Photo: CBC
Let’s face it. If you’re doing an interview on the CBC to talk about your political career, it’s probably because it’s already over. Whether that’s fair or not is debatable. I thought that Helena Guergis did quite a good job at trying to explain her side of things, though at times she sounded a little too meek and, dare I use the adjective, “mousy”.
Both sides came to the table with different objectives in the interview, and each tried to hold their own on that front. Ms.Guergis wanted to come across as the sympathetic and maligned victim of a political decision made by the Prime Minister. Peter Mansbridge was looking to provoke either an admission of wrong-doing, or else elicit an emotional response from her.
Late in the interview, it appears he succeeds, as Ms.Guergis turns from the camera and seems to break down. But when she turns to the camera again her eyes are dry. What to believe? I don’t wish to be cynical, or to doubt her sincerity, but people react most strongly to genuine emotion. If she was holding back, perhaps that was a mistake.
There’s definitely something sympathetic about Helena Guergis. Her voice is quiet, almost plaintive, while her body posture is hunched and submissive. She didn’t look defiant — she looked defeated. Was that the message she wanted to get across? That she had been defeated by vile gossip and innuendo and tweets about “busty hookers”?
In my mind, I am inclined to think that she has done nothing unethical with respect to her position as a sitting Member of Parliament, and genuinely feels betrayed by the Conservative Party, who felt they had no choice but to jettison her from the caucus. She alludes to personal problems in her life, and I would have been interested to know whether those problems precipitated the airport incident in Prince Edward Island.
At times, her comments seemed passively petulant:
“I feel as though they’ve thrown the rule books out the window, that they’re not respecting due process at all. I find it very undemocratic.
“I’m hurt by the Prime Minister. I am hurt because I did consider him to be a friend as well, so I find that very hard to deal with.”
What this entire affair comes down to seems to be Ms.Guergis’s inability to cope with the political realities of being embroiled in a scandal which, while she is not directly responsible for, she is very much in the middle of.
“I’m not ready to give up my political career.
“If people in your family make mistakes you don’t turn your back on them,” Guergis said, pausing to fight back tears. “You stick with them and you work through it and I am committed to my marriage.”
I don’t blame her for sticking with her husband. Many people would stick with their significant other, whether they were accused of influence-peddling, or even much worse crimes. I admire the fact that she feels it is her duty to stick by Rahim Jaffer, despite the serious allegations that face him.
But to expect her career to escape unscathed from this is naive. The fact is that she had a choice to make between her husband and her career, and she tried to choose both. But Helena Guergis is a veteran of politics, and no longer some wide-eyed neophyte. Though we might feel sympathy for her predicament, I can’t imagine she didn’t calculate that this is the only way all of this could possibly have gone down.
She allowed Rahim to use her email and office ………that is enough to dismiss her.
Yes on all counts the editing of the interview was for impact.
Did you notice Peter did not ask if she blamed the media for participating in the witch hunt? How much money did the CBC spend on their part, flying down getting Snowdy? How many hours on CBC on her, husband “fate”?
Peter also failed to ask if she felt betrayed by those hiding behind parliamentary privilege.
Yes rule of law, due process was thrown out the window and information from a 3rd party may have not been given to her.
We can look at many examples of life being unfair, mistakes, betrayal of “friends” ending your career or casting negative rumours.
How effective would this have been without the protection from lawsuits and abuse of parliamentary privilege?
Lesson, don’t trust anyone to defend your own interests. She waited too long to clear or deflect the criticism.(Cone of silence for weeks, hope it would go away)
A lesson is to challenge them personally, call out the media personalities, MP’s who hid behind parliamentary privilege in making allegations.
I thought she was rather vague in calling out those who smeared her without any evidence. Particularly the Toronto Star article that pretty much touched off the firestorm.
The whole thing is terrible, from start to finish and the media indeed should be hanging their head. The PM and the party hung in there with her the entire time they were initiating their now what has become a predictable and disgusting witch hunt.
We asked the media on numerous occasions to go and look at the Charlottetown tapes but no one would.
This IS NOT about vindicating Helena but IS about trying to paint the PM, one more time as a bully.
Helena was their prey and she took the bait, being the wounded bird that she is now. It’s such a shame but she needs to stay dignified. If she did nothing wrong, it will come out. Let’s hope her husband truly didn’t cause her this grief. That is what is at play here and they are serious allegations.
