That is apparently what Belinda Stronach said. Far be it from me to criticize a person misspeaking but if we wanted a Prime Minister who cannot speak a national language why didn’t we just keep Chretien who, after all, knew something about government before he got the position. Bels Strons, it appears, is looking like the new Stockwell Day already. She may also have a Deanish temper:
Stronach had blunter words yesterday about some of the media coverage of her campaign, saying she should be judged on her policies, not her appearance. Media focus on her hair, wardrobe and personal life sends the wrong message at a time when more women should be drawn to politics, she told reporters at an Ontario Progressive Conservative policy convention in Niagara Falls.
While this is true, what I think we are seeing is a corporate CEO who wants to be treated like one off the job – don’t analyze, don’t expect to be told and for God’s sake don’t presume that anything being done is your business. Front runner Harper to me has this nasty streak as well. What the Conservative Reform Alliance Progressives stand for appears to be this:
- Alberta ought to be treated like a part of the country that more than about 10% of the population
- Whatever is being done, do the opposite
- Is it not the place of the press or ordinary taxpayers to question
The National Post, of course, plays it differently from The Toronto Star but still can only focus on the clothes, the supposed greater interest in her speech compared to a David Bowie concert and the apparent need to determine only if she is “sexy”. What an odd and depressing thing that overused adjective does. I remember George Grant in an undergrad class going off on a small rant twenty years ago on the sexification of society, making such questions sadly inevitable. It almost makes me sympathetic as I watch the wheels coming off so early in a foolhardy campaign – and one, really, only given credibility in the hope of creating some facade of a leadership race to justify what is more and more clearly the final defeat of the Progressive Conservatives by the Alliance.