Puffins, Apologists and Apartachicks

Good day All!!

I know that the Puffin bit is passe but it does seem to have legs. By now you all know that Deputy Leader of the LPC Mike (Iggy Puff) Ignatieff recently waxed poetic on the virtues of the Puffin. Now I'll be out front here and admit I've never met a Puffin.

That said, I'm sure Puffins are fine and upstanding citizens of Canada. The fact that Iggy is fascinated by their propensity for hiding their excrement is noteworthy. Not because I say so but rather because this string has continued to play out to the point that some 'heavies" from the MSM are now weighing in.

This from Susan Delacourt of The Toronto Star:

Editors Note: Please click the link and pay attention to the name of the ship that floated all things Liberal. Some of the more/least salient points:

"The puffin is a noble bird," Ignatieff proclaimed.
The next day, as caucus was winding up, reporters were looking for some amusing material for weekend features and asked Ignatieff to expand on his views of the puffin's nobility. Gamely, he obliged and recited some trivia he'd learned from the tour, including the fact that the little bird mated for life and hid its own waste in one place.

"It's a noble bird because it has good family values. They stay together for 30 years. I'm not kidding. They lay one egg and they put their excrement in one place. They hide their excrement. They hide their excrement!

They have good family values. They flap their wings very hard and they work like hell. This seems to me a symbol for what our party should be," he said.


"The puffin is not anybody's hero right off the bat, but you see those little flappy wings and how it works and those good family values and you start to warm to the puffin."
The reporters, including this one, were highly amused – in a light-hearted way. That was the object of Ignatieff's little dissertation on the puffin.

Susan....ummmm....yesterday Iggy Puff learned some trivia...today it becomes a dissertation? That is one bad ass Prof.

Editors Note: Did you click the link? Quick quiz. What was the name of the boat? This will become pertinent later.

Back to Sue:

You wouldn't know it, though, from some of the scandalized reaction to the remarks – what kind of numbskull compares his party to an animal that hides its excrement? How dare he give the Conservatives ammunition to attack the Liberals? (Just as an aside, how would that work, exactly? Are Prime Minister Stephen Harper's attack-addicted gang going to run TV ads in which Dion appears as a puffin? Wouldn't that actually be kind of endearing?)


I don't know Sue. Would he be hiding his excrement in little brown envelopes?

Editors Note: Pop quiz. What was the name of that boat again?

Anyways, more Sue:

Humour seems to have gone out of fashion in politics in Harper's Ottawa. It's difficult to explain why that's happened. Even political comedy isn't as funny or as popular as it once was. Several months back, a columnist in the Ottawa Citizen noted how veteran CBC comedian Rick Mercer isn't as funny as he used to be, because Mercer now cultivates celebrities instead of mocking them.


So...It's Harper's fault that Mercer is no longer funny. There must have been something in that sandwich that Harper made him. Do you think Mercer got reality germs on him or cooties? But I digress.

You know what Sue. I could spend hours deconstructing what you pass off as journalism (did you graduate from Ryerson perchance?) but lets cut to the chase.

The name of the boat that the Liberal brain trust went looking for whales on(out of season I might add) was The Atlantic Puffin.

Think about it Sue. What might have happened if they had chartered the Atlantic Pogge or the Atlantic EEL or the Nasty Bad Business.

Apologizing for the disertations of the Deputy Leader may have been beyond even your "objectivity".

And finally, I give you the ultimate kiss of death vis a vis credibility .

Syncro


* No Puffins were hurt in the making of this blog.