The Liberals may be desperate, but Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier certainly isn't. He seems to have done very well for himself with the delectable Julie Couillard, a former girlfriend who once dated an undesirable in a biker gang. Biker chick or not, it's all rather irrelevant unless, of course, you have a leather fetish and want to know where the photos are.
I'll come back to Michael's stupidity about the appearance of Maxime Bernier's SO later - that deserves its own special beating.
Here's his first mistake regarding Mr. Bernier - frankly few of us really give a damn about his girlfriend or her background. That's not the issue. The issue is that our country's Minister of Foreign Affairs isn't doing his job. Nor is his S.O./G.F./whatever conducting herself appropriately when she's 'on stage'. There are protocols and a certain level of decorum that should be observed, especially when you are in foreign lands. One does not, for example, show up in a deeply conservative, religious country and wear a dress that's styled for the Montreal nightclub circuit.
Second, Bernier's commentary on so many topics has been offensive to many of the people that he is in fact responsible for developing constructive relationships with.
However, I'm being all too rational about this, because Michael desperately wants to ride his hobby horse - regulating everybody else's sexuality:
There are, by the way, numerous stories of other Canadian politicians -- some revered -- who are notoriously promiscuous. One of them is a leading champion of women's rights but is known to cheat on his wife on a regular basis. Various gay MPs, Liberal as well as Tory, have their private lives respected as well. And to a certain extent this is as it should be.
Wow - that almost sounds reasonable...then Michael falls off the wagon:
One Canadian judge who ruled on several gay marriage cases was challenged because his daughter was in a lesbian union.
It was alleged that this prevented him from being objective and it was argued that a judge in the U.S. in a similar situation excused himself from such hearings. Not this judge. Not in Canada.
There is also the wider issue of what private indiscretion and immorality says about someone's ability to lead, govern and decide. If a man is prepared to deceive and lie to his wife -- the person he has sworn to regard above all others -- he will betray and lie to people he has never met without a second thought.
Ah...really? Then why is Michael not calling for a purge within the various churches to rid the clergy of child molesters and supposedly celibate priests that have fathered children out of wedlock? Or perhaps he'd like to consider his statements in light of the miraculously "cured" Ted Haggard?
No, of course, Michael wants us to think that conservatives never have these kinds of "moral" lapses that he is so concerned about. (and his past columns reflect that is is more worried about the 'morality' of others than any of us really wish to think about too hard)
With the Clinton case it led to the deaths of many innocent people after the president instigated a drive-by shooting in the Balkans to distract attention from his sexual antics with an intern. Serbs died because Bill couldn't keep his pants on.
Right...Clinton is personally responsible for the civil/ethnic war in the Balkans? Horsefeathers. If one looks further at it, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia started under the tenure of George H. W. Bush, not Bill Clinton. Second, NATO intervention in Bosnia happened under Clinton's tenure - but only after the "ethnic cleansing" atrocities became known to the world.
Claiming that Clinton started a war in Bosnia as a distraction from the Lewinsky affair is laughable logic, and seemingly typical of conservatives who are so desperate to have absolute power these days - linking utterly unrelated topics together.
Put in perspective - Clinton got caught with his pants down. Bush Jr. started not one but two foreign wars in his first term in office. Clinton certainly lied about the Lewinsky affair, but nobody died as a result of that event.
In contrast, uber-conservative Bush Jr. lied about the reasons for starting the Iraq war, and arguably has hardly pursued the public reasons for invading Afghanistan (capturing one Osama bin Laden - remember him?) with any particular vigor. How many casualties have there been in Iraq and Afghanistan - it's in the thousands...
Returning to Coren's stupidity, his last paragraph brings me back to something I wanted to address earlier:
that the Liberals have lost their way and, good lord, that the poor fools don't even know a handsome woman when they see one!
Okay, Bernier has hooked up with the proverbial "trophy wife" that the knuckle-dragger crowd likes to idolize. Sure, she's attractive. As I've already pointed out, that's quite irrelevant to the criticisms of Bernier in the Foreign Affairs portfolio. Second, were I in her shoes, I'd be more than a little miffed at a bald-headed, slightly paunchy middle-aged goon slobbering over my appearance. (Yes, I know it happens, but women typically have brains too - something Mr. Coren seems to have forgotten in his testosterone-addled ravings).
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