Staying Ahead of the Giant Sucking Sound

No, this isn't a report of the fledgling Northern Alliance Radio Network.

Instead it's the account of my efforts to survive the likely outsoucring of my position at this Internet forum. As the Elder's return from South of the Border nears, we fear so does the zero hour for the downsizing of your humble correspondents' positions. I can't be sure how things are going to go next week, but the recent arrival of a new name plate for the Elder's office--saying "El Patron" doesn't give us much hope.

Hoping to latch on with another crew, I've proactively released a few blogging samples into the marketplace. I don't think Mark Steyn necessarily needs a collaborator, but it never hurts to ask. And I believe the chemistry evident in this exchange portends good things. From the Mark's Mail Box section of Steyn OnLine:

WRAPPING HIMSELF IN WHAT?

I was reading, with some amusement, articles on the furor over Don Cherry's intemperate (though not falsified) comments on the visor wearing habits of French guys and Europeans. One of the articles characterized Cherry as a person who "wraps himself in the Canadian flag."

To an American, that sneering phrase sounds kind of funny applied to anything besides the Stars and Stripes. Wrapping yourself in the Canadian flag sounds more like a way to keep warm after returning from a late night Moosehead-fuled outhouse run and finding yourself locked out of the cabin without your toque.

If that's not what it means, please give this benignly curious outsider some insight. Thanks much.

Saint Paul
St Paul, Minnesota

MARK REPLIES: Steady on, man. Persons of many nations like to wrap themselves in their flags, whether actual (English and Italian soccer fans) or metaphorical (pompous French politicians). As it happens, I dislike the (post-1965) Canadian flag, which is more like a corporate logo - or, in this case, a Liberal Party logo. The people who wrap themselves in that flag are the lame-o CanCon boosters at the CBC and similar agencies. The flag Cherry is wrapping himself in is slightly different - the flag of the ROC, of pre-Trudeau English Canada that doesn't see why, just because Quebec speaks French, you have to pretend Kamloops is bilingual. It's precisely because he refuses to wrap himself in the Trudeaupian Maple Leaf that he's so "controversial".

Hard to argue with that logic. In fact, that mirrors my own feelings on the pre-1965 Canadian flag exactly. I believe this is what they call this synergy. Although I will have to look up "Kamploops" in my English-Canadian dictionary. I think it has something to do with cereal. Either way wish me luck.