"Is that Michael Ignatieff on the cover of the British GQ, the upscale version of its more gamy American counterpart?"
That was the question that leaped unbidden to my lips after viewing the photo on the front page of Thursday's Globe and Mail. And, as was the case I am sure with thousands of my fellow Canadians, I mustered up a few "harrumphs" and maybe even one "pshaw" before delivering the verdict: "Well, that settles it. Not going to vote for him."
I think I'm with the rest of the country when I say we really don't want as a future prime minister someone who's not only appeared on the cover of foreign "style" magazines, but - save us the nightmare - has actually written for some of them. It gets darker. He's written for those egghead ones as well - in fact scattered his tony prose in the close print of all sorts of highbrow and middle-forehead publications on both sides of the Atlantic. I believe - I don't want to libel him here, but the truth must out - he's also appeared, very frequently, on the BBC!
Well, say goodbye to 24 Sussex Dr., Michael. The last person Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Canadian want to be leading their country is some intellectual drifter equally familiar to the readers of The Times Literary Supplement or The New York Review of Books. And who sojourned at Harvard, ice palace of the global elitists, as well. Are there no farm boys or fishermen to lead us? Someone, who's actually stayed at home? Or, to pose another alternative, someone who fostered an unparalleled intimacy with the vast range and diversity of our great country, got his hands dirty and mixed with the rest of us, by toiling, say, at the gatehouse of the common man, the National Citizens Coalition? Or someone who had such a full appreciation for the glories of our great confederation that he once argued with great vigour for the concept of a firewall around Alberta?
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