“If you don’t care about the royal baby, don’t bother telling the rest of us you don’t care.”

That was my personal message to assorted grumps, grouches and anti-monarchists Tuesday following the birth Monday of His Royal Highness, Prince George of Cambridge. I could take it no more, Your Babiness, and I struck back with the only sword available to me: A tweet.

Twitter, as HRH Prince George will shortly become aware, is the way in which the world now collectively experiences things. In the era of his great, great, great grandmother, Victoria, it was the town herald in the village square. Later, with great-grandmother Elizabeth, it was broadcasts and watercoolers.

Nowadays, it is Twitter. We all sit around observing the great moments of our age — presidential debates, Super Bowl games, Game of Thrones episodes and (naturally) Anthony Weiner press conferences — and comment on Twitter.

Twitter renders us one big cynical and dyspeptic family, sniping and snarking about whatever shows up on our TV screens. It is as if we are all sprawled out in a gigantic living room, offering up our wit and indignation about what passes for news. And, this week — apart from the aforementioned Weiner’s, er, weiner — what passed for news was the royal naissance of George.

Now, if you eyeballed any one of the kabillion available photographs of George, you would have noticed this about him: He is a baby. He looks, sounds and (likely) smells like any other baby. It is nice that he is among us (as is the case with every other baby), and we wish him luck on life’s journey (ditto).

That is not the sentimentality of a monarchist. I am, most days, as unenthusiastic about monarchies as I am about dictatorships and the Senate. I do not believe anyone should ever exercise great power unless they have first been elected to do so.

But, the bile and the biliousness on Twitter was something to behold, even for a ribald commoner such as I. Over and over, the grumpy republicans felt compelled to inform the rest of us, ad nauseum, why paying any attention to Prince George was an outrage. All while they themselves were, er, paying attention.

It was the same thing over on Canada’s best-loved political website, warrenkinsella.com. For posting something that sounded (and was) anti-republican, I was excoriated by left and right. My personal favourite: Philippe, who advised me that I was “absurd,” and helpfully added “you’re being ridiculous in giving a s— about such insignificant nonsense.”

Tut-tut!

Philippe, and not a few others, were missing the point. If so many folks were so opposed to the monarchy and its latest addition — if so many DID NOT CARE as much as they insisted they DID NOT CARE — well, then, why go to all the trouble of tweeting interminably about it? Why post something on Facebook? Why call a call-in show? Why bother?

Why, um, care?

In this way, crazed anti-monarchists remind us of crazed atheists.

They are more preoccupied with saying they dislike/disbelieve than those who actually do like/believe in God or Her Majesty or whatever.

I mean, honestly, if you don’t care, why don’t you — apologies in advance for this commoner’s phrase, your majesties — why don’t you STFU?

That is a singularly inappropriate acronym to deploy when in the presence of royalty, but it fits. If average folk, starved as they are for good news, would like to hear a bit of blathering about a royal baby, is anyone hurt?

Will our constitutional framework collapse?

Will it kill you to read about something nice, for a change?

It wouldn’t. Thus, my full tweet to the grumps and grouches:

“If you don’t care about the #RoyalBaby, don’t bother telling the rest of us you don’t care.

Because we couldn’t care less you don’t care.”

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Worldly, academic, author, former journalist, Harvard, even a bit of Russia.

What could possibly go wrong?

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Regular readers know my view about the preening megalomaniac who is the ostensibly non-partisan Ontario’s Information Commissioner – but who is, truly, a crazed publicity-seeking McGuinty-hater.  Officers of the Legislature, like her, are supposed to stay above partisan politics.  But – as the partial transcript of her Wednesday interview on Ottawa’s CFRA shows – she has taken to regularly commenting on politics, seeking out media attention, and acting entirely unlike a neutral employee of the Legislature.  (More and more, in fact, she makes John Gomery look professional in comparison.)

Her potshots at me, meanwhile, suggest something else entirely. They are revealing.  They suggest I am getting under her skin.  She doesn’t like being challenged by a lowly citizen.

So I intend to keep doing it.

Here’s the partial transcript, with emphasis added to illustrate how egotistical and reckless she has become:

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Here.

