Heather Mallick: Crazy about Stephen Harper

The Toronto Star's Heather Mallick, demonstrating her usual histrionic doltishness, seems determined to do for Stephen Harper what she did for Rob Ford; create such hysterical nonsense that it actually helps the campaign of the person she viscerally hates.

In her column in today's Star, her unconcealed loathing of Harper is reminiscent of her notorious piece cleverly dubbed by colunmist Rick McGuiness as "Heather Mallick's hate-f*ck with Rob Ford."  In that, she treated her readers to an imagined sexual tryst with the then-mayoral candidate (now Toronto's mayor) and her disgust and self-loathing at its aftermath.  That column suggested an author so unhinged as to evoke the idea at the radical leftist website rabble.ca that Mallick was actually an agent provocateur working to get Ford elected.

In her column today, Mallick imagines a Canada where Steven Harper's Conservatives form a majority government.

Harper's detractors have accused him of being a 'dictator,' although always omitting how it's possible to be so in a minority government where the opposition parties could have ousted him at any time. Since Canadians are no less free and have no fewer rights since Harper became Prime Minister in 2006, sane people might be surprised at Mallick's contention that the result of a Conservative majority would be, "Guns on the street, gated communities, rampant drug use, unlimited anonymous corporate political donations, no government safety standards for food and medicine.."

But that's just for starters!

It seems that there's something about conservative politicians that sends Mallick's brain into spin-out mode, not that she's known for rational pronouncements at the best of times. What might be vaguely clever as satire seems a sign of mental instability when she seriously proposes that "Harper's targeting of perceived enemies verges on the Stalinist." Either Mallick has absolutely no familiarity with the history of Stalinist Russia, or she exhibits a pathology about Harper that needs to be resolved by physicians rather than politicians.

According to Mallick, in a Harper majority, "women's rights would retreat, including abortion rights, access to medical advances and the right to go to court to protest inequality."

After invoking comparisons to Stalin and the Khmer Rouge, Mallick concludes with: "Fear these people. Don't get sick. Don't grow old. Don't have children. Make yourself invulnerable."

Mallick hasn't made me change my opinion about Harper. But it does confirm the Toronto Star's commitment to employment equity. Evidently, exhibiting signs of paranoid schizophrenia does not disqualify someone from getting a job as a columnist there.