Stephen Harper's Hockey Pool

I was watching the Sens-Bruins game Saturday January 27^th on the Hockey Night in Canada daytime broadcast part of a tripleheader that also featured the Leafs vs. the Canadiens and an Oil game in the late slot. I expect Ottawa was screwed into the afternoon time because "Leafs Nation" owns Saturday evening on the CBC. Too bad for the rest of Canada.

Speaking of Canada, I saw a familiar sight there: our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, in the stands with all the regular folks. I've been noticing it a fair bit, actually, as the guys controlling the camera cutting never begrudge him his due in broadcast time. Kind of creepy how cameramen can do that at sports events, actually! You never know if they're zoomed in right on you. Mr. Harper has to assume it and comport himself accordingly of course. He got his air time during the singing of our national anthem and, like any good Canadian, gamely mouthed the words along with the singer. That really gets to me: though I sing astonishingly badly for whatever reason, I do do my utmost to sing (at least volumewise!) the anthem at public events rather than this new fad of kind of silently half forming the syllable shapes or phonemes or whatever they call them just because you're not totally comfortable with doing nothing at all. You'd think our elected Number One Guy would show some more pride.

Despite his shortcomings, I do like Stephen. He's an improvement over his predecessors and would-be successors of the moment. We all know he's an avid hockey fan -- even writing a book on the subject. Very careful not to root for any particular franchise, his crafty advisers seem to see the hockey lovers of the populace as a crowd of morons who'd vote their team logo into office if given the chance, a precaution which might not be wholly without merit. So with the help of a taxpayer-subsidized television station taping in a taxpayer-subsidized stadium he's steadily at work convincing beer-drinking jersey-wearing goalie-jeering taxpayers that, far from being a Scary Conservative with a Hidden Agenda, he's a nice fellow just like them.

Some people get groups of hockey nuts together and make bets about which team will win the Stanley Cup. Stephen Harper bets that if he's seen with enough hockey nuts his team will win the next election. I'm sure he enjoyed the game, too. 3-1 Sens!