Reasons why I’d support her, if she ran:

• She knows how to work with everyone: that’s her rep from the Lastman years, when she was a councillor.  She’s flexible.  She isn’t into dogma.
• She’s hasn’t been part of the messes that have characterized City Hall for the past three years: Ford isn’t the only thing wrong with City Hall.  Pretty much everyone down there – Stintz, etc. – have become part of the problem.  We need an outsider.
• She has good ideas: I’ve run into Chow a few times, over the years, and found her ideas and approaches to be refreshingly centrist.  (The NDP’s 2011 gains, in fact, were because she and her late husband pushed that party into the political centre.)
• She can beat the abomination that is the Ford Nation: and she’s the only one who can.  Not Stintz, not Tory, not anyone – only Chow has the support to get rid of the historic disaster that is the Rob Ford regime.

 

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I’m about to go on Sun News about Weiner’s weiner, among other things. So I decided to try out Slate’s fun Carlos Danger Name Generator, here.

I am now officially Miguel Angel Dynamite. That is how I expect to addressed on Sun News, too.

 

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Guys like Morgan rarely get kudos for doing the right thing, so I say: kudos for doing the right thing.  Nice to see that it still occasionally happens in Harper’s Ottawa.

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Crazed republicans remind me of crazed atheists: they are more preoccupied with saying they dislike/disbelieve than those who actually do like/believe in God or Her Majesty or whatever.  I mean, honestly, if you don’t care, why don’t you STFU?

I swear: if Twitter didn’t exist, crazy people would go back to doing what they previously did, which was talking to their Imaginary Friends.  They should all go back to doing that.

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Who provides oversight for the overseers?

In this era of ombudsmen and commissioners and incessant inquiries, it is no idle question. In a time when, increasingly, gutless politicians are delegating authority for government oversight to unelected megalomaniacs, we need to consider whether we are heading down the right path. Mostly, we aren’t.

About a decade ago, when John Gomery was presiding over his circus-like inquisition into the sponsorship program in Quebec, the issue came into sharp focus. With his reckless comments to the news media, his clear bias against Jean Chretien, and his willingness to spend upwards of $100 million over two years — even hiring his daughter’s law firm — Gomery became a case study in how not to do these things.

In June 2008, the Federal Court agreed, blasting Gomery for his “preoccupation with the media” instead of fairness, for “prejudging issues” before all the evidence was in, and for wrongly assigning blame to Chretien and his former chief of staff, Jean Pelletier. Two years later, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld that scathing decision, and even ordered Stephen Harper’s government to pay some of Chretien’s legal costs.

Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner, should heed the lessons of Gomery. Cavoukian is the unelected narcissist who wrote a report a few weeks back about deleted e-mails in the ongoing Ontario gas-plant controversy. At the time, Cavoukian said the e-mails had been deleted “to avoid transparency and accountability.” It was “just appalling,” she said. It could even hurt the Ontario Liberals’ “ability to be re-elected,” she said.

Cavoukian, like Gomery, loved the attention that her over-the-top report received. So she dialled up the rhetoric. Immediately thereafter, the opposition also started screeching that laws had been broken and the OPP decided to investigate Cavoukian’s claims.

A few weeks later she was at it again, claiming the e-mails had been deleted to avoid “public scrutiny.” She then went on to call Chris Morley, Dalton McGuinty’s former chief of staff, “misleading,” “disingenuous” and alleged Morley had engaged in “misrepresentation.”

But, when pressed, she admitted much of what Morley had said had been “technically true.” And that she hadn’t even interviewed him to get his side of the story — not once.

Oh, and the deleted e-mails? Turns out some of them weren’t “deleted” after all.

That’s a pretty big mistake, considering what her mistake led to — headlines, subpoenas and a police investigation. Her excuse is that some unidentified functionary in government told her the e-mails had been deleted, and it was that person who got it wrong, not her. But that’s not good enough.

Cavoukian has a huge staff that is paid to weed out information. They forwarded on to her information that was not true and she used it. By her own admission, she rushed her report out the door. Most seriously, before accusing people of actual crimes, and viciously attacking them in print and on air, Cavoukian had a legal obligation to leave no stone unturned. She didn’t do that.

Instead, she (like Gomery) reminded us that, most of the time, the overseers are just as bad as those they were hired to oversee.

Or worse.

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