Justin Trudeau is young, charismatic, thoughtful and energetic. It's hard to imagine a man more suited to revive the fortunes of the failed enterprise he's poised to take over.
I'm talking about the Canadian news media, of course. Though I suppose he might do OK as Liberal boss, too.
Since the untimely and much over-eulogized departure of Bob Rae last week, practically every major Canadian pundit has emerged as a steady booster of young Trudeau. Critics agree his decisive positions on looking dreamy and punching people obviously make him an ideal leader to spice up the stagnant third-place party everyone's grown sick of writing about (the world can only take so many "wither the centre?" retrospectives), but did you know he apparently possesses some other attractive qualities, too?
Uber-Liberal extraordinaire Warren Kinsella has no less than 10 reasons why JT is the man, most of which are some variation on observation number three: "He isn't an old fart." This may seem like a fairly specious thing to say, until you realize that many Liberals like to think of Justin Trudeau as "their Obama," and we all know how critical old fart-not-being-ness was in getting that guy into the White House.
Fellow Grit Jeff Jedras at the Post says that all this youth is particularly important when you consider that, ahem, "we're not going to win the election in 2015." All the more reason to elect someone who won't be dead by 2020! Or, to put it in pundit-speak, someone "who can commit the next decade to growing the party." This was also the strategy encouraged by Jon Ibbitson a few days ago, though one hopes that if Trudeau actually does decide to run, he'll keep the "elect me so I can lose" plank of his platform on the DL.
Even the righties are blinded by this star!
Cuddly curmudgeon Rex Murphy says that a Liberal leadership race without Trudeau as the front runner is about as plausible as "Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark" since he's the only dude "who can relight the flame" and "muscle the Liberals into public attention." All that flaming attention might ultimately fizzle out in yet one more epic Martin-Iggy-Dion-Rae false Messiah burnout, he warns, but hey, it's either that or some wet matchbook like Marc Garneau.
Amidst this love-in, only Michael Den Tandt of Postmedia enterprises seems willing to play the spoilsport.
"What has Justin Trudeau ever said or written that is substantive, original or politically powerful?" he asks. And that's all well and good, Mike, but still... thehair!
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In Meta-media news, the stern-faced busybodies who run the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council have decided to punish Ezra Levant for some on-air obscenities, which he has cheerfully characterized as a perfectly reasonable reprimand for a regrettable personal failing.
Oh ho ho, what a joker I am!
No, Levant is actually planning to fight these heartless bureaucrats tooth and nail for his right to spout what he calls "a Spanish phrase" and what the Globe and Mail calls a "slur that roughly translates into 'go have sex with your mother.'" The offending foreign words were cussed during a particularly angry moment in Levant's long-running feud with the American banana industry, which I suppose is about as much context as you'll probably need for something involving Ezra Levant.
Already on a giddy high from the Tories' recent abolishment of section 13 of the Human Rights Code, Levant has so far made about a billion Sun TV appearances on this latest self-proclaimed "fight for freedom." But I'm sure his interest will wane as the weeks go on.
Oh ho! Got you again!
WATCH HuffPost Media Critic J.J. McCullough talk about Trudeau on CTV's Political Express.