Dear Famous Canadians:

Canadians behaving badly in the United States: you could practically write a book about the subject, couldn’t you?

On the Right side of the spectrum, there was the time that former Toronto mayor Rob Ford was arrested in Miami, mugshot and all. Ford told a Miami police officer to “go ahead take me to jail,” and the officer happily did so. Ford had been arrested for drunk driving and marijuana possession. 

He became mayor of Canada’s largest city anyway.

On the Centre-Left (but not entirely-Left) side of the spectrum, there were those many times Michael Ignateff offered commentaries that would follow him around, like a persistent bad smell. So, Ignatieff told an American magazine that we would all “pay a price” if we banned torture. Or, that time he was again at home in Boston, and he wrote an essay about the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq, and allowed that “I think they are right on the issue.” Or, that famously unhelpful CSPAN interview, where he said America was “your country, just as much as it is mine.”

Ignatieff still went on to become leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

So, we’re rather forgiving of Canadians who behave badly when south of the 49th parallel, aren’t we? We are. You can still behave badly and go on to be a big success when back home. A psychologist could have a field day with what this says about us, but we digress.

Just this past week, we were provided with yet more alleged-and-otherwise examples of Canadians doing bad things while in America.

There was our Liberal government’s Governor-General-to-be, Julie Payette, found to have been charged with assault when she lived in the US in 2012. The court files documenting the case, the Liberal-friendly Toronto Star reported, were gone. “The entire case record has been ‘expunged’,” the Star reported. Odd, that.

It also reported that Payette, while behind the wheel of a car, hit a pedestrian in Maryland in 2011, where she then lived. The woman, Theresa Potts, was killed. An eight-month-long investigation by Maryland police eventually found that Payette was not at fault.

The Trudeau government, who can fairly be presumed to have known about Payette’s assault charge and the fatal collision, appointed Payette to the vice-regal post anyway. “She is perfectly aligned with the image that we want to project,” a senior Liberal official said to the Globe and Mail. “It’s such a nice nomination.”

Theresa Potts might disagree, but she’s not around to ask anymore, is she? No, she’s not.

Just this past week, too, there was Conservative MP Peter Kent, writing in the august pages of the Wall Street Journal, calling the settlement with Omar Khadr a “cynical subversion of Canadian principles.” It wasn’t even the first time a Tory MP had written an op-ed in the Journal, condemning on his own country: back around the time of the aforementioned Iraq War, Stephen Harper excoriated my former boss, Jean Chretien, for declining to join George W. Bush’s insane misadventure. He even called Canadians who opposed the Iraq war “cowards.” That’s a quote.

Oh, and he went on to become Prime Minister for nearly a decade. It was in all the papers.

The Conservatives’ Khadr-related fundraising initiative also saw Conservative MP Michelle Rempel on Fox News, no less, declaring that “Canadians are absolutely outraged about [the $10.5 million settlement and apology Khadr received].” That may be true. But when Tucker Carlson, her crypto-racist Fox News host, asked Rempel if the settlement was “a way of giving the finger to the United States,” Rempel apparently didn’t say it wasn’t. 

How nice.

Of this Conservative strategy, Ipsos Reid tells us, more than 70 per cent of Canadians are onside. They’re mad, too, and presumably okay with the likes of Kent and Rempel – and before that, Harper – crapping on their own country when in the United States.

They shouldn’t be. 

It’s regrettable that it needs to be said, but we’ll say it nonetheless: Canadians who behave badly when abroad – driving drunk, or advocating for torture, or allegedly getting in altercations, or simply going on American TV to malign one’s own country – just, you know, shouldn’t. 

It’s unfortunate, too, that this also merits saying, but we’ll do so anyhow: prominent Canadians who act like jackasses – or who allegedly commit crimes, or who do unhelpful things whilst in other countries – shouldn’t be rewarded when they come home. They shouldn’t get a collective shrug.

You represent Canada when you aren’t in Canada, famous folks. Stop acting like jerks.

Sincerely,

Etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On socks, Alberta and No More Mr. Spice Guy.

Here.

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The cover of the next LP, SFH Kinda Suck. Remind you of anything?

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…to prevent her from bouncing down the stairs, that is.  The still GG, not the one presently in the crosshairs of Kevin Donovan.

You're on some steps with the Queen. She starts to fall. You:

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) July 19, 2017

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On Spotify!

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From Leger.

Facebook reminded me.  The slide, meanwhile, reminds all of us that there are no certainties in politics – everything can change in an instant, and in ways few of us foresee, too (cf. Brexit, Trump).

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…well, they can be, actually.  Following me, for instance: shouldn’t you all be outside, playing a sport or something?

Anyway, I am grateful that my 140-character-consciousness has some appeal. And, Justin Trudeau, watch out: I’m coming after you.

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So, I was on Evan Solomon’s show on CFRA yesterday afternoon, with my pals Karl Belanger and Monte Solberg, and Evan asked us about Justin Trudeau’s Spotify list.  Given that Trudeau’s list contained stuff “you could hear in an elevator anywhere in Canada,” I said, to general merriment, Evan challenged me to provide a better alternative.

