It’s said here that Calgary native Ted Cruise needs to make an appointment to have a serious chat with Conrad Black before he makes any rash and irrevocable decisions to run his Canadian passport through the shredder.
Cruz is now the junior Senator from Texas and a favourite of the Tea Party, a group that would like to keep foreign-born people like Cruz, especially foreign-born people with Hispanic parents like Cruz’s father, out of the United States.
Don’t ask me to explain this. I don’t understand it. And the news story I’ve been looking at is datelined Austin, Tex., which is way more liberal than Canada, which is waaaay more liberal than Cruz would approve of. So go figure!
I can tell you that Cruz isn’t quite as avuncular as Ron Paul, who is the crazy uncle of the American right, but seems to be just about as as crazy. Paul, who is also from Texas, was born in Pittsburgh, Penn., which is more than halfway to Canada in every sense of the expression, which in this context is not a good thing. Hook ’em ‘Horns!
Cruz has apparently lately found that his quest to attack almost everything done by Hawaiian-born U.S. President Barack Obama, as well as his aspiration to someday hold Obama’s job, may have been dealt a blow by the fact he holds dual Canadian-U.S. citizenship by merit of the location of his birth in Cowtown, the de facto capital of Alberta.
Accordingly, Cruz has told everyone that he will renounce his Canadian citizenship as soon as possible, although whether Canada is the problem or just Calgary is not entirely clear. Indeed, Cruz looks forward to renouncing his Canadian citizenship immediately, and, judging from the comments section of a number of Canadian newspapers, plenty of Canadians look forward to him doing the same thing.
It’s not clear whether anyone in Texas really cares, but, hey, it was a slow news week!
Something, however, seems to be holding Cruz back.
Leastways, the author of that Associated Press story from Austin I was just talking about, who is no doubt a mushy liberal who hates guns and freedom and wants to coddle the kind of terrorists who are bound to try to slip across the Canadian border, sorta suggested that he doesn’t quite believe Cruz’s spokesperson’s claim that the Senator hasn’t gotten around to renouncing his Canadian citizenship because he’s been too busy “fighting for Texans’ values and interests in the Senate for the last year.”
Which is why I suggest that if Cruz really is having second thoughts about severing his 43-year tie with Canada, cold as it is here this week, he should speak with Lord Black, who has some experience in this area.
Lord Black, of course, is well known as the former Canadian media magnate who like Cruz was born in Canada but later publicly and officially renounced his citizenship after a loud argument with a fellow named Jean Chretien, who at the time happened to be the prime minister.
Chretien seems to have held the view that one oughtn’t to be a Canadian citizen and a Lord at the same time. Unlike most of us, he was in a position at the time to do something about his opinion.
Lord Black, who apparently strongly disagreed, took up British citizenship, whereupon he could call himself a Lord whatever Chretien and his liberal Liberals thought, and soon thereafter took up residence in the United States — delivering unto us disgustingly socialistic, envious and small-minded Canadians a double bitch-slap!
Unfortunately for his Lordship, however, immediately after that he faced some legal difficulties south of the Medicine Line (which just this month in an unrelated development was renamed the Medical Marijuana Line) resulting in a short stay in the state of Florida as a guest of the People of the United States. It only goes to show how petty and spiteful Canadians are that so many here, possibly still smarting from that double-slap, took unreasonable satisfaction in his troubles.
Upon release, it turned out Lord Black had reconsidered his apparent previous desire never again to cast his shadow on Canadian soil, and he had to go through the nerve-racking process of applying to reenter Canada as a person who had spent time in a foreign jail.
Fortunately, the Canadian government at the time was extremely sympathetic to the plight of wealthy non-citizens who found themselves in conflict with the law elsewhere, and swiftly welcomed Lord Black back to his natal land. He has since happily completed the transition from the country’s top press baron to its leading baron o’ beefs!
Lord Black now occupies himself writing an extremely irritating regular column for the National Post in which he complains incessantly about such topics as Obama, the United Nations and how mean everybody is to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who is in fact (his Lordship argued recently) a refreshing change from the rest of us Canadians, “monochromatic aspirant Dudley Do-Rights” that we are.
Now, all this said, it is hard to be really know what Lord Black might actually advise Cruz.
He might say something like, for God’s sake, Ted, don’t renounce your Canadian citizenship! Renew your passport/passeport instead! God forbid, we could have another Liberal government some day, and if that happened, and something were to go awry for you in Texas, they’d never let you back into the country! And, other than the winters, Canada has really become a place with huge potential these past few years. Nonetheless, your northern countrymen here have a disgusting tendency toward bestial self-righteous excesses that require immediate and constant correction!
On the other hand, he might say something like, so sorry, Ted, but you need to renounce your Canadian citizenship at once, as wonderful and valuable a thing as it can be. If you become president, you can be as great as Woodrow Wilson, or perhaps even George W. Bush! And nothing, Ted, nothing, not even your valuable Canadian citizenship, must stand in the way of that goal. Don’t be intimidated by the corrosive, sadistic, soul-destroying wheedling of those envious Canadians who only wish to bring the happiest, most agile flyers to earth!
Unfortunately, it’s simply impossible for mere members of the Canadian hoi polloi such as myself to know.
We can only hope that, should Cruz take my advice and speak with Lord Black, this notable dual Canadian-American will take the advice he receives, and for the good of everyone that his Lordship will be so kind as to share it with the rest of us in his next column in the Post.
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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