When I was in university, one of the annual wordplay jokes among my group of Friday night pub-going friends was, “Must be Spring; the Leafs are out”, a reference to the Toronto NHL team’s inevitable yearly collapse in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

If the recent wave of hand-wringing national angst in this country’s sports headlines is any indication, you can probably add, “Must be the Olympics; Canada’s whining has started” to the list of alternative ways to say, “You can bet on it”.

In the wake of not one, but two, 2-0 “stunning / shocking” Canadian men’s hockey losses to supposedly inferior hockey teams (Switzerland and Finland), the headline writers and sports columnists are already agonizing over how to frame their “What went so terribly wrong?” opinion pieces. Already, I’ve read excuses that the players – whose combined annual salary runs to over $90 million – are playing like fat-cat “superstars”, out for individual glory rather than coming together as a team. Or they’re distracted by the NHL betting scandal that erupted just before the Olympics began and which has threatened to tarnish the reputation of their manager, Wayne Gretzky. Or that the larger European ice surface is tiring them out before the full 60 minutes have been played.

Meanwhile, from the other ice surface where Canada has not been doing as well as was expected – the curling arena – I have read some truly astonishing laments. If I ever need someone to take over this forum in the event of an extended vacation, I will look no farther than among those who bleat about Canada’s curling teams to find a world-class whiner to fill in for me. These people have actually tried blaming everything from the quality of the ice on the curling sheets to the very rocks themselves, although that last one didn’t last too long when someone pointed out that the 40-pound chunks of polished granite used in Olympic competition all come from the World Curling Federation, and that to blame the rocks would require believing there is a highly-organized international conspiracy at work aimed at screwing up the Canadian curlers’ game.

Which, astonishingly, has at least been considered, if this note in a recent Globe and Mail sports column on the subject is any indication: In a column by Bob Weeks, Hans Wuthrich of Gimli, Manitoba, whose claim to fame is apparently that he makes fantastic ice surfaces for curling, “offered one other eyebrow-raising suggestion for the straight ice, one that would certainly upset Canadians teams. ‘It could be politics, too,’ Wuthrich said, then quickly covered his tracks by adding, ‘I'm not saying that's what's happening.’”

Uh huh. I’m just saying it could be happening. Not “is”. See the difference?

I have since learned that “straight ice” refers to the relative smoothness of its “pebbling” – a feature which enables a curler to give his or her rock a turning capability. Europeans apparently make their ice with smaller surface “pebbles”, reducing a rock's ability to turn or “curl”, hence its label: “straight” ice. Canadian curlers view such ice as – no surprise here – an inferior condition. (Not to be confused with taking one’s drinks “straight”, which of course means with no ice at all, generally held by aficionados of single malt scotches to be a superior condition.)

Where was I? Oh yes.

Mr Weeks himself then goes on to further rationalize the wisdom of blaming the ice: “Certainly, straight ice is quite common in Europe, which doesn't have the resources or technology to make ice as swingy as is common in Canada. A one-foot or two-foot curl is standard in many European competitions, while Canadians favour three or four feet. Keep the ice straight and the two Canadian teams are at a definite disadvantage.” (“Bad conditions at Olympics throw curlers for a loop”, Bob Weeks, Globe and Mail, February 20) Mr Weeks is better known as a golf columnist and editor. This column on curling makes it pretty clear why.

Now I know it’s been a while since I curled, but one thing I distinctly recall – and which I don’t believe has been changed for the modern winter Olympic games – is that both teams in a curling match (a “draw”, in the language of the sport) still play on the same sheet of ice. In other words, good ice or bad, the surface condition is neither advantageous nor detrimental to either you or your opponents since you’re both, in turn, hurling 40-pound blocks of granite along precisely the same path. And whether that path is “straight” or “swingy”, the winner therefore should be the team with the most skill. Now there's a concept!

