Trudeau-mania, 2012 edition
February 16, 2012 | 2 Comments
Several things are true about the latest episode of Canadian political drama involving MP Justin Trudeau and his comments on Quebec separatism. (He said the following: “I always say, if at a certain point, I believe that Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper — that we were going against abortion, and we were going against gay marriage, and we were going backwards in 10,000 different ways — maybe I would think about making Quebec a country.”)
His last name alone and his father’s legacy guarantee widespread media coverage.
PET remains a polarizing force, four decades later.
Depending on the mood of the country, comments on separatism by a federal politician usually also attract attention.
The political bubble that is Ottawa/Parliament Hill is intact.
Liberals still love to raise the threat of Harper’s secret agenda.
Politicians love rhetoric.
Politicians say stupid things.
With these truisms stated, it seems the coverage of Trudeau’s is particularly mean-spiritied. (ipolitics has a good round-up of all the editorials.) Observers have launched personal, character-based attacks on Trudeau, most claiming that he is a intellectually deficient narcissist. Most of the editorials take a condescending tone that has been absent when someone like, say, Pat Martin says something stupid. One commentator even implicitly questioned Trudeau’s masculinity. It’s not even a slow news cycle- we got PANDAS! and the gun registry was killed. It doesn’t help that Trudeau referred to himself in the third person, but still, why so mean?
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2 Responses to “Trudeau-mania, 2012 edition”
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February 16th, 2012 @ 1:33 pm
Our political culture is increasingly poisonous. Trudeau is part of it and feeding it.
At the heart of the problem is the apparent inability to agree to disagree. Tolerance of political diversity is very much under assault. And no party is innocent.
This ties directly back to Trudeau’s remarks. The key part of his remark is that he doesn’t believe that people who don’t like abortion or same-sex marriage should be Canadians. He’s not disagreeing with their views, he’s suggesting they are fundamentally illegitimate, and that disagreement over these two issues is secure rationale for the breakup of the country.
To flip it around: Wouldn’t Trudeau be obliged to support the separatist agenda of conservative Christians, who obviously very much disagree with the status quo on abortion and same-sex marriage?
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February 18th, 2012 @ 2:40 pm
Great reason. I really like to make out the print IMDB
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