Photo Courtesy of The National Post

How you doing? Sniffly? Sneezy? Got a frog in your throat or a crick in the neck? Do you feel, to use the vernacular, like you want to barf up a lung?

Nope. “Fine.” That’s good to hear. And on that account, I say told you so.

With spring springing and the arrival of longer, warmer days and the promise of fun and excitement in the great outdoors, it’s time to take accounting of the pandemic flu season that just past. Or perhaps that should be non-demic.

I was serving on the Community Editorial Board of my local daily, The Guelph Mercury, this time last year. As the coming swine-flu-pocalypse was starting to break, I waxed sarcastically about the media’s attention to hysteria, and how when all the beans are counted, common medical sense will bear out and all the worry will have been for not.
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Courtesy of Macleans.ca

Last week in the United States Congress, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky took a lot of guff for stalling the renewal of unemployment benefits for millions of out of work Americans. Bunning was the sole voice of objection to passing the proposal by unanimous consent, and after being asked again to drop his objection shortly before midnight by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, the besieged Bunning replied simply, “tough s**t.” After the close of the debate after 12am, Bunning said he was ambushed by Democrats and forced to miss the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game on account. To which a nation of people worried about putting food on the table this month replied, “Now we know who the real heroes are.”

Bunning made himself a pariah by the media, the picture of a politician out of touch with everyday, normal Americans, which furthered the narrative of a broken governmental system in Washington. If that weren’t bad enough, The Daily Show and others made him a farce, as his fanboy disappointment left many to ponder, “Has this guy never heard of Tivo?”
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It takes a special kind of political acumens for a regional Canadian politician to make news headlines both north and south of the border, but Danny Williams has done it.

The Blogosphere across North America lit up a few weeks ago with the news that the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador was heading to an undisclosed American medical facility for a no-further-details-given heart surgery last week. Canadian progressives are chastising Williams for bailing on his at-home medical options while American opponents of healthcare reform get a new scapegoat for why a public option doesn’t work.

Simplistic? Probably. Williams’ people were less than helpful when the news broke, initiating what CBC reporter Janyce McGregor called a “cone of silence” about the matter.

What we do know is that after “weeks of consultation” with doctors, Williams decided to head stateside for the surgery which was apparently unavailable in his home province. This was according to Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale, for whom the odious duty of informing the media fell.
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