocco Rossi is? And that any of his comments made any change in policy, let alone an action equivalent to betraying D-Day? Are you comparing Mrs. Pedro to Rocco Rossi? Are you trying to insult me or Mrs. Pedro? Am I being compared to the disinterested leadership in Washington? Stop me before I OD on the question mark! Navel-gazer is a compliment for you. There are a gazzilion memos written by all manner of embassies and diplomats that are filed and forgotten. That is a tidbit we readers should be informed about.

        • Attack! says:

          “should be”? what, you’re an editor, or the thought police for working journalists, now… that they should all be fair & balanced and try to research unaswerable questions (how are they supposed to know who reads and acts on what were supposed to be confidential cables?), even though, um, it’s actually a column — an opinion piece — rather than a news story?

          The theme of WK’s piece wasn’t “Rossi has damaged the LPC,” it was, “Rossi shouldn’t be trusted, because he talks out of school.”

          Since my analogy about betrayals of confidence being bothersome even if no one was really listening was lost on you, here’s a more direct one.

          Imagine, for the sake of argument, the following news report from 10 years hence:

          “The Province is still struggling with the recession, despite Premier Hudak’s best efforts. Or possibly, because of them — according to Finance Minister Rossi, who told this reporter in an exclusive interview last week that the Premier generally does not take his advice, but rather consults his horoscope each day to decide what to do.”

  5. Tiger says:

    The president doesn’t.

    Foggy Bottom does — they like to keep track of pols they think are on the rise, and cultivate them.

    Standard operating procedure for the Foreign Service — even, or especially, among allies.

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