A Little Help From My friends

Political Spin; at its best is an annoying coat of white wash that the original sinful colour eventually bleeds through. At its worse is a never ending smoke screen blown up every available orifice of the electorate, a never ending barrage of sound bytes, stylized imagery and sweater vested promo shots that make it impossible to break from cover to actually see the scenery.

A couple of days ago we were victim of some either incredibly well thought out political spin or some not so planned, not so good political spin. Our Prime Minister took some time off from arguing with the opposition, visiting with Obama, and just generally trying to prevent a winter election to sing a little ditty with Yo Yo Ma for charity. A wonderfully sweatervested collective 'aww' moment for a man portrayed as somewhat cold and altogether...well..sweatervested.

And its not so much Harper's musical break that has me questioning his motives but rather his choice in tunes. The Beatles? Really? With A Little Help From My Friends? Seriously?

Seriously.

This from the man who said he was fighting a war against 1960's style drug culture. According to our PM "We are up against ... a culture that since the 1960s has at the minimum not discouraged drug use and often romanticized it, or made it cool." So now he's singing a Beatles song? (albeit one of the lesser 'druggie' songs in their repertoire).

All drug references aside, who are your Friends Mr Harper?
Students? Definitely not.
Small Business owners? Definitely not.
Pubic employees?
Farmers?

You live a pretty lonely life at the top their Stephen. Must be a hard life to live knowing that your only true friends are American Big Business Tycoons and Evangelical Pastors.

Well this blogger has only one thing to say about this whole political grandstand...

wouldn't 'You have a friend in Me' been a better choice? Its a Woodie Guthrie song, so plenty of political connotation there (dustbowl era music is scarily realistic in today's economic climate). And it would have gone hand in hand with the Mr. Rodgers sweatervest you seem so fond of wearing.