By the time you get to read this, Canada in fact might well be on the way to yet another men’s hockey gold medal, if not already will have won one; the two losses accumulated at this writing did not knock Canada out of the medal round. Or Canada’s NHLers might have actually been beaten for that bit of hardware by an “upstart” team of foreign NHLers and the public sportswriter moaning in this country will have risen to a truly blizzard-like torrent.

But regardless of the outcome and this year’s final medal count, if they ever make whining and fingerpointing an Olympic competition, we are so going to kick the rest of the world’s BUTTS!

And so to all those who believe in mythology, superstition and the power of external charms, or their absence, I’m afraid I don’t share your thinking that if we are beaten for the men’s hockey gold medal, it’ll be because we somehow failed to embed that damned loonie deep beneath the Turin hockey arena surface at centre ice.

But on the other hand, I won’t entirely discount the possibility that a just and merciful God was less than happy with Team Canada’s naming whack-job Todd Bertuzzi to the men’s hockey team, thus embodying the modern Olympic ideal of “win at all costs”. (Bertuzzi is, of course, the Vancouver Canuck “enforcer” who in March 2004 sucker-punched Colorado Avalanche player Steve Moore and then fiercely rode him down to the ice, grinding his face into the surface and causing him such tremendous injury that Moore’s professional hockey days are probably over, as was damned near his ability ever to walk again – before Bertuzzi wept openly on TV that he hadn’t meant to hurt him.) And Yea! He, the just and merciful God, didst spake thus unto Team Canada – “Have it all your way? Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn… no. No way. Not this year.”

And it doesn’t bother me a bit that this year – so far – they have already been dancing in the streets of Basel and Helsinki.

(A same-day posting update, or “This just in…”): The Canadian women’s hockey team earlier today gave the men’s team something to shoot for. A gold medal. The women won it by finally solving the mystery of Sweden’s sparkling goaltender and beating the Swedes 4 – 1. At this writing the Swedish women, who are going home with silver medals in the sport, have not yet complained about “straight” or “swingy” ice, and no doubt their media will be simply beside themselves with joy at celebrating their women’s Olympic hockey accomplishment – not berating their players for “losing gold”, but rather heaping plaudits on them for “winning silver”. What the hell is the matter with that country?)

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Meanwhile, long-time readers of this Whine will probably recall that one of my pet peeves is the trumping of accurate record keeping for the sake of political correctness.

Recently, a news release crossed my desk that opened this way (the news release, that is, not my desk):

“TORONTO -- The Original SoupMan(TM) will celebrate the long anticipated grand opening of their new location at The Toronto Eaton Centre on Thursday, February 23 at 12:00 p.m. The Original SoupMan features the Zagat-rated soups of legendary soup man Al Yeganeh, who inspired the famous 'Soup Episode' on Seinfeld.”

Apparently, Mr Yeganeh has founded a charity called “Soup for Life” that makes generous contributions to area food banks and feed-the-homeless programs.

(“Homelessness” is one of my work-related files and it’s why I occasionally get wonky news releases like this, or like the one sent out when the Hollywood mansion that was Wayne Manor in the original TV show, “Batman”, burned down and several newspapers carried a story under the headline, “Batman is homeless”, or when a west-coast NFL team’s stadium was damaged in an earthquake and there was a news release-driven sports page discussion about where the temporarily-“homeless” team would have to play in order to have home-field advantage. But I digress.)

Back to the Seinfeld “Soup Episode”.

Talk about being afraid of words.

Al Yeganah might well be the founder and figurehead behind a 25-year old and now-blossoming franchise called “Original SoupMan”. But the reason he exploded into public consciousness, and the whole point of his character as written into a Seinfeld episode that many fans rank high on their lists of favourites, was that he was a soup “Nazi", not a soup “Man". The business, not surprisingly in this day and age, must of needs be the politically-correct "Original SoupMan", but the "legendary" character – his incarnation on Seinfeld – was the "Soup Nazi".

