Call me Ishmael!
Would you pay $8,679, or even $2,952, to be trapped for nine days aboard a boat, even a very large boat, with Ezra Levant, Michael Coren, Brian Lilley and a host of other sorry reruns from the Sun News Network commentariat, not to mention the communications vice-president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers?
This is a serious question, people! And if you answered yes to it, then perhaps © Ezra Levant’s Freedom Cruise next August is for you. Anchors aweigh!
I’m thinking I may pass on this particular opportunity myself, although in truth we (the matrimonial we, that is) have been thinking that an Alaska cruise might be a very pleasant way to pass some time as retirement beckons.
Still, I’m not walking across the rickety gangplank of any ship with Messrs. Levant and Coren aboard unless it’s named the Pequod and I am permitted to wear officer’s whites and be in command as we make our stately way through British Columbia’s still-pristine Inside Passage along the route followed by the ill-fated Queen of the North.
Please be calm, people. Everything is under control. The bridge is fully staffed with capable officers such as myself. That rainbow sheen you see on the water is just a slight residue of WD-40 from a passing fish boat, the almost entirely harmless residuum of a quart of completely ethical oil. Coren, fetch me a cup of the finest Starbucks from the Atrium and Ocean Bar below! And be right smart about it, man!
Where was I? Oh yes… © Ezra Levant’s Freedom Cruise. Readers who regularly follow this blog will think I am just making this up out of a malicious and spiteful sense of mischief, but I assure you this is not the case.
Indeed, we must admire the Sun News Network, even as its viewers run screaming for the exits — or more to the point, search the sofa for the TV remote with rising desperation — for industriously coming up with new ways to try to make money.
And if things really don’t work out, the Sun News Network’s commentators will have been eased into new careers as cruise ship social facilitators. Not many sinking, as it were, companies would do that for their employees.
And thus we have © Ezra Levant’s Freedom Cruise drifting past the site of the unlamented Ripple Rock, eliminated by the Dominion Government in history’s largest non-nuclear blast on April 5, 1958, something that no private company … oh, never mind.
You have to admit, the characteristic optimism of the typical free marketeer is inspiring!
Indeed, should the voyage of the MV Zuiderdam fail to deliver the anticipated return on investment — although that is hard to imagine when passengers will have the opportunity to dine with a different Sun personality every night, go to private cocktail receptions with their favourite SNN personalities and attend seminars with Q&A sessions — Sun News can always hit up the CRTC or its maritime equivalent for a compensatory taxpayer subsidy.
Each seminar will examine a fascinating question:
– Could Thomas Mulcair or Justin Trudeau derail our beloved Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2015? (Quelle horreur, l’horreur à double!)
– Will environmental activists shut down Canada’s key industry? (Spelling the doom of Ethical Oil.)
– What happened to Alberta and are conservative ideas safe anywhere in Canada? (Yes! At least aboard the MV Zuiderdam whilst she remains in Canadian waters!)
– Is the U.S. now a liberal country? (Not while the Koch Brothers live and breathe!)
Passengers will also have the opportunity to hear from Pamela Geller, director of both the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA).
We’re sorry to report that left-wingers in the guise of Stop the Alphabetization of Everything (SAOE), a group that I made up just now as if I were writing a cruise brochure for © Ezra Levant’s Freedom Cruise, are continually trying to bully and erode the free speech rights of people like this Great American Patriot of the Year (GAPOY).
Now hear this! Now hear this! Rainbow-coloured periscope to port! Take the helm, Mr. Queequeg! Hard to Starbuck, I mean to starboard! That is all! That is all!
Also aboard will be Janet Annesley Vice-President of Communications for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), who will presumably be speaking about the threat posed by crazy environmentalists who could be lurking almost anywhere in rainbow-coloured submarines with plans to CAPP-size Canada’s ethical oil!
Readers will also be relieved to learn, as I was, that notwithstanding their mutual presence on this cruise, no business connection exists between the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and Ezra Levant.
Moreover, the MV Zuiderdam is operated by the Holland America line and has never been used to ship unethical Chiquita bananas or burn unethical Bunker C.
Still, anyone who can survive nine days on board a boat with the crew of the Sun News Network without developing a really serious drinking problem deserves the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.
Then again, anyone who is of a mind to do any such thing probably already has one!
Talk about maritime disasters!
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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