No one’s coming up smelling like roses these days
If I didn’t know better, I might say a certain collusion is afoot in the Great White North, where our national reputation was once as pristine as the driven snow.
Consider a few dispatches from the world press last week:
“(Justin) Bieber posted bail of $2,500 US, and faces charges of driving under the influence, driving with an invalid licence, and resisting arrest without violence after being stopped while ‘drag racing’ in a residential neighbourhood,” the CBC reported. “His rented, yellow Lamborghini was impounded.”
According to the arresting officer’s official report, which tweeted faster than a song bird in heat on Thursday, “I caught up to the yellow Lamborgini (sic) and initiated a traffic stop. . .I approached the vehicle on the driver side. I asked the driver to place the vehicle in park. At this time, the driver began to state, ‘Why did you stop me?’ I explained to the driver that he was stopped because he was drag racing with (another) Lamborgini (sic). I immediately smelled an odor of alcohol eminating (sic) from the driver’s breath and bloodshot eyes. The driver had slow deliberate movements and a stuper (sic) look on his face. These are all indicators of an impaired driver. I asked the driver to exit the vehicle. . .The driver stated, ‘Why the (expletive) are you doing this?’”
Meanwhile, back at the barn in good, old Hog Town, Burgermeister Bob was up to his old tricks. According to the Toronto Star, “Mayor Rob Ford was off the wagon at an Etobicoke steak joint this week, impaired and rambling, associating with accused video extortionist Alexander ‘Sandro’ Lisi and hurling profane, expletive-laden insults at Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair. . .’(Expletive) Chief Blair,’ Ford says in a videotape made at approximately 1 a.m. Tuesday. ‘They chase me around for five months. . .You know how much that costs?”
Later in the week, the Star’s Robyn Doolittle reported, “A couple hundred suits who’d gathered at the Hilton Toronto on Thursday afternoon grumbled quietly to each other about the mayor’s extreme tardiness. Rob Ford’s speech to the Economic Club of Canada was supposed to start at noon, but when he was still a no-show 45 minutes later, an entire table got up to leave. . .The mayor was an hour late for his speech.
‘We were stuck in an elevator,’ his spokesperson Amin Massoudi insisted.”
The question for the conspiratorially minded among us is, of course, are these separate and unrelated events or are they, rather, strategically conjoined displays of bad behavior designed to promote Canada’s new and improved tough guy image abroad? And if the latter is the case, who’s pulling the strings?
More questions swirl:
Is it really mere coincidence, dear reader, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has campaigned vigorously over the past year for a national hardline reset on everything from environmental rules and regulations to foreign policy just as Messrs. Bieber and Ford began to act out?
The former has 48,996,563 twitter followers. The PM has a mere 408,102. If you were him (Mr. Harper, that is), whose social media presence would you count on to popularize the message that we Canadians are, in fact, bat-guano crazy?
Former federal Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae doesn’t go down conspiracy row with any sort of aplomb, but he made some excellent points this past summer in his political blog on Huffington Post, to wit:
“Canada has become the classic practitioner of megaphone policy. . .We have the megaphone, the Prime Minister telling the American President in his own country that ‘he won’t take no for an answer’ on Keystone, John Baird . . .expressing skepticism but having no information and no knowledge to assess what is actually happening in Tehran. In my recent travels and discussions with seasoned foreign policy experts and politicians in the U.S. and Europe, I haven’t met one who took Canada seriously anymore, except as a posturer, a poseur, a political game player.”
Oh, I don’t know about that. The stridently hawkish Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems to think we’re pretty swell.
Then again, he may may also think that a country’s international reputation can only benefit from blanket coverage of its boozy mayors and sloshed, foul-mouthed post-adolescent superstars.
The Bruce Scribes 