Martha is coming to the pumpkin festival in Windsor, N.S., this weekend after all.
quote:
The flurry of government activity on Ms. Stewart's behalf enraged the New Democrats, who cast it as another example of what ails the immigration system."When a relative from abroad tries to visit family in Canada, there are unbelievable delays and frustration," MP Libby Davies said in Question Period. "Yet when Martha Stewart gets out of jail and decides to race pumpkins in Canada, she gets her visa in record time."
Mr. Volpe countered by asking whether the NDP could "have something against" the Children's Wish Foundation, for which the pumpkin regatta is raising funds. Later, in the Commons foyer, he insisted that Ms. Stewart had received no special treatment. "It's taken about five days; normally it takes about five hours."
From today's Grope and Flail
First: who is telling the truth about these permits? Are there grounds for contrasting the treatment of American felons with the treatment of immigrant families? Or the treatment of celebrity and non-celebrity felons?
Second and third, I would say, come the issues of celebrity but also of the curious weightlessness of female celebrity, or even of female criminality, come to that.
Do Liberal cabinet ministers find it easier to cheer up and say cute things for the cameras (one of them a couple of days ago hinted that the visa would be coming, and added that that would be "a Good Thing" and grinned) when the felon involved is a woman, especially a woman who is pretty and who, however fearsomely accomplished a businessperson she is, is popularly associated with "domestic" accomplishments?
In other words, is Martha considered no threat because she is a woman? Or is it fair and reasonable to consider her no threat?
And lots of other questions besides, I'm sure. I am of many minds on this issue.