There's an old joke Rodney Dangerfield used to tell about one of his first agents, a stereotypical New York cigar-chomper with a seedy office above a delicatessen.
Rodney went to see him and the guy immediately wanted the upstart comic to change his stage name.
"What's in a name?" quipped Dangerfield. "As Shakespeare said, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
"Who ya gonna listen to," grunted the agent, from behind a haze of cigar smoke. "Me or your friends?"
Well, there are likely a few people wondering who they should be listening to if they put any faith in Talk Show maven Sue's political analysis.
All during the campaign, from deep inside the Connie campaign bus, Sue called relentlessly to Bill and Randy and anywhere else that had a radio show with a telephone to explain how a Harper government would mean better representation in Ottawa for the areas outside Ontario and Quebec.
To anyone with a clue, her comments were nonsense from the start. A minority government would want to boost its representation in the places where it didn't have seats. In a majority, everyone gets rewarded with the inevitable result that the bulk of the cabinet spots go to the places where the most seats come from.
Like Ontario and Quebec.
Then came the Harper cabinet.
The big portfolios go to people from Ontario. (Compare that to Paul Martin's cabinet, with its key finance portfolios going to westerners.)
The government departments handing out big bucks for public contracts and capital works go to Quebeckers.
Here's the break-out by the numbers:
Ontario: 8
Quebec: 5
Alberta: 4 (including Harper)
B.C.: 4
Everywhere else: 1 each, except PEI which has no cabinet representation.
Fully 48% of the cabinet is from Ontario and Quebec, the provinces that have traditionally dominated federal cabinets. Ontarians and Quebeckers also get the key money portfolios.
Add all of the western provinces together and you get 37% of cabinet - but you have to add them together.
Atlantic Canada? We get 11% of the seats in cabinet.
So when it comes to astute political analysis, the question for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians is a simple one:
Who ya gonna listen to?
Radio call-in shows of course.
But solely for their entertainment value.
If you want to understand what is going on in the world, you'll have to go somewhere else. "Experts" that call Bill and Randy may have the name, but they don't smell anything near as sweet as the ones who really know what they are talking about.
