FLANAGAN

Holy cow, police in the United States say threats against public figures are on the rise. Like, way on the rise!

According to a report of the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate issued last May, threats against U.S. senators “were up 300 per cent in the first few months of 2010.”

Three hundred bleepin’ per cent!

Usually the people who make these threats, of course, are described as “quiet,” “loners,” the kind of folks who have “a history of mental illness” and “a cache of guns.” You know the drill … Kinda like the quiet 70-year-old North Carolinian who phoned up his U.S. Senator and told him, “if you vote for that stimulus package, I’m gonna kill you. Simple as that.”

FBI agents arrested the poor old slob and hauled him off to the crowbar hotel, where prosecutors charged him with threatening to kill a federal official — a felony, we’re told, that’s punishable by up to 10 years in prison in the very, very, very serious country to the south of us.

However, court records show the case was dropped after it turned out he was only joking… No, wait, that’s what happens in Canada! The North Carolina case was dropped after the guy was found incompetent to stand trial.

Well, sheesh, never mind that. There’s none of that stuff up here in the Great White North because our own politicians and their pals do their own threatening, thanks very much.

Consider the case of Thomas “Smokin’ Tom” Flanagan, a quiet loner from Calgary with a cache of …. No. Wait! I’m getting my cases all mixed up again. That was the crazy old North Carolina guy. Nothing crazy about Perfesser Flanagan. Smokin’ Tom not only teaches political “science” to impressionable young people at the University of Calgary when he’s not issuing fatwas and emailing “borderline” threats off to Toronto, he’s a rich old white guy who advises our prime minister and his underlings on how to avoid “bozo eruptions.”

So if you piss off a guy like Tom Flanagan for advocating freedom of information or, worse, doing something about it, he might just be on the phone to his pal the PM to scare up R2D2 or whatever that secret elite commando force is called, or better yet going on TV to advise the president of the Good Old U.S.A. (at least, I’m pretty sure that’s the way Ole Tom sees the place) to call in a drone attack and blow the whole Wikileaky pain in the continental butt to kingdom come.

And if you don’t happen to like what he’s saying, and should you drop him an e-card to say so, well, he knows where you live. And he bloody well should, too, because there are Mounties with CPIC computers living right inside his pal Steve’s house! So, yeah, he does know where you live!

So if you think Canadian politicians have anything to fear from their POed voters like their wimpy U.S. counterparts, well, guess again, because in this country we have Tom and his buds from the Calgary School, like Ted “Hunter” Morton, and if you mess with them, well, they might just mess with you. Got that? Capiche?

And, by the way, if you think I’m just being mean to these guys because they’re from the ReFarm Party and want to bust up the gun registry, which even the cops like, well never let it be forgotten that we used to have a Liberal prime minister who went around throttling protesters and bopping burglars on the head with Inuit sculptures!

But that was bad, of course, because, like, the prime minister in question was a Liberal. (And where were the Mounties then, I wonder?)

Meanwhile, charges against the purveyor of Perfesser Flanagan’s Anti-Bozo-Eruption Creem won’t even be laid because … everyone out here in Alberta knows he was only joking. It’s true. Really. That’s what the Edmonton Journal said yesterday morning. (They also said Henry II was just kidding when he told his spear carriers to go murder Thomas Becket — I’m really not making this up! Any of it.)

Facing a death threat? “We must learn to let such things pass,” quoth the Journal editorialist, mercifully anonymous. You see, it’s the Wikileaker we should be pissed at, the Journal explained, because … because … because maybe if this keeps up our few remaining readers might expect us to report the news too? And, anyway, Ole Tom said he was sorry, for cryin’ out loud.

But, je digresse. Just one more word of advice to the young people. Don’t you crack any jokes like Perfesser Flanagan’s, especially if you’re about to board an airplane, for, unlike the noted Senior Fellow of the Frazier Institute, you might find yourself talking to the police for several hours in a room with no doorknob on the inside.

And speaking of doorknobs and bozo eruptions, as we were, Dr. Flanagan’s fairweather pal Steve Harper was doing Jumpin’ Jack Flash imitations in front of a crowd of Conservative bagmen and obsequious reporters in an Ottawa hotel last night. I’m not making this up either, and I have the link to prove it! Talk about, “Oh-NO-ooo-oooh, don’t get caught in a bad hotel!” But, je digresse again.

Remember that U.S. Senator from North Carolina? Well, he and the Mrs. have found a uniquely American solution to their crazy stalkers. They’re both packin’ heat!

But what the hell are we supposed to do here in Canada when our politicians start stalking us? I mean, hell, gun registry notwithstanding, we’re not even allowed to carry!

This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...