The Liberals and Conservatives might not be officially married any longer but that’s not stopping them from being friends with benefits.

In the House on Monday, Liberal trade critic Scott Brison defended Bill C-23, the Canada Colombia free trade agreement thusly:

“If we isolate Colombia in the Andean region and leave Colombia exposed and vulnerable to the ideological attacks of Chavez’s Venezuela, we will be allowing evil to flourish.”

What a disgrace. Uribe is linked to rightwing death squads that murder union leaders and other leftists while Chavez is educating his people. Yet Brison thinks the latter is the evil one.

As I said in yesterday’s post, when I first saw the Canadian, Please video my reaction was what the fuck?! My second reaction was that it was going to drive the right whingers bonkers as they sneered contemptuously at the Canadian leftards for not thinking that killing Moooslims and working to keep dark skinned furriners out of our country was what they should be singing about.

Since then I’ve watched the video a few more times and something began to tug at the edge of my consciousness as I did. This morning I watched it again and I think I’ve figured out what is so compelling about it. Canadians have wrestled with the question of what it means to be Canadian for quite some time now and the video directly addresses that question.

The upbeat tempo and satirical approach encapsulates our deeply held desire to be the fun loving kid on the block that harbours no malice toward anyone. It speaks directly to our fierce but shallow Canadian pride that we don’t take seriously. It demonstrates the love we have for our national icons but at the same time demonstrates that they are not vital to our essence as a people. It teases out our flaws; our insecurity, our confused national identity and our often times naive view of the world around us. But at the same time it boasts of our strengths; our desire to get along, our determined purpose and our ability to see the good around us.

In short, this charming little two and a half minute video proficiently captures the zeitgeist of a nation and says this is what it means to be Canadian.

Well I see that the Liberal war room is in good hands.

For all you youngsters out there - your very own Mr. Angry avatar, for you to print up, clip out, and save!

Coming soon: Jellyfish Jack!

No doubt this accounts for why libfloggers are all acting like this, these days. I wonder if Kinsella, in a rare moment of lucidity, ever realizes that he is the purple dinosaur now.