(Google "Soup Man": 11,800 hits
Google "Soup Nazi": 161,000 hits)

In my home library, I have a trio of books – “Penrod”, “Penrod and Sam” and “Penrod Jashber” – that are among my fondest childhood reading memories. All are by Booth Tarkington, a turn-of-the-century US writer, and all are about the highly creative adventures of one Penrod Schofield, a remarkably adventurous 12-year old, who plunges into encounters that leave one searching for synonyms for “extreme mischief”.

In Tarkington’s day, and in Tarkington’s environs, black Americans were labelled with terms and characteristics we would today characterize as “politically incorrect”, if not outright racist. But so labelled they were. And so labelled were they in Tarkington’s novels. Here’s how the discomfort that a modern reader might experience is qualified in the introduction to my 1985 Indiana University Press Library of Indiana Classics edition of “Penrod”:

“What has changed most dramatically since the time when Penrod was written is our attitude toward race. Today’s reader will be struck by the offhand, unconscious prejudice in Tarkington’s description of black people. We see this in his casual reference to a 'darky boy' or a 'nigger lady', and more elaborately in his treatment of the black brothers, Herman and Verman, who serve as attractions in Penrod’s backyard carnival and who, in their 'simple, direct, African way' drive a bully from the neighborhood. Because of their no-holds-barred manner of fighting, Herman and Verman are described as 'beings in one of those lower stages of evolution.' Like some equally painful moments in the works of Mrk Twain, say, or William Faulkner, such passages reflect the prejudices of the author’s own time and place and social background – which is not to excuse or deny them, but to see them as an expression of a widely shared racism that we have begun, haltingly and imperfectly, to outgrow.”

A very affectionate reminiscence of the Penrod stories by Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley (“Attaboy! Booth Tarkington's Rascals”, Saturday, August 7, 2004) gets it exactly right when he writes:

“In only one instance does ‘Penrod and Sam’ seem anachronistic by today's standards, and that is a familiar one. In language and in stereotypes, Tarkington portrays black characters in antiquated and occasionally offensive ways. This is unfortunate, to put it mildly, and some parents may decline to lead their children to his work for that reason. Yet here we must step carefully, for a good deal of evidence indicates that Tarkington is more respectful and sympathetic to his black characters than first impressions suggest. Penrod and Sam play with their black friends Herman and Verman pretty much as equals, and Tarkington invests them with a certain dignity. When Verman is insulted by Georgie Bassett with a racial slur, Sam quickly and emphatically comes to his defense, making plain that Verman ‘won't let anybody’ call him that. Here we see the racial divide not through the eyes of the adults to whom Sam is speaking but through those of the boys. Yes, the divide is still there, but it's a lot narrower than it is in the adult world. Sometimes bad boys can be very good.”

My simple point, probably being made with excessive cumbersomeness, is this: rather than run away from language when changing times impart meaning that is perhaps offensive in a modern context, we should instead embrace the fact that we are aware the language is offensive. But at the same time we display the words, we should teach the context of the times when, rightly or wrongly, they were part of everyday speech. And rather than ban the books or digitally expurgate the language of films whose “offensiveness” derives from reasons of propaganda, or simply their world when they were produced, we should celebrate the fact that we’ve probably grown up a little since then.

There's (a) politically correct, and there's (b) historical accuracy. I hate it when (a) trumps (b).

(Oh, and while we’re on an “accuracy” jag, “NOO-cyu-lar” is the WRONG way to pronounce “nuclear”. The fact that the current US President says it that way does not make it right, nor is it – Merriam-Webster Dictionary take note – an allowable “var”.)

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In a February 16 National Post column lamenting that a flamewar between two writers would be taking place in public in the paragraphs of their respective columns, Warren Kinsella quoted one of the columnists’ comments about a book the other had written recently:

"’The Continuity Girl’ illuminates the limitations of my thesaurus. Uber-lousy? Fifth-rate? Super-bad? None of the above. There exists no English word that adequately describes the not-so-goodness herein. Even the German word SaumassigeSchreibmaschiene, which roughly translates into 'putrid garbage typewriter prose,' fails to convey the stench of this slush pile."

