{"id":44552,"date":"2018-08-17T03:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T07:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=44552"},"modified":"2018-08-16T12:50:19","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T16:50:19","slug":"when-he-asked-her-about-jagmeet-singhs-cbc-appearance-notley-laughed-out-loud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/08\/17\/when-he-asked-her-about-jagmeet-singhs-cbc-appearance-notley-laughed-out-loud\/","title":{"rendered":"“…when he asked her about [Jagmeet] Singh\u2019s CBC appearance, ‘Notley laughed out loud'”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh<\/a> is apparently fascinated by the internecine fight shaping up between the NDP Premier of Alberta, Rachel Notley, and the federal NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh taking part in a Pride Parade in June 2017 (during the leadership campaign).
Photo via Wikimedia.<\/p><\/div>\n

If I am being honest, the thing about the Singh-Notley quarrel that interests me most is not the range of possible political consequences. Nor is it the brute economics of Canadian oil. No, I am most interested in the rhetorical style of it. Last week, on CBC\u2019s Power and Politics, federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was discussing Saudi Arabia\u2019s strange diplomatic meltdown and started speculating about Canada\u2019s need to look for imported oil from other countries. Western viewers \u2014 no doubt the CBC technically has some \u2014 were well aware that Singh had opposed the controversial Energy East pipeline.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

With Saudi Arabia acting like the cranky, unstable extended family it is, Energy East is looking a bit like a missed opportunity \u2014 not only for landlocked Alberta, which has a permanent stake in the multiplication of oil export options, but for the entire country. So it did not take long for people to start laughing at Singh\u2019s musings about where, oh where on this great planet Earth, Canada might obtain some oil.<\/p>\n

I am using the word \u201claughing\u201d literally. On Friday, the Edmonton Journal<\/em>\u2019s politics columnist, Graham Thomson, had a sitdown with Alberta NDP Premier Notley, and when he asked her about Singh\u2019s CBC appearance, \u201cNotley laughed out loud \u2026 \u2018It struck me that that was a thing that maybe he should have thought through before he said it.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

The premier went on to add \u201cWhat happened with Jagmeet is that he\u2019s learning that things are not as simple as they sometimes seem\u201d and insisted that \u201cto throw (workers) under the bus as collateral damage in pursuit of some other high-level policy objective is a recipe for failure, and it\u2019s also very elitist.\u201d The e-word! For New Democrats, that\u2019s rough talk.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Her rough treatment of Singh is unlikely to hurt his by-electoral cause in Burnaby, so the Notley-Singh fight can still be dismissed as mutually beneficial political theatre. Still, Singh tried to defend himself, sort of, in a Monday interview with our Maura Forrest. \u201cI know that Premier Notley\u2019s in a tough political fight,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I\u2019ve always felt, and I believe, that personal attacks are beneath her. That\u2019s not my way and I think she\u2019s better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

I will never stop being confused and amused by the way politicians speak in these situations. Read for pure ostensive meaning, Singh is not accusing Notley of making a personal attack on him: in fact, he\u2019s specifically saying that she is incapable of such a thing. But then why should she need the excuse of a tough political fight? Of course, we all know that saying someone is \u201cbetter than that\u201d is another way of calling them a jerk \u2014 perhaps the cruellest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colby Cosh is apparently fascinated by the internecine fight shaping up between the NDP Premier of Alberta, Rachel Notley, and the federal NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh: If I am being honest, the thing about the Singh-Notley quarrel that interests me most is not the range of possible political consequences. Nor is it the brute economics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53],"tags":[542,1168,798,371],"class_list":["post-44552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-alberta","tag-jagmeetsingh","tag-ndp","tag-saudiarabia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bAA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44553,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44552\/revisions\/44553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}