I was pretty interested to learn that the Charlottetown tapes were mild. And finally learning the context of the “hellhole” remark made perfect sense. We all think airports are hellholes, and wouldn’t want to be trapped in one. In that context it could have been any hellhole.
My take on the interview is similar to yours, Adrian.
At the beginning I was sympathetic to her story but as the interview went on I resented her continual criticism of the PM and his decision to distance the party from her.
As you say, she was naive to think otherwise. And while moist eyes might be a human response, she really went overboard with the weeping. If that was genuine she should have asked it to be edited out because she looks weak.
The only thing that bothers me about this is the fact that there seemed to be a witch hunt by Wayne Easter and the rest of the opposition and the media as others have noted.
Also if she truly has no idea what the specific allegations are, then that doesn’t seem right.
Nobody wins here.
How could anyone who has been as maligned as Helena has by the CBC – then agree to appear with that very station and NOT come out swinging at them? I would have been spitting mad and taken my shots at the media. She didn’t
Something is off here?
It was surprising to me to see how meek and quiet she was. As I said, her voice was kind of “mousy”. At times she sounded like an ex-convict trying to describe what a difficult go of it she had had in prison.
Maybe your perspective?
Maybe not everyone shares your media persecution complex.
Who uses who?
Does the media use the opposition parties to sensationalize politics in Canada for monetary gain or does the opposition use the media for political gain?
I’d say it’s six of one and a half dozen of the other.
No matter, everyone seems to be talking now about the inordinate time spent on scandals with the Liberals blaming Stephen Harper for being vicious and mean-spirited as he supposedly flings mud at the opposition parties and the media nods in agreement as if they’re not complicit at all.
Things would get better if only Stephen played nice.
Somebody from the Conservative Party has to come out swinging at the media. Let them start with the hypocrisy of the CBC going to such great lengths to destroy the career of a cabinet minister only to then turn around and use her emotional turmoil to sell more advertising.
Alberta Girl
I think you are dead on. She never even mentioned Kevin Donovan who supposedly unearthed the story of the busty hookers. Hopefully her lawsuit will commence shortly.
I would love to have a body language expert do a take on this interview. If she was fighting back she did a very poor job, not once did she put any blame on the media or opposition MPs for going on a witch hunt. Too bad for her that we remember what they did. Who can forget Goodale ranting in QP, fire this minister.
And not once did Peter ask her if she felt the media had led the attack. Oh no, it was all the PMs fault.
After seeing the tapes why didn’t Peter ask Who manufactured the story given to Easter, did he do it himself. Will he have to produce the identity of said accuser.
I have a couple of thoughts.
1) Would we feel as sympathetic to her if she were a man? How likely would it be that anyone would write this about a man? “Her voice is quiet, almost plaintive, while her body posture is hunched and submissive. She didn’t look defiant — she looked defeated.” Adrian, are you feeling sorry for her because she lacks a Y chromosome? I think you might be.
Sure, it’s a double standard, but it’s just one of those double standards that refuses to go away. We’ve all got it to some extent. Men, women, feminists and egalitarians all treat men and women differently.
But should we give her a do-over “because she’s a girl”? I think not. Would we let NDP MP Charlie Angus have a do-over in an identical situation? Not a chance. Sympathy is fine, but it can cloud our judgement if we’re not careful.
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2) Did she let her husband use her phone? Did he use her e-mail account? Either of those constitutes an ethical breach in my opinion. There doesn’t have to be stacks of non-sequential bills in brown envelopes for there to be a breach of ethics. And in any case, in the political world, your spouse’s behaviour reflects on you. Does anyone think that Mr. Harper wouldn’t be destroyed politically if his wife was arrested for drunk driving and had cocaine? I didn’t think so.
3) It’s admirable that she’s choosing to stick by her husband. It speaks well of her as a person. As for her political career, I think her behaviour and her husband’s behaviour have already destroyed it. That’s unfortunate, but being a politician is not the only means of public service.
I think men can strike sympathetic figures based on the circumstances. I remember that when Ben Johnson was accused to using steroids in the Olympics, none of us wanted to believe it. He went on camera pleading his innocence and I bought it.
There have been other men who went on camera and pleaded for understanding, but of course women are better at eliciting a more sympathetic audience. That’s the benefit of using the inherent physiological differences to exploit public empathy.