Now it occurs to me that ”SaumassigeSchreibmaschiene” would be a heck of a cool name for a blog. For that matter, so would its English rendition, “Putrid Garbage Typewriter Prose”. Kinsella goes on to debunk the term’s very existence, based on a run through a couple German-to-English sources at his disposal – certainly the online Babelfish translation site gags on it – leaving one to suspect it is made up. But to my mind that doesn’t reduce its cool factor at all. Therefore, let me hereby declare it to all and sundry that SaumassigeSchreibmaschiene will be the name under which “Baby Duck” is read, the moment I am linked through the BerlinerZeitung’s Am Auzgeseichnetestenbloggenbabblekolumm.

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Speaking of “cool”, just outside my window is what remains of an old spider web. During a recent snowfall in the nation’s capital, I noticed it had snagged a few wayward flakes of snow. I was delighted to observe that these were absolutely classic crystalline, symmetrical snowflakes. And sure enough, of the half dozen I could see, no two were alike! So I trust that puts to rest any suggestion to the contrary. (What? Six is not a scientifically sufficient snowflake sample size? Oh sure, and you probably believe that evolution is just a “theory”.)

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And finally, in the spirit of those Canada’s Olympic athletes who this year committed the cardinal sin (at least in the eyes of the media) of “failing to meet expectations” and were beaten out in sports in which they were expected to win medals, and who offered as excuses: ice conditions, snow conditions, biased foreign judges, or by heaven knows what, perhaps by an unexpected brand switch of the fat-free margarine they had on that morning’s toast – by anything, in other words, but a faster, higher, stronger and more passionate opponent – there’s this:

I just got our family’s espresso maker back from the repair shop where it had been residing for a week because it hadn’t been making espresso. Having run the gamut of trouble-shooting suggestions in the manual, and having been given no espresso whatsoever from its twin spouts, I took it to the appliance hospital. After a week, I received a phone call telling me that it was working fine – and in fact that it had apparently been working fine when I brought it in, because their “espresso machine technician” had test-brewed not one, but several batches of coffee and had been rewarded with a perfect product every time.

I was dubious – because that had not been my result – so I did a number of variations on “Are you sure?” in my phone conversation with the store rep who called. "Yes," she said, “We are sure.”

So of course, when I got it back home, I filled it with water, loaded a batch of first-rate genuine espresso coffee into the filter and switched it on.

Nothing. Just – again – the same gnarly hum of the motor but no coffee.

So being me, now I start to seethe. Quickly, I yanked the instruction manual from the shelf, spun once more through the troubleshooting chart, ticking off each possible problem with a “did it; did it; did it; did it; did it” (a mental rhythm that also led me to start humming the saxophone theme from the “Pink Panther” movies, but I digress).

So, on a whim, I rolled back the manual’s pages to page 1 – “First-time set-up” – and there I read (re-read, I assume, since I had to have read it at least once before, when I first set the machine up many months ago) – a brief paragraph on “priming your machine”.

Oh.

Oh yeah.

An espresso machine’s pump motor works on the siphon principle. Before fluid will actually flow, there needs to be fluid in the system. Since the fluid in this case is water, after a few days have gone by without your having made an espresso, it is possible that the small volume of water that actually sits in the pumping mechanism will have evaporated, and the dry mechanism will therefore need to be re-primed.

Now that being said, am I being unreasonable in thinking this would be a perfectly logical consideration to include in the troubleshooting options already listed in the manual under the title, “Motor runs, but machine does not make coffee”? To be followed by, perhaps, a simple suggestion on the order of, “The priming water might have evaporated. Please re-prime as per instruction on p.1”? Because it isn’t.

