The Scene and Herd

Allow me, for a moment, to make a metaphor using my favourite TV show at the moment; The Wire. For those of you unawares, The Wire is a wicked awesome show about Baltimore, corruption, cops and drugs.

There is this scene that stays with me: Carver pulls a corner boy (For those of you that are not from Bramps, a “corner boy” is a kid that stands on a corner selling drugs) down to the precinct and is questioning him, playing “good cop.” Carver is trying to get Bodie to spill it. “You remind me of me,” he says.

“Oh yeah,” says Bodie, “you came up hard?”

This is a game you play with delinquents. To gain their trust, you make them believe that you braved the projects, “the low rises,” if you will. 

This is a game that (some of) the Canadian people are trying to play with Ignatieff.

A google news search of Ignatieff turns up a raging plethora of rants and raves (some of them completely embarrassing). Americans like him (ignore the weird graph). It’s patronizing, the way they express it, but they like the guy. 

And yet this persistent trend over here, this bizarre demand for someone “down to earth.”

Okay, can I blame Orillia for a little while?

All this news over the weekend that Orillia really likes Iggy, “standing room only” etc. But what does Orillia have to say?  They like him… because… brace yourselves,

“the former Harvard professor was more like a cross between a folksy preacher and sympathetic high-school guidance counsellor.”

This is what impressed The Orillia Packet.

Shouldn’t The Orillia Packet be saying, “What the hell? I thought you were a Harvard professor. You sound more like a high-school guidance councellor.”

Points to Igntieff for his apt performance, but Orillia (among others) needs to get a grip. Iggy did not come up hard. And he’s not like you, thankfully.

Now stop acting like a bunch of needy delinquents.