Can Ignatieff distance himself from his past?
Why in hell would he want to?
Tories looking like narrow-minded bigots
Conservative attack ads on Ignatieff take us all for fools. Why not go after Gretzky, too?
By Stephen Hume, Vancouver SunMay 16, 2009
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Michael Ignatieff is being called un-Canadian for having a brilliant career at some of the world's most illustrious universities.
Photograph by: Andy Clark, Reuters, Files, Vancouver SunMrs. Grundy, that narrow-minded pillar of mean-spirited parochialism, seems to be alive and well and living in Ottawa where she's disguised herself as a Conservative campaign strategist.
Lord, no sooner do we bury an unpleasant provincial election campaign that achieved the dubious honour of earning the lowest voter turnout in British Columbia's political history thanks to its nasty invective than the federal Conservatives launch their own exercise in pettiness and spite.
This time, the target is Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and the campaign is an apparent attempt to repeat what Conservatives must assume was an earlier rousing success in characterizing then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion as a hapless fool. Presumably they assume the rest of us are fools, too, and ready to buy the same pig twice.
I suspect advertising had less to do with Dion's inability to impress Canadian voters than his apparent naivete and inability to adapt to changing conditions. Nevertheless, the Conservatives are now embarked upon the time-honoured strategy of the narrow-minded bigot, which involves belittling intellectual achievements in the wider world as somehow being inherently un-Canadian.
It's called tearing down somebody else's mountain in an attempt to build your own molehill. It might also be characterized as precisely what Edmund Burke meant when he observed that the personal attack is the last refuge of the scoundrel who has nothing of substance to say.
It's one thing to attack Ignatieff's policy positions. It's entirely another thing to question his integrity because his academic career took him off to study and teach in other countries. A host of Canadians has had career opportunities lead them to Europe, the United States, Asia and Africa -- why is it acceptable for a petroleum engineer to work overseas but not a university professor? And why is scholarship a less worthy profession for a future politician than business or law?
One might wonder why, in the Conservative pantheon of the insufficiently Canadian, this criticism is restricted to one who seeks to be prime minister but doesn't apply to others who have gone on to serve as significant role models by pursuing successful high-profile careers on the world stage.
Apparently Wayne Gretzky doesn't rate as less Canadian for marrying an American and moving to Arizona to coach a hockey franchise. Michael J. Fox is not less Canadian for pursuing a successful Hollywood career as an actor. Pamela Anderson isn't less of a citizen for her fame as an acting celebrity in California. Diana Krall isn't less Canadian for marrying English musician Elvis Costello and living in London, or New York, or whichever world centre she happens to prefer. And Calgary-born soccer star Kevin McKenna didn't betray his patrimony by signing with a professional club in the German league.
But according to the Conservatives, Ignatieff is simply not up to Canadian standards because he succumbed to the temptations of a teaching career at some of the world's most illustrious universities and now has the temerity to think he's got the jelly to contend for the prime minister's job.
Gosh, Ignatieff could have settled for a sessional lecturer's job at some suburban community college. Instead, he won a doctorate from Harvard and then, on the basis of his brains and scholarship, was awarded teaching posts at Cambridge, Oxford, the University of California, the University of London and the London School of Economics.
Oh, yes, and the brainy bounder did something else equally un-Canadian and inexcusable. He wrote 18 books -- some of them critically acclaimed -- and as a consequence found himself in demand on the BBC.
All that when he could have stayed in Canada, written nothing and perhaps developed a career in the toxic wasteland of Conservative talk radio.
For this he's now pilloried as an arrogant egghead who only returned to his country to sate a lust for power. The shame of it! What a betrayal of all things Canadian to achieve fame, respect and success elsewhere and then return home to your country to cap your career by offering yourself for public life.
What, one wonders, would the Conservatives make of the late Bobby Ackles, who had a stellar career in the National Football League and then came home to help revitalize the B.C. Lions and the Canadian Football League.
Frankly, this kind of politics demeans democracy, insults the voters and further undermines their desire to participate in the process and says far more about those who embrace such a campaign of divisive belittlement than it does about the targets of the advertising.
If you ask me, these attack ads are what's un-Canadian, not Ignatieff's career as a world-class intellectual.
