I never much cared for the Governor General position. I always thought it was a waste of money.
What a fool I was.
Michaëlle Jean proved just how great a Governor General can be when she did perhaps the most awesome and downright insane thing ever by a government official — she devoured a raw seal heart.
It was a great burn against sealing protesters. And it helped show how, in contrast, their whole campaign is just a big image war.
Last Friday, a small group of protesters laid on Barrington Street covered in fake blood and handed out PETA pamphlets about how seals are murdered in the most inhumane ways.
This raises the question: How small is PETA’s imagination? I’d imagine that lighting them on fire or stabbing them to death would be much worse.
Short of giving them an overdose of sleeping pills, a hakapik to the brain seems on par or better than the way we kill millions of other animals. But it does look worse, so it’s become a cause célèbre.
What’s annoying is it’s so easy to protest the seal hunt. We can push all our scorn on a small culture we don’t understand without having to make any concessions ourselves.
Meanwhile, the seal population is flourishing, but tuna stocks are collapsing and sharks are going extinct. But seals are cuter than sharks so they need our help, right?
This doesn’t make sense to Michaëlle Jean. She’d rather people put their energy into causes that actually make the world better. And she’s willing to eat a raw seal heart to drive home the point.
Can we make her Governor General for life?
Paul McLeod is a staff reporter at Metro Halifax. He’s currently in rehab for being a political junkie. It’s going badly. Contact paul.mcleod@metronews.ca.
