Wherry linked to this article yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance to give it a read until this morning. Classic. Just classic. I haven’t seen this many suspect assertions come together since Larry King last recited his marriage vows.
In the interests of science, let’s rank Senator Mike Duffy’s statements on the Scale of Dubiousness™ – with 1.0 being a straightforward claim easily supported by abundant factual evidence and 10.0 being Bill Clinton denying having tapped that.
1.2 “I’m still learning about those secret handshakes, and the wink wink, nudge nudge,” Duffy said. The experience [of becoming a senator] can be surreal at times, he said. “There are games within games and you’re never really sure who your friends are,” he said.
This all makes sense. Becoming a senator is like joining a club – not a cool club like the Friars Club or even a useful club like the Hair Club for Men, but a club whose proceedings go almost entirely unnoticed by society at large. Think of it as Fight Club but with naps instead of punches.
5.7 Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Dean Del Mastro [the area’s MP] are working day and night, Duffy said, leaving no stone unturned or even taking summer vacations.
Although it scores only modestly high on the scale of dubiousness, this statement single-handedly shattered my Sycophant-o-Meter® – and that thing had survived a dozen Barbara Walters interviews and the last three years of L. Ian MacDonald’s columns.
You have to appreciate Duffy’s over-the-topness here: Working day and night! No stone unturned! No vacation! Rest assured that if that doesn’t do the trick, Harper is prepared to give 110 per cent, take this one recession at a time and the good Lord willing, things will work out.
9.998 At first he said he wasn’t interested in the Senate, he said. But he had watched a round of layoffs take place at CTV, he said, and knew more were on the way. “I thought, do I want to be around the office when it happens again?” Duffy said.
Not interested in the Senate? Mike Duffy? Please. Mike Duffy was not interested in the Senate the way Kirstie Alley is not interested in whether you’re going to finish that Twinkie.
I’m not saying the last three years of Mike Duffy’s broadcast career were a blatant audition for the Senate but, well, let’s just say that when Duffy’s lips file their tax return they list Stephen Harper’s ass as their common-law spouse.
9.999 He also said he wanted to sit as an independent, because he wasn’t a Conservative. “I was always a journalist,” Duffy said.
A journalist… riiiiiiiiight. Mike Duffy is a journalist the way that Velveeta is cheese, in that he kind of resembles one but then on closer inspection, uhh, no. Actual journalists don’t habitually read stuff directly to their TV audience from their BlackBerry without corroborating the information in any way whatsoever. “This just in: A Nigerian widow has made me a millionaire – so long, suckers!” Also, most journalists don’t stare lovingly into Jim Flaherty’s eyes and ask, “Would you like a backrub?” (I may be paraphrasing here.)
The best part, however, may be the line that comes next: Conservative senators were in the minority, he said, and Prime Minister Harper told him he needed him to sit as one. “And I thought, well, OK,” Duffy said.
Boy, you sure can tell how much he wanted to serve as an independent! I am adamant that I must protect my hard-won integrity as a journalist by sitting in the Senate as one whose lack of bias and partisanship defines him as – oh, you’d LIKE me to sit as a Conservative. Fine then.