And it honestly did not occur to me, when the machine failed to work after sitting idle for a few days, that I should re-visit the “First-time use” section of the manual, for the simple reason that this was not its first time being used. (Needless to say, that troubleshooting possibility is now handwritten in large bold text and underlined on the front cover of the manual.)

Baby Duck: Our motto (because I AM CANADIAN! tm.reg.): It’s always someone else’s fault.

--

I think a new standard has just been set for the definition of “stiff upper lip”.

Picture this (and were it not for the fact that it’s a British museum, it would qualify for a scene in any of the “Pink Panther” movies involving the hapless French klutz, Jacques Clouseau):

Some poor museum visitor is shuffling down a staircase in the venerable institution and somehow manages to trip over his own shoelace. (I felt genuine sympathy when I read this, because I’ve actually “fallen” exactly like this – one moment you’re casually descending in stairwalk mode, then suddenly you’re careening downstairs with only one thought – to try to get your feet back underneath you and halt your uncontrolled forward momentum before you kill yourself either by completing the fall onto the stairs, or running full tilt, smack into an immovable object.)

In this case, the falling individual opted for a compromise – running into something that was not quite an immovable object but not quite the stuff of a soft landing either.

What he hit was a trio of 17th century Q’ing dynasty Chinese vases the museum has since characterized as “priceless”. In the process, he shattered all three into “a million pieces”.

Where does the stiff upper lip come in, you ask? Well, afterwards, when it was found that the poor bloke was merely dazed but otherwise uninjured, the museum’s Director said, “It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident but we are glad that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed.”

A different museum director might simply have sat at his or her desk, head in hands, and wept inconsolably.

But I also suspect that in the museum’s basement, there’s a small cluster of ceramic conservationist co-workers who high-fived each other when they heard the Director promise the world media (because this story went all around the world) that the vases would be put back together. So when they come into work tomorrow they will be given a large box of Q’ing bits roughly the size of Cheerios and will finally have the chance to do something other than remove microscopic traces of 400-year old dirt from hairline cracks in priceless vases.

(Quotes in the foregoing are all from the mirror.co.UK website for January 30)

= = =

Embezzlement in the news

News item: RCMP lay fraud charges against National Defence contractor
News item: Former Salvation Army accountant admits he stole $2.3 million from charity

What is it about embezzlers that they always seem to overlook the fact that, to the public eye, ostentatious flaunting of excessive wealth might be a clue that something is not quite kosher? In those two stories above, the common thread is just how visibly these clowns lived high off the hog. The National Defence contactor had homes in the Canada and the Turks & Caicos. He claimed he’d hit a run of extraordinarily good luck in the stock market.

The Sally Ann thief was even more obvious. Despite an annual salary of $41,000, he drove two brand new BMWs – one a sport utility vehicle, and lived in a $450,000 home in a high-priced Markham sub-division equipped with two plasma-screen televisions. He didn’t claim anything by way of justification for how he managed his finances. And yet no one seemed to wonder how an accountant for a well-known charitable agency was able to live such an upscale life. (Or if they did wonder, they sure didn’t wonder aloud.)

Now if I were a serious embezzler, you can bet I’d keep my home fairly nondescript on the outside, but on the inside? I would have the single most lavishly equipped basement you’ve ever seen! In fact, I might quite possibly have a multi-storey basement, with a pool and a loft. (Don’t niggle. “Underground lofts” could very well be the next architectural phenom.) But the neighbours would only ever see a patchy front lawn where the grass always seems to struggle to find only the most sporadic of incentives to turn green.

In fact, I would probably pay extra to have the plasma screen televisions delivered in the very early morning hours in a plain white van, and have the packing material hauled away at the same time so I wouldn’t inadvertently have “SPECIAL DISCOUNT FOR 2 GIANT SCREEN PLASMA TVs OFFER” packaging sitting out in plain view at the curb on garbage day.

