Stephen Harper and the Rotisserie Campaign

If like me you've been finding Stephen Harper looking and sounding even more plastic and robotic than usual.

And wonder whether he's just a maniac stalking a majority, or a cyborg waiting to grill us like chickens.

Aaron Wherry, in a brilliant article, explains how the robot is made.

All campaigns create kinds of bubbles—the constant movement deadening the brain and reducing everything else to a blur in your periphery—but Mr. Harper’s possesses the unique feel of a travelling television program.

The audience is here to wave signs and applaud. They are here to further the illusion that this is something other than a taped television advert.

It's a chilling portrait of totalitarian media control.

When a television reporter, unsatisfied with the response to a question he had posed after one event last week, dared to direct a supplementary question at Mr. Harper, the Conservative partisans around the Prime Minister rose up to drown out the journalist with cheers. (Among the most enthusiastic applauders was a member of the Prime Minister’s staff—a senior advisor apparently hired both for his ability to forcefully put his hands together and his eagerness to defend the boss from any assertion of unapproved reality.) The reporter kept shouting and the crowd grew louder. The reporter persisted and the crowd stood and began to chant Mr. Harper’s name.

Mr. Harper simply stood there, in the middle of it all, waiting for the man to give up.

And it makes you wonder what this sinister cyborg might be like if he ever got a majority. 

And this is telling  too.

Thus, Mr. Harper enjoys wide latitude to simply talk around subjects he’d rather avoid. He is discipline personified and he will give no life to undesirable stories. And with the press, addled on Twitter, unwilling to dwell on anything for more than 48 hours (if that), he has proceeded steadily through this campaign, through half a dozen scandals of varying relevance, without so much as a dip in his party’s standing.

So much for the twitterati.

But I have to admit the part I most liked about Wherry's article was when he compared Harper's phony routine to that of a rotisserie salesman...



Because it's so true eh? The Con crowds clap just like that. And that's what he would do to us if he ever got a majority.

And it reminds me of another ad Great Plastic Leader made.

You know those fancy jets whose price just keeps climbing ? But he doesn't care.

Well here he is asking us to guess how much they'll cost.

And claiming they're a BARGAIN...



Yeah...yeah...I know I shouldn't be laughing at this point in the campaign. But think of it this way eh?

If Stephen Harper wins a majority we won't be laughing for at least FOUR years.

But if we play our cards right on Monday night, Harper will be the one looking for a new job as a televangelist or a rotisserie salesman.

And we'll be the ones grilling him like a chicken...