Subject:
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Re: Not embarassed to be a Canadian anymore...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 25 Nov 2002 16:16:49 GMT
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Viewed:
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596 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Koudys writes:
> > Someone, somewhere, in a position of Canadian Authority, told it like it is.
> >
> > Though I would never call any person a moron, I would call a persons
> > policies and directives moronic, and that's how I feel about Dubya--he may
> > not be a moron, but where he's leading you Yanks, and the rest of us along
> > for the ride, is moronic.
>
> I can't help but to wonder if this person's opinion would be different had OBL
> leveled a different target-- namely Toronto's First Canadian Place.
>
> He may disagree with Bush's decisions handling worldwide terrorism, but
> calling them "moronic" is mere demogoguery. What I'd like to hear are some
> alternate solutions to deal with terrorism that don't include a dependence upon
> the naive solution of diplomacy (because I've seen how well that strategy has
> worked in the ME)
>
> -John
Well, here's a brief interesting historical interpretation:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035774744488&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News
The entire article (the good bit is closer to the end of the article,
listing a bunch of, shall we say, more colourful metaphors used by American
and Canadian folks):
Editorial: Morons, and worse
Good thing George Bush has sent his warships steaming Saddam Hussein's way.
Otherwise they might be sailing up the Ottawa River.
It's hard to know what's worse: Jean Chrétien's notoriously testy mouthpiece
calling Bush "what a moron." Or Chrétien defending Bush with these immortal
words: "He is a friend of mine. He is not a moron at all."
The circus that played out Friday in Ottawa as critics bayed for Françoise
Ducros' head spoke more to Chrétien's weakness as a lame duck prime minister
who has overstayed his welcome, than to any big rift in Canada/U.S. relations.
Anything that embarrasses Chrétien is peachy with Paul Martin's ambitious
troops, other wannabe successors, and the opposition. Ducros was just the
pretext. But what a pretext.
She was right to apologize, which she did a day after her comments. She
would have been smarter if she had kept her mouth shut in the first place.
When she talks, even in private, her words carry the weight of the Prime
Minister's Office.
Explaining away her gaffe, Chrétien said Ducros had actually been defending
Bush, not slagging him, in a private comment that went public. We cringe at
what Ducros might have said had she been in a mind to criticize the president.
We cringe, too, at Chrétien's claim that Bush "is a friend of mine." The
prez might call that "a stretcher." Relations are correct, but stiff.
But Americans can be big about these things, even if some in the U.S. media
growled for an apology.
Ducros' gaffe is small potatoes in the long context of crabby words between
the world's two best buddies.
White House staffers cheerfully refer to Chrétien, 68, as "dino," for
dinosaur. And his predecessors have been called worse.
John Kennedy famously referred to John Diefenbaker as an SOB, for son of a
bitch. Kennedy even more famously denied it: "I couldn't have called him an
SOB At that time I didn't know he was one."
Potty-mouthed Richard Nixon called Canada "a pain in the ass," Pierre
Trudeau an "asshole" and a "son of a bitch" and Trudeau aide Timothy
Porteous an "ugly bastard."
To which Trudeau replied, "I've been called worse things by better people."
Porteous was just plain flattered to be on Nixon's hit list.
Former U.S. deputy secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger had his 15
minutes of fame when he said Trudeau's attempt to cool U.S./Russia Cold War
tension was "akin to pot-induced behaviour by an erratic leftie."
And let's not forget Lyndon Johnson, who upbraided Lester Pearson for
criticizing U.S. policy in Vietnam in these words: "You don't come here to
piss on my rug."
From his high intellectual perch Henry Kissinger, the dean of U.S. foreign
policy, once had this to say: "Canada and the United States are doomed by
geography and history to friendship, irritation, co-operation, disputes,
and, finally, a parallelism of outlook." True enough.
But Will Rogers put it plainer: "Canadians are a fine tribe of people," the
American cowpoke comic once quipped. "They are hardy. They got to be to live
next to us."
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Not embarassed to be a Canadian anymore...
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| (...) I can't help but to wonder if this person's opinion would be different had OBL leveled a different target-- namely Toronto's First Canadian Place. He may disagree with Bush's decisions handling worldwide terrorism, but calling them "moronic" (...) (22 years ago, 23-Nov-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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