It hasn't exactly been a slow summer for news. When terrorist suspects aren't being arrested or sought for plots to blow up New York's Holland Tunnel or the Toronto Stock Exchange, terrorists are actually blowing up transit systems as happened a couple of days ago in Mumbai. The Middle East is exploding in Gaza and Lebanon while Iraq seems to close to the sectarian civil war that the "I told you so" critics of the U.S. administration have been saying would happen.
In spite of all this, it seems fairly quiet on the home front this summer. The big news seems to be not that Prime Minister Stephen Harper went to the White House to meet with the U.S. president but that George Bush called our prime minister, Steve.
While the american president usually has to invade a foreign country to cause a stir, all he had to do to get the Canadian elites in a right tizzy was to call Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Steve.
First off the mark was interim Liberal leader, Bill Graham. Graham warned, yes warned, of the extreme danger to our country if a "closer, cozier relationship" is developed between Canada and the United States. If by closer and cozier, Graham means that the president of the United States is no longer being called a "moron" and his countrymen are no longer referred to as "bastards" by the government of Canada and its officials, then he has a point. He's correct if a closer and cozier relationship means the United States is no longer being blamed for the bombings and beheadings that are carried out by Islamofascists. But the Liberal leader went out of his way to say that Bush had called former Prime Minister Paul Martin "Paul" and so what's the big deal about calling the current PM, Steve?
Graham displayed the usual elite arrogance that is so common with the Liberals who have yet to realize that they are no longer in power. Treating the Canadian populace as some kind of inferior life forms, Graham thinks that we think we have a much closer relationship with the United States because Bush called Harper, Steve.
Calling Harper, Steve, got the reaction that it did because it is virtually impossible to imagine anyone calling the Right Honourable Stephen Harper PC, Steve. It's just something that's never done, at least in public. The only exception to this was Toronto Sun columnist, Rachel Marsden. Shortly after the Conservatives formed the government, Marsden referred to Harper as Prime Minister Steve or PMS for short.
Stephen Harper simply looks like a Stephen and not a Steve a Steve could dress up like a cowboy and pull it off in the way that a Stephen couldn't in that now infamous picture of Harper. While some prominent politicians would have looked right at home on the range, no so Steve, oops, Stephen Harper. Harper confirmed the fact that except for very few close friends, no one ever calls him Steve. The PM also added that in the wake of the episode at the White House, President Bush can expect a letter from Stephen Harper's mother.
Only those who see the United States as the greatest source of evil in the world would think that Canada is on the brink of becoming the 51st state because George W. Bush called Prime Minister Harper, Steve. Of course Bush really felt close to the PM, he would have a thought up a much better name for Harper. Who can ever forget Bush's first meeting with his then new best friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin who the U.S. president affectionately called "Pootie-Poot". Until Bush gives Harper a similar moniker, we are unlikely to see the stars and stripes flying from the Peace Tower anytime soon.
and alas, for Stephen and his mother, we haven't seen the last of Steve Harper.
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