John Geddes

John Geddes writes on politics and policy, with occasional reporting and comment on arts and culture.

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So then Gerry sez…

by John Geddes on Thursday, September 18, 2008 9:35am - 27 Comments

I can’t help it, I find Gerry Ritz a funny guy. Like back in 2002 when Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day were slugging it out for the Canadian Alliance leadership. Harper’s campaign had been warning that Day was relying too heavily on evangelical Christians, threatening to isolate the party from a broader electoral base. I ran into Ritz, a big Day backer, and asked him about the issue. “If Stephen Harper controlled federal infrastructure money,” Gerry said, “he’d be building colosseums and importing lions.” Ha! Funny. And a bit risky, as good jokes, even humour about, say, religion or death, often are.

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john g

Wow. Now the G&M has a story about how once in 2003 Ritz made a comment about “peeing in the wind”.

What’s next? That he told some kid that he had “fart-breath” on the playground when he was 5 years old?

Remind me again how the media is not artificially trumping up this story???
Cara

What I find offensive about Ritz’s comments is his lack of professionalism. It’s not just the so-called jokes he made but the time he spent worrying about how this bad news could be spun to make the Tories look better. And then there’s the comments about the Green Shift.
For crying out loud, the only thing that should have been of concern during this conference call is the fact that people were getting sick and dying because of contaminated meat! Nothing else. No jokes. No talk about spinning. No talk ncern about the Green Shift.
If Ritz had, in fact, kept concern for public safety at the forefront of his mind then we would be congratulating him, not criticizing him.