I wish he were The Nowhere Man instead…

   Canada’s political commentators and cartoonists are slow on the uptake. How else do you explain why no-one in the mainstream media has picked up on the uncanny resemblance between Stephen Harper and the head of the Blue Meanies from Yellow Submarine?

   I do admit, I’m going to have to sign up for the slow learners’ class for not spotting it earlier myself. But honestly—it’s a natural: the Tory colour, the supercilious leer, the complete abhorrence of all things fun, or mildly enjoyable, or even remotely human. Like the Blue Meanie pictured above, Harper probably even had six fingers (certain foreseeable accidents of genetics will do that do you), before lopping one of them off as part of a hastily-conceived program of self-destructive austerity. If this were the 1970’s, Harper’s kisser would be all over t-shirts, posters, buttons, and airbrushed vans, threatening Ringo and his pals in Pepperland within an inch of their mumbly Scouser lives.

   Oh, you can find the odd reference of this sort, if you Google hard enough. You just won’t find it where anybody makes their living paying attention to the Canadian political scene. I won’t blame it on self-censorship, or on lack of grey matter. These are just depressing times to live in, and they have a way of dulling your faculties. But, maybe this’ll be the fateful occasion when the moniker “Blue Meanie” goes viral on Canada’s answer to the Supreme Dalek, and it enters into common parlance. Mulroney had been in power half a decade before “Lyin’ Brian” finally stuck to him, and he’d told enough whoppers to fill every waking hour of that time twice over…possibly even more than that, if he talked in his sleep. Those of you young enough and fortunate enough not to have been around back then may well ask how anyone could be sure that he wasn’t telling the truth. Well, his lips were moving, weren’t they?