Thus, SFH’s newest hit-to-be, Kinda Sucks, was flushed out of hiding.  Here it is, newly mastered – along with how the cover will look, soon to be clutched in the sweaty maulers of millions of teens around the globe.

Watch for it on iTunes and independent record shops near you, Evan!

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Stupidity.

When every other explanation fails, there’s always stupidity. Remember that, boys and girls.

Let us explain. Back at the beginning of time, when this writer wrote for the Calgary Herald and the Ottawa Citizen and the like, media folks still had expense accounts. It’s true, we did. We would gather at local canteen, and dissect the latest bit of political skullduggery, and charge our beneficent corporate overlords.

So, if Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had declared that he intended to “roll the dice” with the Constitution, as he did, we figured he couldn’t possibly mean that. Because, you know, actually “rolling the dice” with a nation’s supreme statute would be utterly reckless and irresponsible, and would have the potential to destroy said nation. So it couldn’t possibly be that. No way.

Therefore, we would assume some grand strategy was at work. Mulroney was being diabolically clever, and putting the Premiers on notice. Or he was being Machiavellian, and attempting to stampede the Opposition onto his side of the argument. Or, whatever. (The expense accounts would get strained, at this point.)

Steven Harper, too. When, mid-campaign in 2015, he abruptly stopped talking about his main political strength (the economy), and started talking about an issue that absolutely no one else was talking about (the niqab), lots of media folks thought the then-Conservative leader knew something the rest of us didn’t. The economy is the main concern of millions (that is, millions) of Canadians, and the wearing of the niqab in a lineup had come up twice (that is, twice) in the preceding months. But Harper Is A Strategic Genius, etc. etc. He knows what he’s doing, etc.

Well, no. It was knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, dog-whistle politics of the worst kind. It was pathetic and desperate. It was, in fact, a complete repudiation of every previous effort Messsrs. Harper and Kenney had made to, um, curry favour with New Canadians. It was like holding a hand grenade, pulling the pin, and saying, just before blowing oneself to smithereens: “Canadians will greatly admire the bold and decisive move I am about to make.”

Which brings us, in a circuitous fashion, to Donald “Diaper” Trump, Jr.

(A word of explanation: back in his salad days at the University of Pennsylvania, the younger Donald was renowned as the Big Drunk on Campus. As his classmate Scott Melker was seen recounting this week on Facebook: “Donald Jr. was a drunk on campus. Every memory I have of him is of him stumbling around the campus, falling over or passing out in public, with his arm in a sling from injuring himself while drinking. His nickname was “Diaper Don” because of his tendency to falls asleep in other people’s beds and urinate. I always felt terrible for him.”)

A week or so ago today, Diaper Don was being hounded by the ink-stained wretches and wretchesses at the New York Times. They were onto a story that Diaper Boy – aided and abetted by his brother-in-law, and his father’s top campaign boss – had met with Russian operatives in June 2016 to receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

The Times didn’t have the documentary proof, however. They just had dribs and drabs from three anonymous sources. Diaper Don and the geniuses at the White House serially offered up a variety of explanations for the meeting, none of which made sense, and none of which were actually true. But it was still the Donald Jr., on the record, versus three anonymous weasels, largely off the record. It was a plausibly deniable position, because there was no paper proof.

So, what did Diaper Don do?

He gave the media proof.

Ho ho ho, the Trumpkins crowed. Donny showed the Deep State! He stole the scoop away from the Times! He went first, and owned the news cycle! He defined the story before it could be defined! He’s a genius! Nothing burger, etc.!

Well, no.

Diaper Don gave the news media the entire email exchange between himself and some crypto-Soviet sleazebag, who told him – and we are putting this in all-caps, because it actually merits it – that: “THIS SENSITIVE INFORMATION IS PART OF RUSSIA AND ITS GOVERNMENT’S SUPPORT FOR MR. TRUMP.”

Upon receiving this “sensitive information” from the Kremlin, did Diaper Don go to the feds, to report a possible crime? Did he notify the media and summarily condemn it? Did he take steps to protect his father, then losing to Hillary Clinton?

Um, no. He cheerily went to the meeting, at Trump Tower, and he helpfully brought along his brother-in-law (who now works at the White House, and is under criminal investigation, because Russia) and the top campaign boss (who is now registered as a pro-Russia lobbyist, and is also under criminal investigation, because Russia). And, three days later, the hacked Clinton campaign emails started to spill out.

The general consensus is that Diaper Don has now handed Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing all of this Trumprussia stuff, the proverbial smoking gun. He has offered the proof that no one previously had: namely, that Donald Trump – and his family, and his most-senior campaign operatives – knowingly and maliciously conspired with Russia to cheat, and steal the election from the real president, Hillary Clinton.

Sometimes, boys and girls, there is no grand strategy. Sometimes, there is no diabolically-clever tactic being deployed. Sometimes, it simply is what it looks like.

You know: stupid.

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