Then: Max Ruelokke’s “ties” to the oil industry made him an unacceptable candidate to head the offshore oil industry regulatory board.
Now: Mark Turner’s ties to the oil industry make him the perfect candidate to assess offshore oil industry regulations.
Then: Hydro Quebec was a worthy partner to take an ownership stake in the Lower Churchill, no redress for 1969.
Now: Hydro Quebec is the latest incarnation of foreign evil.
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When you’ve been writing a politically-oriented blog for five years, some things stand out by their presence, others by their absence.
Like the complete absence of any Fan Club comments on any posts by your humble e-scribbler after Monday.
A post back in early April that mentioned - just mentioned mind you - the Premier’s 8th floor digs in a Florida condo tower generated 49 comments.
One on his potential successors last week picked up a few but for the most part they were pretty weak.
But after that Monday post, as things turned particularly sour for the current governing party, there’s not so much as a peep out of them.
And it’s not like there has been plenty of stuff they could sink their teeth into.
Maybe they are just bored.
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More like maquette.
or to be even more accurate a mockette.
Not even enough of a mockery to be a fully qualified one to handle the name on its own.
More like mockery-light.
Mockery of a political party, mockery of democracy and mockery of a genuine separatist party.
Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc: political irrelevant.
But damn fine comedians.
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Well, it used to matter to leaders like Lyndon Johnson, anyway.
Here’s the now-legendary photograph of Johnson showing off the scar from his gall bladder surgery to a gaggle of reporters.
Biographers Irwin and Debi Unger argue that Johnson was merely trying to show that he was healing well.
It didn’t come across that way.
That story leads off a paper by University of Missouri – Columbia professor Jeffrey Pasley on American presidents and media coverage of presidential health issues.
Unknown to the public and the press, Johnson's doctors had also been concerned about the possibility of more dangerous conditions, such as pancreatic cancer and a recurrence of his earlier heart troubles; true to their fears, the president actually developed a superventricular tachycardia (dangerously accelerated heartbeat) while undergoing anaesthesia. Trying to allay suspicions that Johnson was seriously ill, press secretary Bill Moyers "snowed [the White House press corps] with details," including full-color anatomical slides, and the news media duly carried daily reports of Johnson's convalescence, including such minutiae as how well the president slept on particular nights, Lady Bird planting a tree outside the hospital room window, and his viewing of "Hello, Dolly!" on television. Unfortunately, Moyers had no idea how far the president was willing to take the full disclosure policy. On October 20, [1965] Johnson was holding forth to the press as he sunned himself on the Bethesda Naval Hospital grounds.
"Apparently feeling words to be inadequate" in describing how he felt, the Baltimore Sun's Muriel Dobbin reported, "the President whipped up his blue knit sport shirt," and, as Time put it, "let the whole world inspect the ugly twelve-inch seam under his right rib cage" where the surgeons had done their work. Many newspapers and both major newsmagazines carried a photo that week of a squatting, squinting LBJ exposing his flesh for the press.
Moyers’ efforts are typical of what politicians and their staff try to do in order to dispel rumours about a politician’s health. . Moyers pushed out bags of detail at a time when that volume of information was unheard of. He might have been on safe ground too, if his boss hadn’t opted for the more earthy approach.
Pasley summarises a number of episodes that demonstrate just exactly how some episodes of presidential illness have been handled and mishandled. Take a minute and read the article. You won’t be disappointed.
There is a lesson in the American experience with illness and transparency, one that would be useful for any politician to heed.
Just as daylight is the best disinfectant for political corruption so too is factual information the curative for the diseases that fester in the often incestuous world of politics. As with physical disease, moralising and ex poste facto rationalisations are seldom useful for preventing or curing a partisan pox.
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It’s been the better part of two weeks now since it started and the Cultists are still bombing any available media outlet with the same line.
Yes, folks, it really is a media strategy that could only have been devised by Chris Crocker.
Amazing how these things just seem to happen as if by magic, without any co-ordination at all.
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Newly minted tourism minister Terry French seems to have a thing for Joe Smallwood.
Consider this bit of his answer to a question about the province’s tourism budget:
Do you know how many awards we have won in marketing in this Province? We have not won one, we have not won ten, and we have not won twenty - fifty-one awards.
French couldn’t have nailed the Smallwood trademark any better if he’d practiced it for hours with Kevin Noble.
There is no truth to the rumour that French was spotted recently in the mall looking for bowties.
But he might have asked Santa for one.
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Thankfully there are still some places in the province where a sense of humour hasn’t been surgically removed.
The crowd up in Labrador took advantage of the Friday meeting in Churchill Falls to have a little fun in the midst of all the heavy discussing.
Give it a listen. It’s funny stuff.
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Criminals are now writing columns, presumably from inside their American jail cells.
Yes, Insta-peer Conrad Black has a by-line for a piece on the monarchy.
Quebec and Newfoundland have a string of politicos with criminal records all of whom could do either court or political reporting. Maybe that would help solve the Post’s financial woes.
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It’s always good to keep a sense of humour, even of you have to wear those cruel shoes.
From 2005, Jack Layton sings the party song.
The New York Times’ Ben Schott challenges readers to have some fun and invent new words or phrases that have an obscured or no meaning to replace words and phrases that already work perfectly well.
Here is one to get you started:
Democratic Party (of Canada)
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