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Here's my hot take on #elbowgate: everyone just shut up already.

Justin Trudeau, please shut up.  You embarrassed yourself and the country by trying to act like an alpha male in parliament, attempting to push a member of the opposition back into his chair like a bratty kid trying to leave the breakfast table before finishing his Cheerios.  You probably thought the episode would be another one of your charming viral hits — "studly Canadian prime minister shows how to deal with an unruly co-worker" — and your phony baloney apologies have revealed you remain a slave to your own vanity.

You say you failed to "live up to a higher standard of behaviour"?  No, you failed to resist acting like a camera-mugging, show-boating narcissist, and I am sure that's not going to change.  You say your pushing of Mr. Brown was entirely a product of the fact that you were "simply concerned that unfortunately the decorum of this place was impeded by the kind of preventing of the work that the whips are doing"?  No, you were trying to ram through a law to allow doctors to kill patients who feel worthless, a ghoulish piece of legislation which your government had grown tired of pretending it was intellectually equipped to justify.

New Democratic Party of Canada, please shut up.  The video footage clearly shows that you guys were playing games of your own on the floor of the House of Commons, trying to form a human barrier around Mr. Brown to stop him from taking his seat and thus prevent a vote on the future of the suicide bill.

Ms. Brosseau, I'm sure it hurts to get a pointy elbow to the breast, but accidents happen and that's clearly what this was.  I'm willing to accept the PM's poke was painful enough for you to want to take a breather outside the chamber, but I do not accept the premise that this was one of the most distressing events of your life.  For 24 hours you were apparently too "shaken" to talk to the media and when you finally did today you "teared up several times."  This is not the behavior of a mature woman.

Thomas Mulcair, shut up.  It's hypocritical beyond belief for you to be fainting like a dainty hausfrau at Trudeau's temper tantrum when everyone knows you're the biggest hothead in parliament.  The second Ms. Brosseau recoiled you immediately began bellowing with your big, cavernous mouth "WHAT KIND OF MAN ELBOWS A WOMAN?!" thus helping transform an already stupid episode into an even stupider spectacle of overblown gender politics.  Nikki Ashton is going around saying we need to apply a "gendered lens" to this "deeply traumatic" event, insisting "it is very important that young women in this space feel safe" which will presumably require lots of parliamentary reeducation seminars to extinguish the misogynist war crime of the two genders unintentionally colliding with one another.

 

Conservatives, you shut up too.  The rise of Donald Trump has proven that there are an awful lot of voters out there who have grown sick and tired of the 24/7 outrage machine.  You had an opportunity to prove you were the adults equipped to rise above both Trudeau's theatrics and the NDP's drama queening, but instead you chose to play along.

Rona Ambrose is claiming to have been "almost in shock" at what transpired, and understands completely why the House of Commons has become "uncomfortable for a lot of women."  Meanwhile, we have Lisa Raitt more or less comparing Trudeau to Jian Ghomeshi and Michelle Rempel evoking the trope of victim-blaming as if being even slightly skeptical of a politician's reaction to getting accidentally elbowed by the leader of a different party is somehow morally akin to condemning a woman for her own rape.  In choosing to react firmly within the established boundaries of social justice silliness, you Tories seem eager to be more echo than alternative.

And lastly, shut up Elizabeth May.  Stop preening as if you are a noble stateswoman shedding an elegant single tear at the "toxic spiral" of Canadian politics from up there in the cheap seats.  You are not a calm voice of reason now, or ever.  You spent the entirety of the Harper years a spraying fount of hysterics, paranoia, conspiracy theories, and pseudoscience.  Indeed, the only reason you seem particularly perturbed by Elbowgate is because it robbed you of time to drone on about the dangers of "chronic lyme disease" which is bogus nonsense.

A country run by such people is not one with a future to bet on.

Photo Credit: CBC

 

Written by J.J McCullough

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.