New Year’s Eve is typically a slow news day. Flipping over to the Guardian to see what’s happening on the other side of the pond, I see that Van Morrison is denying that he is a new father. And hey, there’s an article about Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue parliament – evidence that the Brits are gluttons for punishment. The author, Colin Horgan, isn’t too happy:
It will take a special kind of apathetic populace to collectively shrug off back-to-back cut-and-run attempts like this.
I did a Google search on “Canadians” and “apathetic” and got over a million results. Apparently we are also apathetic about voting, terrorism, and Prince Charles, among other things.
But I appreciate that a U.K. paper is reporting on our Afghan torture scandal and our lack of leadership on climate change and our perogies and all that. I thought that they might have been more interested in Stephen Harper’s bid to become the new 5th Beatle:
There can be only one of four possible outcomes of Harper’s new Beatles obsession. (1) Divorces wife, remarries, winds up in a Montreal hotel in a bed in for peace. I’m guessing it’s unlikely; (2) travels to India, learns to play the sitar, becomes devotee of the Hare Krishna tradition. Again, I’m guessing no. (3) becomes the next Mr. Conductor. Possible; (4) is busted in Japan for pot possession; probably the most likely outcome for 2010. It’s always the ones you don’t expect.
And it’s not entirely clear that we’re going to shrug this off. We might, but there have been low-level grumblings. The Conservatives are doubtlessly hoping for a boost from the Olympic games, but we have a history of sucking at the Olympics, even ones we host, and that could put us in an especially foul mood.
And if Canadians continue dying in Afghanistan while parliament is M.I.A… we’ll still be famously apathetic, but we’re capable of being apathetic towards the good things that governments have done as well.
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