I was on my best behaviour with Evan Solomon for my biennial appearance on the CBC, and it seems to have done the trick judging from the reviews. Patricia Karpiuk:
Mark Steyn is horrible. Had to fast forward through that part.
Mark Steyn is horrible. When will right wing talking heads stop.
Glad to have missed PnPCBC. Mark Steyn? Seriously?
Why are you giving this self-important douche Mark Steyn airtime?!!!!
Thanks
@PNPCBC your last RWNJ guest has me yelling at the TV.
Mark Steyn you're idiot. Nuff said.
Mark Steyn is actually a caricature of the angry, rightwing, frenzied hater.
Message on my phone: "I was just watching Mark Steyn on Power and Politics. This is terrorism!"
Mission accomplished! See you in 2016!
~I'm in Ottawa to speak at the Manning Networking Conference, the biggest annual confab of Canadian conservatives. Good crowd at the opening reception - Preston Manning, Laureen Harper, Monte Solberg, Danielle Smith, Jason Kenney, Diane Ablonczy, the last of whom Mrs Harper always introduces as the person who got her into politics. (The picture above of me and Mrs H comes courtesy of Morten Paulsen. If you've just motored up from the US, as I have, it's hard not to marvel at the assumed informality of Canadian politics: It's impossible to imagine the First Lady working a room the way the Prime Minister's wife does - without Secret Service or staffers, buttonholed by anybody, high or low, young or old, who wants a word in her ear. I hope that doesn't change. The whole entouragification of American politics doesn't do it any favors. As I wrote in the Speccie during my Australian tour two years ago:
I introduced my American manager, a former staffer for a US senator, to Julie Bishop. She asked the Deputy Opposition Leader, Shadow Foreign Minister and Shadow Trade Minister, how many staff she had. 'Three,' said Julie.
I could see my manager thinking, 'Loo-zurr.' Julie asked how many staff her senator had had. 'About 50,' said my manager. I could see Julie thinking, 'Loo-zurr.' America is the Brokest Nation in History. Getting citizen-legislators to cut back on their Gulf emir-sized entourages would be a good place to start turning things around: you can't have small government with big retinues.
Julie Bishop is now Foreign Minister, and still traveling light in the retinue department. I don't think this is a minor point. The artificiality of the upper tier of American politics - its detachment and insulation from real life - distorts the kind of people attracted to it: at the presidential level, one gets the weird feeling that the job is now designed to appeal only to those unfit to do it.
~I'm glad to have a couple of days' break from Michael Mann and the upcoming trial of the century. Down south, though, the debate goes on. George Will has a good column on "climate change":
In Indonesia, Kerry embraced Obama's "Shut up, he explained" approach to climate discussion...
Hmm. Who does that sound like?
Meanwhile, over at Mother Jones, they're taking it to the next level:
Study: Global Warming Will Cause 180,000 More Rapes by 2099
Perfect: The grand convergence of " climate denialism" and "the war on women".
~I'll be joining my former National Post colleague Don Martin on CTV's "Power Play" today, and later checking in with Brian Lilley on Sun News. Details in our TV box at right.
