Thursday, February 27, 2025

The Un-Great One

By Zamboni

It looks like the repercussions from Benedict Donald's wacky desire to make Canada our "51st state" are finally getting noticed.

As in, American journalists are realizing that Trump is driving the Trumpy Canadian Conservatives right into the ground.

Just weeks ago, the Tories and their wildly unappealing leader, Pierre Poilièvre, were poised to take power after nine years of Liberal rule. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared well past his sell-by date, and voters were restive — polls had PP and the Tories ahead by as much as 26 points. And then Trump came back to Washington, and "le monde à l'envers," as they say in Quebec. Every time Trump opens his mouth, he does PP more damage. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Now it's become clear that Donald has done the same thing to Wayne Gretzky. Of course, Gretzky has helped, big time. He was at Mar-a-Lago for the victory party in November, and attended the scaled-down inauguration with his badly face-lifted wife. (Actually, both Gretzkys appear to have used the same ham-handed plastic surgeon.) And although Gretzky was named Companion of the Order of Canada in 2009, he's never traveled to Ottawa to accept the honor. What's that about?

Then, this month, he put in a perfunctory appearance at the 4 Nations Face Off — looking quite put upon by the simple duties he had to fulfill as honorary captain for Team Canada. "Gretzky walked onto the ice from the Team USA bench and gave a thumbs-up to the American players while dressed in blue," The Montreal Gazette reported. (A few hours later, ha ha, Canada won the championship in overtime.)

But bad as Gretzky's behavior has been, Trump does him no favors when he says stuff like "I have so many great friends. One of them is The Great One. I said, 'Run for prime minister, you’ll win. It will take two seconds.' He said, 'Well, am I gonna run for prime minister or governor? You tell me.' I said, 'I dunno, let’s make it Governor. I like that better.'" It's gotten to the point where fans in Edmonton are so pissed off they're petitioning to take Gretzky's name off a local freeway and have his statue removed from Rogers Place, the Oilers' home venue.

Gretzky's wife says that "It has broken his heart to read and see the mean comments." These MAGA morons — they're always the victims, aren't they? But let them whine, because it's hard to see how all this pulls Poilièvre and the Conservatives out of their plummeting polls. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

(IMAGE: By Terry Mosher, a.k.a. Aislin, The Montreal Gazette)

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