Let sleeping overdogs lie: Nothing to see here folks, just move along, please!

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“There’s nothing to see here folks, just move along…”

It’s nice to know the Calgary Herald, fearless champion of the overdog, is still on the job, just like it used to be in the days of Ernest Manning and Ralph Klein. Earlier this week the Herald advised Alberta’s NDP government just to ignore those snoopy investigative journalists at the CBC poking sticks at Alison Redford and “let sleeping Tory governments lie.”

You know, like sleeping overdogs, which the Herald presumably hopes the Tories soon will be again.

Well, that’s probably sound advice to a competitor from the perspective of a business that doesn’t really employ very many journalists any more. Now, there appear to have been lots of Tory lies in the dreary Tobaccogate affair to which the Herald refers, although that’s presumably not what the sensibly anonymous editorialist had in mind here.

Rather, what I think he or she was saying was: Don’t go turning over any rocks just because there might be something under them! If you think I’m making this up, you can just go and read the editorial for yourself. If you start to hyperventilate, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Premier Rachel Notley and her Dippers, the moribund rag continues, should “just ensure such shenanigans don’t happen on their own watch.” Erm… sure.

I think what this really means is that the Herald’s editorialists pine for the day when there was a direct line from the Tory premier’s office to the publisher’s suite in the lovely brick building with the state-of-the-art pneumatic tube system that overlooked the Deerfoot Trail and downtown Cowtown. In those days, it was easier to know what to write, because the premier told the publisher on the weekend when they were fishing together and the publisher told you.

Alas, the building’s been sold off and all that’s left of the old phone is a faint ringing sound in the walls that disturbs the insurance adjustors or actuaries or whoever those guys are that now occupy the place. Someone in the premier’s office is probably just trying to figure out who’s at the other end of this old phone.

Things fall apart! … Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world! Or, communism, anyway, judging from the hyperbolic tone of the current political discourse out here in Wild Rose-hip Tea Country, which is wracked just at the moment by the nightmarish prospect of a surfeit of health and safety down on the farm. Quelle horreur!

Speaking of which, is George Canyon rural Alberta’s answer to Neil Young? I ask this question seriously. And, if so, why isn’t one of Postmedia’s top political commentators commentating about this?

Personally, I’m OK with entertainers bloviating on any issue of the day, as long as they pay their taxes in the jurisdiction where they lay their scruffy heads. But I do wonder what the Sun-Journal and the Sun-Herald would have to say about Mr. Young if the old rocker took Mr. Canyon to task for, you know … encouraging methane!

So AlbertaPolitics.ca is taking a break while I ponder these vital questions of the day. There will be no posts. And don’t get mad if it takes a long time to publish your thoughtful comments – it’s probably just the wifi, not a Media Party conspiracy. The Media Party didn’t even invite me to their … umm … Holiday Gala last night. (Cue the War on Christmas music.) The beasts.

Hasta luego. AlbertaPolitics.ca will be back shortly. In the mean time, read Daveberta.ca. He’ll keep you straightened up and flying right … which, of course, nowadays around here really means left.