Pity poor Rex Murphy. He doesn't understand what he calls the "unbalanced and disproportionate" antipathy Canadians feel for Stephen Harper:
For, step back a little, make a little space, and you will see that in his personal and domestic conduct, Harper is almost stereotypically Canadian. He’s a mild, unobnoxious, hockey-mad fellow. He doesn’t boast.He shuns the spotlight he could be commanding every day. He keeps his privacy and doesn’t insist, like many public figures, in conducting a soap opera around his position or his family. He’d be the ideal neighbour — he wouldn’t just drop in, too reserved for that (which is great), but I’m sure he’d lend a shovel when needed. Probably even help dig out your car if you were stuck, and take your thanks with a self-conscious smile and reassurance that it was no trouble.
Really? Murphy advances this opinion in the same week that the cost of those F- 35 fighter jets was revealed to be $45 billion instead of $16 billion, and that Mr. Harper approved the sale of Nexxen Energy to China's state owned energy corporation. Two weeks ago Canada voted against recognition of Palestine at the UN.
There were those calls in Irwin Cotler's riding, which the Speaker of the House labelled "reprehensible" -- not to mention the robocalls in the last election. And there was Joe Oliver's claim that environmentalists were enemies of the state. In fact, Mr. Harper likes to label all his opponents enemies of the state. Remember "Taliban Jack?"
And then there is the business of Harper's hidden agenda. Rex writes:
Even though he is Prime Minister and has a majority, many still believe he keeps that damn agenda up his sleeve. Query: What’s the point of a hidden agenda that stays hidden? Will it still be hidden when he leaves office? If so, what was or is its point?
What, indeed, is the point of keeping government estimates away from Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page? Why did Mr. Harper not want to release those documents on the treatment of Afghan prisoners? Why do the Conservatives insist that so many parliamentary committees meet behind closed doors? And why are Canadian scientists not allowed to speak with the media?
Why is Stephen Harper so deeply dispised by a majority of Canadians? The answer is as plain as the nose on Mr. Murphy's face -- and as old as the human race: What goes around comes around. When you treat people with contempt, they will return the favour.
Mr. Murphy simply hasn't been paying attention.
20 comments:
My god, ... what was Murphy trying to say with that?
"Somebody fire me! I don't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about!"
When harper heard that our Karzai allies were raping children his first thought was to cover it up.
That wouldn't have been my first notion.
Rex, thesaurus-geek of the CBC, abandoned critical thinking long ago in favor of lexical posturings. He piles up $5 words with the sort of abandon and redundancy that would get a remedial English student strapped even in this day and age. He's lost in a jungle of verbiage. And this comment was written by his avatar. ;-)
Rex is the perambulating house thesaurus of the CBC. He's lexically mad and piles together all the $5 words he can find in order to bury his reader in a mass of verbiage. And fashion some sort of misshapen wreaths for all Cons, neo-Cons and what the French call simply 'les cons.'
Rex just doesn't get it, thwap. He's living in another country.
Rex is more rhetorical show, than incisive substance, Anon.
Sounds like a second comment from the same Anon.
Ah Mr Murphy.. a man who's feet are not planted on Canaadian soil, nor Planet Earth. His mind adrift in a vacuum. That agenda he's wondering about.. the one that was hidden in a minority government but was unleashed immediately via omnibus 'budget's to attack our environment. The in camera committees same deal.
Mr Murphy needs his head cuffed hard (metaphorically speaking) for willful blindness in characterizing Stephen Harper as he does. The hockey mad nonsense is part of the camouflage of a sociopath. Like Mitt Romney, Harper is a pathological liar and manipulator.. and a very very clever man.
I'm looking forward to the next prorogue from this secretive obstructive deceitful government that is leaking scandal, incompetence, malfeasance and ignorance from its rotten ethically and morally dead carcass..
It would appear, salamander, that Mr. Harper has conned Mr. Murphy. I suspect, however, that Canadians will not be conned by Mr. Murphy.
I haven't watched Cross Country Checkup since the man tok over. I call it the 'Old White Guy' Country Checkup. Used to love it once upon a time.
Like you, Anon, I used to listen regularly to Cross Country Checkup. I don't anymore.
Murphy is a professional contrarian, a practitioner of theatre arts cheaply executed.
One of Mother Corp's great failings has been this proclivity to find niches for types like Murphy where they're revered as High Priests of Canadian broadcasting. Duffy had that treatment before he bailed to CTV for more money and, ultimately, his personal stairway to heaven in the Senate.
Like you I long ago stopped listening to this wretch on Cross-Canada Checkup. It is simply boring, even a bit creepy as Murphy indulges his penchant for intellectual onanism.
So true, Mound. Onanism -- intellectual or otherwise -- is self defeating.
An excellent riposte to Mr. Murphy's drivel, Owen. Perhaps his surrender of any semblance of critical thinking can be explained by a comment I read the other day on Twitter: Murphy is desperate to join fellow Harper-sycophant Duffy in the Senate.
I fortunately missed Rex's latest spew. I find him an ignorant man dressed up in intellectual peacock feathers - I assume he reads the long words from the teleprompter. I notice that even my elderly mother is becoming aware of Harper's shortcomings, in spite of the CBC's eternal coverup, of which Rex is part. If my mother is vaguely aware that something is wrong, then something is moving in the sluggish Canadian intellect. It's about time.
It's interesting that Harper has been able to convince a number of journalists to join his court, Lorne. Besides Duffy, there are, of course, Peter Kent and Pamela Wallin.
Perhaps Murphy wants to join the cadre -- which doesn't say a lot for people who used to be respected in their profession.
I can't help but think, Fightfor, that ordinary Canadians have begun to understand that Mr. Harper is an accomplished con artist.
If nothing else, the difference between the advertised cost of those F-35's and their cost on delivery should convince a lot of people who voted for him that he's not the kind of salesman you would trust when buying your next car.
It's time to release the gasbags and fartcatchers from the CBC News division or just sell the whole thing off and get it off the backs of the citizens.
There are a handfull of CBC
journalists (who really keep this boat afloat) who must just cringe when they see Murphy's mug at the intro of the "National".
The CBC is quickly becoming a parody of itself.
Harper used to be so critical of, what he now does himself, only on a much worse scale. Harper is certainly a weirdo. Right from day one. I thought of Harper as, I do not like thee Dr. Fell. My son laughed at me. He isn't laughing anymore.
I found a lot of humor when, Harper was described as a, petty gasbag, arrogant, stubborn, impossible to work with and co-operates with no-one. Country's are always so miffed with Harper, at the meetings of Nations. He always manages to anger and insult, every Nation present. I guess, only other weirdos could like Harper.
While I'm sure there must be CBC journalists who are embarrassed by Murphy -- Lyndon McIntyre would be one -- I'd hate to sell off the CBC, Anon.
I still believe that the BBC sets the standard. And even that organization has been rocked by scandals of its own making.
That's why Murphy's assertion that Harper is stereotypically Canadian rings so hollow, Anon.
There are lots of Canadians who share Harper's love of hockey. But they do not share his values or his beliefs.
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