In that regard I think Helena kind of overdid it. I think a stronger and more angry and defiant tone would have been more appropriate for somebody wholly innocent of all charges.
I was willing to cut her some slack, but this final bit of bad judgement on her part, has doomed her, in my eyes.
It’s bad enough that she agreed to be interviewed by her chief tormentor, the CBC. But that she agreed to a TWO HOUR interview, which anyone with half a brain KNOWS the CBC will edit down to the most damaging (for PM Harper and the CPC) 15 minutes or so.
Good grief, woman, give your head a shake ! You should have insisted on a 15 to 30 minute interview, which HAD to be aired in it’s entirety, unedited.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
I disagree with anyone who claims she should have been out earlier defending herself. Surely at the first scent of trouble she had a lawyer or even a few. They must have advised her to keep her mouth quiet and wait to see all that is to be thrown at her. True, it is complicated. It is not only about her. It is about a very indiscreet husband allegedly, and now one who many feel has been caught in quite a few lies. The Prime Minister did hang in with her while a lot of this was going on. How could he after a government lawyer advised him of allegations from outside sources. He gave these allegations to the RCMP. Although we have not heard from the RCMP about any of this, I am with the Ethic’s Commissioner that it would not be fitting to do anything with this until the RCMP have been heard from. The Prime Minister is head of the government, not only the leader of the Conservatives and this situation is not a friendship show. She should have offered to resign. She did not. She had a third problem. Her Riding Association. That brought her into the news again. Perhaps she should have told them also before they were forced to make decisions, that she had decided, under the circumstances, to not let her name stand when an election comes about. This is the honourable way and it has been like that for decades. All of these actions speak to her inability to discern the good advice she receives from the bad. CBC was no friend. How could she think that this would be a good way to get her side of anything out there. They were like the Lion in waiting for it’s prey. She was the prey as some here have suggested. It shows me the Prime Minister acted on things when he needed to. He had the insight of things to come perhaps because of what he had already seen of her. Someone had to. All this is not over yet…we are only seeing another chapter for the final accounting.
canadiansense says:
Yes on all counts the editing of the interview was for impact.
Did you notice Peter did not ask if she blamed the media for participating in the witch hunt? How much money did the CBC spend on their part, flying down getting Snowdy? How many hours of CBC on her husbands “fate”?
Agreed. I had my back to the TV so I didn’t get to see the feigned tears, but the fake sympathy in Mansbridge’s voice was almost enough to make me gag. Coming from one of the people most responsible for turning this whole thing into a no-holds-barred media smear-fest, this was inexcusable. Time for a strong government response, I think…this can’t go unanswered.
Not with MY tax dollars.
Liberal muckraking as usual, play all sides all the time. I don’t feel sorry for her due to her poor decisions on many fronts. I have been critical of the PMO for ‘clinging’ to her far too long so that they ‘blew up’ in our faces when it didn’t need to.
Ms Guergis is taking “Stand By Your Man” to absurd extremes.
Apart from that, her insistence that she was thrown to the wolves without a reasonable explanation is completely believable. She had become an “inconvenience”, and that’s the way things are done in Ottawa.
Her near breakdown at the end of the segment looked real to me – the reaction of a “not really very strong” person trying hard to be tough and eventually losing it. As a matter of fact, her weakness throughout the interview indicates that turfing her from cabinet was probably a good idea even though it appears to have been done for specious reasons.
I’d bet Iggy and Bob are going to ask Guergis if she wants to cross the floor, and further their claim that Harper is against women in office.
Ms.Guergis,up to this point,led a rather charmed life,and everything fell into place so easily,abetted by her glamorous good looks that made people want to be part of her circle.
When the going gets tough,the character or lack of it,shows up, and Guergis has failed to make the cut.
The MSM here in B.C.absolutely destroyed an NDP leadership candidate a few years back,for a lot less.
Ms.Guergis knew she was living in a fishbowl,and she knew that the Liberals and all their little spies were looking for anything to make the Conservatives look bad,yet she allowed herself the moment of self indulgence at the PEI airport,and that momentary lapse has probably ended her political career,at least as a Conservative.
She probably DOESN’T deserve the treatment she’s had at the hands of the MSM, but if you swim with sharks………………….
It’s admirable she is standing by Jaffer, but she came across as terribly naive in her blind faith.
He had cocaine in his possession and he says he has no idea how it got there? Really?