Who knows? Maybe that’s how “Higher Power” balances things out. The really ugly embezzlers HP might well allow a short time in “high life” mode – but only to make them even more repulsive to the rest of us when their stories break into the public eye. At the same time, he gives them a brain case that contains about 4% organic matter and 96% empty space. And the rest of us, who pre-plan some sort of brilliant plot to avoid advertising the proceeds of our crime, well HP simply endows us with a broad streak of fundamental honesty so our diabolically clever plans, if they leak anywhere beyond our imaginings, only ever make it onto the pages of our diaries.

Or our blogs.

That’s what I’d like to think, anyway.

= = =

I guess it’s a guy thing.

On a recent episode of “Jeopardy”, the category was “’B’ in Fashion” (For anyone unfamiliar with the popular game show, any part of a category that appears within quotation marks must be a part of the answer. If it’s a single letter, as in this case, players know that each answer must begin with the letter “B”).

The clue was, “Item of clothing worn by Madonna that was stolen from the Frederick’s of Hollywood Museum?” and the first contestant to ring in was a guy who answered with what no doubt everyone watching assumed was the correct answer: “bra”.

But instead of rolling on to the next question, quizmaster Alex Trebek next said, “Can you be more specific?”

Now at this point, I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that every guy in the studio and entire viewing audience, confronted with a request to enlarge upon (sorry) “bra”, especially one worn by Madonna, immediately went to his mental thesaurus in search of synonyms like “big”?, “REALLY big”?, “poke-your-eye-out pointy”?, “reinforced to a bursting strength of 1,000 pounds per square inch”?. The hapless (male) contestant clearly had also been brought up short by the request, because his answer was one long sustained, “Uhhhhhhhhhhh…” at which point Alex mercifully interrupted him with “Sorry, time’s up. The answer we were looking for was 'bustier'”.

Now that’s clearly a term which, in print, also applies to Madonna but of course Jeopardy was not about to turn itself into a promo for Hooters, and the word, which Alex confirmed by carefully repeating it aloud, also refers to a specific female undergarment whose name, when spoken, is rendered as “bust-YAY”.

Needless to say, as your ink-stained wretch of a blogger was assembling this item, I of course immediately embarked upon a vigorous Google search for verification of this story’s essential facts. Loyal readers will be pleased to know that I can confirm, in the interests of accurate and thorough reporting, the following facts: 1. Frederick’s of Hollywood does indeed have a Museum, specifically The Frederick’s of Hollywood Lingerie Museum; 2. about a decade ago, a bustier (to be precise, a “bustier with gold-tasseled cups from her video Open Your Heart”), worn by Madonna was indeed stolen from its, uh… collection. Based on the lack of response to date to Frederick’s offer of a $1,000 reward for its return, the thief seems to value this more than the money. Go figger.

And finally, 3. a bustier does indeed incorporate a portion intended to give support to a woman’s (no surprise here) bust. Here’s one definition: “A highly structured garment, which extends from bust to hip. Most bustiers have flexible boning throughout the body of the garment for additional shaping, and close in the back with a long row of hooks and eyes. Additional features may include removable or convertible straps or garters. Smooth bustiers are perfect under special occasion wear as they provide both shaping and uplift.” (From a highly scientific and research-driven website of foundation garment definitions. The accompanying photo is simply to illustrate the product. Really. “Titillation”? Oh, don’t even go there!)

Sheesh! The lengths to which I will go to ensure the factual integrity of this blog… Baby Duck: Not only maintaining the public’s right to know, but also ensuring that what the public knows is correct.

Don’t mention it. Unmentionables, I mean.

= = =

Gratuitous domestic advice.

Wondering how to begin when it comes to cleaning out a peskily stuffed chest freezer? Try this sure-fire, never-fail technique.

