Elizabeth May’s Ottawa outburst
I was not there in Ottawa, but watching the video I could see two reasons for that odd and lengthy outburst (she can thank her friend, Minister of Transport Lisa Raitt for hauling her backstage before it got worse): 1) she may have been in her cups, a quaint 17th century British manner of saying drunk as the proverbial skunk; and 2) Ms. May loves being politically hip.
I’d bet Mike Duffy’s bottom dollar that she was in her cups. I mean I don’t expect her to be the comedic equivalent of Catherine O’Hara but surely she does not think, even in her least lucid moments, that a semi-coherent talking jag that ends with her being yanked off the stage and calling out that the “whole fucking cabinet” is classless is the stuff of high comedy.
She was tipsy and instead of playing along with the light tone – yes, she did sing, but it was kinda weird – which prevails at the dinner, she could not stop herself from trumpeting Omar Khadr, thereby showing us that she loves the political flavor of the day, while trashing the Conservatives. Among a certain sect such activities are politically hip to engage in.
Elizabeth May: Gets no respect
Last fall, May was that sycophantic leader who was so intent upon being politically hip that as the Jian Ghomeshi scandal was unfolding and others were condemning him she let us all know how much she loved the then-culturally hip Mr. Ghomeshi.
“I think Jian is wonderful,” she tweeted. “Likely TMI for an old fogy like me, but his private life is none of our beeswax.”
After her opinion hit the political fan she took down her tweet, apologized and claimed she hadn’t read all the information yet. Saturday night it was fatigue and the flu responsible for her errant ways, in October she blamed her questionable tweet on being upset about the violence that had taken place in Ottawa that week (the lone-wolf terrorist attack on the National War Memorial that killed Corporal Nathan Cirillo).
On and on May went Saturday, rambling about Stephen Harper and about how she doesn’t get enough respect. It isn’t fair, you see, that she isn’t included in national debates; after all her party has all of two seats (they’re tied with the the Block Quebecois and Forces et Démocratie!).
Here’s what The True North Times quoted journalist Paul MacLeod saying about May’s ramble: “She also talked about her fake hip and the oral and anal stages of psychosexual development. I am somehow not joking.”
Morally Green Party
Okay, this is what annoys me about her brand of Tea Party Left: it is sanctimonious. It’s like they are better than the rest of us. Isn’t it cool to say “more class than the whole fucking cabinet?” Yes, those nasty Conservatives aren’t just a government she disagrees with, they are BAD people. BAD people whom she and her hench-persons are morally superior to.
Guess what? Some humans do not think a person who has killed in the name of an organization that stones women to death and kills men who don’t cater to their religious demands, a person who showed, when young, to incline toward being a terrorist, should be free. That’s a viable opinion held by more than just Stephen Harper and his cabinet. Is that opinion really that outrageous?
Look, they’re not fucking classless, they just have a different opinion. Savvy, Elizabeth? Argue they are more fearful, less forgiving, more law and order, but not that you are better than them. Are you better than them? Do you really think that? Is arrogance something most of us want in a leader? Richard Nixon had that – and look where it got him!
The Conservatives have different ideas on how to get to a place whereupon everyone gets along, sits down to three square meals a day in a safe environment and manages to reach their potential. Even though they have been right about some things, I don’t think we’ll get there the way those darn Conservatives believe we will.
But are they more fucking classless than some guy who killed an army medic with a hand-grenade? A man whose allegedly tainted U.S. courtroom admission doesn’t sound so tainted now, given that upon his release, he said he was “…sorry for the pain I’ve caused for the families of the victims.”
So then there are victims beyond Omar Khadr?
Here’s this: the Conservatives represent views of many Canadians, whether you like those views or not. And here’s this: Omar Khadr sounds now like a nice person but we shall only find out if that is so in the fullness of time, as he himself intimated. He is back in our world though and I agree that the best thing is to treat this man fairly and well.
But it shouldn’t be politically hip to glom on him like he’s the second coming of Mahatma Gandhi. Or trash Stephen Harper and the Conservatives like they’re the second coming of Darth Vader and the Galactic Empire. And it shouldn’t be that our political leaders try to gain a few brownie points by claiming the moral high-ground.
After all, doesn’t it lack a little class?
