Tue Feb 22/05
A terrible humour is born

Here's Alexa McDonough on Frank McKenna's bewildering "done deal" statements about Canada participating in US missile defence:

But of course we know what else the Americans want is Canada to be the fig leaf — Canada to give the aura of credibility and respectability to the US decision to go ahead with this missile-defence madness.

I'm going to quote Michael Bluth's advice to Tobias Fünke: "Okay, you know what you do? You buy yourself a tape recorder, you just record yourself for a whole day. I think you're going to be surprised at some of your phrasing."

George W Bush is many things. A seeker of fig leaves he is not. I don't subscribe in any large sense to the "Canada is useless and irrelevant and let's all just hate ourselves" school of political thought, but to believe that Canada could somehow confer an "aura of credibility" to missile defence through its non-essential, non-contributory participation, or that the Americans are losing sleep about going forward without said aura, is… well, it's insane. If McDonough actually believes that, she needs to check herself in somewhere.