Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's Warren Kinsella*

*In homage to one of Canada's most spectacularly, narcissistically, and tunelessly pretentious descents into abject mid-life crisis.

And, speaking of decadence, allow me a short intermission...

I wonder, to those few Canadians who have become accidentally aware of Warren Kinsella's modest and unearned celebrity within a small, dull circle of elite political trainspotters, which of Kinsella's achievements among his trove of gumball-machine trophies gathered during a dismal career of representing everything Canadians loathe about their vapid, cynical, focus-grouped, spin-doctored politics shine the brightest. Would it be

1) Kinsella's use of a Barney doll to ridicule the Leader of the Opposition's Pentecostalism in what became the first overtly sectarian attack ever launched in the course of a Canadian federal election?

2) Kinsella's key role in a legendarily arrogant Liberal administration that laid waste to the progressive Pearson/Trudeau social welfare legacy and superintended corruption so vast and flagrant that its exposure destroyed the party and guaranteed an indefinite, perhaps generations-long, even more deeply corrupt "Conservative" overlordship?

3) Kinsella's 1997 electoral loss, amid a crushing Liberal national victory, against a half-mad Western separatist incumbent languishing on Reform's farthest fringes?

4) Kinsella's bathetically unctuous attack of the vapours over an offhand remark that allegedly places a blogger he considers good enough to poach from in the ideological company of the "Far Right", broadcast in blithe disregard of his own protracted collaboration with the odious Sun Media Corp. (among whose vile notorieties is the 2010 Ottawa Sun editorial that advocated the mass murder of civilians, an outrage that went unprotested by Kinsella) and of the fact that a strict application of his logic would force him to declare Noam Chomsky an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier?

My guess is that most would choose number 4—chiefly because that event's diffusion has not had to rely on Kinsella's own negligible powers but has been driven by Dr. Dawg's superb systematic demolition of the pious fool's presumptuousness. I'll warrant you that, since last week, thousands of people have stumbled onto Warren Kinsella's existence for precisely the reason English Literature undergrads discover Thomas Shadwell. Enjoy your 15 minutes, Warren, to terminate when our laughter subsides and we return you to the scribbling, had-been* obscurity where, at no one's request, you regularly dole to a tiny, indifferent readership a clutch of limp, pedestrian lines, each one an ingenious rearrangement of the disarmingly candid sentence, "Yeah. I used to be a spin doctor; tough racket".

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* Instead of the conventional "has-been", we use the past perfect here to indicate that Kinsella was a has-been before he lowered himself below the dignity of has-been by joining the execrable Sun chain of over-priced bog roll.   

Constitutional Pedantry Justified*

* Now with "What He Said" and "Support Our Troops" updates!

Anyone who wondered how badly we need to restore dignity, authority and competence to the office of Governor General and beg of it to take ultimate executive authority away from the giggling psych-ward outpatients who now pretend to national leadership needs to understand that our current prime minister thinks democracy is dangerous. No, really.

Just when you were starting to bow under the apparently persuasive weight of the endlessly reiterated insistence that Stephen Harper has changed—that he is not the state-hating, anarcho-libertarian, free-market fundamentalist he used to be—the man himself proclaims that, since the "games" (he means "debates") that go on in Parliament are so frightening to international finance, the House is better off kept empty.

Disappointingly, Harper failed to pursue his train of thought to its logical conclusion and announce the indefinite suspension of Parliament and the immediate proscription of all political parties (except his own) in order to ensure that Canada remains attractive to the sharks that ply the world's capital markets. Perhaps he’s just waiting for his blue sweater to come back from the dry cleaner’s, as he would wish, of course, to sport his “harmless eunuch” look when promulgating that particular edict.



What He Said:

I just came across this week-old editorial by noted constitutional scholar Errol Mendes (of my dear old University of Ottawa) and thought I would share it with you. It’s so close to the spirit of my last post that it might have served as its contextual preface. I was quite surprised to read Mendes explicitly argue that Harper’s prorogation was undeniably unconstitutional (as in illegal).


"Support Our Troops":

On a lighter (though, also, darker) note, I thought I would pass along a clip of Noam Chomsky deploying his rarely used stand-up skills. Here, he talks about what asinine, bumper-sticker-ready slogans like “Support Our Troops” are designed to accomplish on behalf of élite objectives.

Given that the latest Parliamentary suspension might go down in history as the “Support-Our-Troops” Interlude (as it barred the evil Opposition from doing the Taliban’s work in their subversive House committees) and given that Chomsky’s guild syndicalism is the closest thing to Romantic-Jacobean Toryism of which modern Americans appear capable, I believe the clip to be more than glancingly apropos.

Noam Chomsky, ladies and gentlemen. Well into his eighties, and still really, really angry. Now that’s my kind of guy.

Harper Valley: Pity, Eh?

As mentioned in my "Quotations of Chairman Harper" post of last week, I have never for a minute credited the media- and CPC-generated hype about Stephen Harper's allegedly sabre-sharp political acumen. To me, this uncritically approving susurrus sounded like a tin-pot emperor being fitted for new clothes.

Now, even though the lamentable aftershocks of last Sunday's ridiculous "Conservative" media minstrelsy should have been powerful enough to rip every last thread of those clothes from Emperor Stevie's back, Harperoid drones seem as eager as ever to strip naked, slather their shivering bodies with blue paint, and hurl themselves in human waves against a withering chain-gun fire of scorn and ridicule that always remorselessly rips to shreds the last remnants of their dignity and self-worth. Pierre Poilievre's abjectly but appropriately rabbit-like performance on Charles Adler's radio show is only one example of a recent CPC self-immolation for the greater glory of the Chairman and of the Great Leap Backward.

Naturally, the Blogging Tories are dutifully following Poilievre into the valley of imbecilic self-abasement--each in his own special way. For instance, a great many of that tribe are valiantly but pointlessly attempting to salvage the Chairman's reputation by arguing that Harper had no prior knowledge of Sunday's disastrous "press conference"--that Sparrow, Findlay, and Lepsoe acted as rogue agents, entirely on their own initiative.

I've already indicated my own total contempt for this assertion. Earlier today, I was delighted to encounter this insider confirmation of my own view:

"Tories privately say Mr. Sparrow should not be held responsible for communications strategies at party headquarters, saying the Prime Minister's Office is calling the shots for this hardball approach to the media".

Of course, I did not require this independent ratification of common sense, and neither, I'm sure, did my non-CPC readers. I offer this merely as a public service to my few Harperthought jihadists--a service which, doubtless, will go deeply unappreciated.

And, guys, I'll understand if you don't thank me. I can take it: I wont cry and run down the stairs.


P.S. Cringing apologies for the awful pun in the title (or, more properly, the pun that is the title), but I thought it might extort a chuckle from those d'un certain âge.