Politics and Press

Interview with The Homeland Security Secretary

As if poor President Obama doesn’t have enough to worry about, as he considers whether it is the chaps who ordered torture in the name of homeland security or the chaps who carried out the orders – or neither or both – who should be brought to trial. And then, as a side show, his choice for protector of that same border gives an interview on Canadian national television outlining her concerns. Coming as it did upon the conclusion of a Canuck hockey game and first round sweep, the talk with an unknown woman appeared to be a perhaps somewhat heavy-handed satire about the former guardians of the US side of the Canadian border. Here was a comedienne portraying a US diplomat who was announcing that the US-Canada border must be made more impenetrable – just like the Mexican one – because the 9/11 terrorists had entered the US that way and that the currently informal border controls would have to be made much more stringent so it didn’t happen again. Well, you could walk down the street and ask almost anyone and they would know that no 9/11 terrorists entered from Canada, so this part of this routine was too nutty to really be cutting satire. The four-hour waits at the border on the last long weekend also made the second part too obvious since it was just meant to show the supposed US diplomat hadn’t crossed that border in years, if ever.

And then her name flashed on screen – Janet Napolitano, apparently a Canadian comedienne my brother and I had never heard of, though we have great connections in that field. And then her title popped up – Homeland Security Secretary of the USA. Well, that was a good one, if a bit of a cheap shot, until it turned out to be true. This birdbrain – apparently the former governor of Arizona – is in charge of US border security, and is going to cost both countries billions of dollars in lost trade, more if she builds a wall like the one on the Mexican border in the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, and she doesn’t know what country the guys came from who attacked New York. Sometimes satire just doesn’t pay.