1. Invite a sewer company in to run a video camera through your sewer. In the process, have the plumber unplug your freezer for “just a few minutes” while he runs the playback unit on his recorder to show you the whole tour of your sewer line. Then, about ten to 12 days later, open the freezer to pull out a tub of spaghetti sauce. Just for a second, be slightly puzzled by the stream of water that flows off the underside of the lid. “Just for a second”, because that’s the exact amount of time that passes between when you first notice the stream of water before the unbelievable stench roars up your nasal passages and replaces the “Hmmm… I wonder what’s that all about?” with an eyes-watering simultaneous burst of vigorously expressed obscenity that would have drawn appreciative applause from the ramparts of Fort Zinderneuf. Only then do you notice the freezer plug swinging freely beside the receptacle from which it had been removed almost two full weeks earlier.

2. Package an entire freezer’s debilitated contents into several double-thickness heavy-duty garbage bags for disposal at the first upcoming curbside collection. Drench two huge old beach towels with the unspeakably reeking fluids that have pooled inside your now laughably misnamed freezer and immediately fire up a laundry to undo the abuse inflicted on the towels.

Briefly air out the offending appliance, seeking a balance between allowing the stench to drift away from the now empty freezer and restricting its osmosis into every single corner, nook and cranny of the entire house. Apologize to the brace of family cats who each is feverishly pawing her nose while seeking olfactory relief in, of all places, their shared, covered litter box. February temperatures be damned, open the upstairs windows for several minutes.

After not one second more than the very few minutes of this that you can stand (when you can see your breath in the living room), plug your freezer back in. A few minutes later, you will notice that a freezing temperature is a wonderful suppressant of foul smells – the reason, I suppose, for a freezer’s figuring into the occasional episode of the television crime drama, Law and Odour.

And yes, I did that on purpose.

= = =

And finally, file this under “What was he thinking?”

Many, many months ago, on that famous day when Conservative MP Belinda Stronach crossed the floor to an immediate cabinet position with the Liberal government of Paul Martin, Oh my! There was an anguished outcry from the shocked ranks of the Conservatives and their rabid supporters at just how “turned” their rising star’s coat had suddenly become. Conservative (small “c’, that is) bloggers were even more outraged and flung epithets and labels at Ms Stronach that went from the ill-advised to the downright disgusting and personally abusive.

(You just know where this is going, don’t you? So I’ll keep it short.)

In his very first news conference after announcing his first-ever cabinet, newly sworn-in Prime Minister Stephen Harper was asked about the (*ahem*) simultaneous announcement that one of his new cabinet members, David Emerson, was a man elected just days earlier as a Liberal, but who was this day “crossing the floor” and surprise(!) has been given a seat at the Conservative cabinet table (International Trade, if you’re keeping score).

So what does Mr Harper say when asked how he rationalizes this appointment in the face of the howls of outrage that emanated from his side of the floor immediately following the Stronach defection? Well, he’s a man of religion so it shouldn’t surprise anyone to discover that he elected to do a Pontius Pilate: “Well, it's up to Mr. Emerson to explain the situation to his constituents…” (This, despite the fact that the floor-crossing was, by Mr Harper's own admission, instigated at his invitation.)

Meanwhile many of the Tory-supporting bloggers, some of whom either themselves used or, if not, quite tacitly endorsed the label “whore”'s being applied to Ms Stronach all those months ago, have been tying themselves in knots to make sure the shoe can somehow be made to look different when jammed onto a Conservative foot. One of the more widely-read, who blogs under the tag, “Angry in the Great White North”, weaves a veritable Gordian knot of rationalization:

“He will be one of the only people on Stephen Harper's team with any experience in cabinet. So while putting Belinda in cabinet probably lowered the average quality of Paul Martin's cabinet, David Emerson potentially improves it. In other words, all Emerson can offer to Stephen Harper is experience and representation in one of Canada's major cities, both things in short supply in Stephen Harper's Conservatives. Increasing both makes for a better government.”

Uh huh.

What was that eminently quotable bit of middle management advice from the well-known executive search firm, Daltrey, Townsend, Entwhistle and Moon (dec)? Oh yes…

“I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss”