It's a pattern repeated a depressingly large number of times. An individual with a public profile draws enormous attention to him or herself by making hitherto unspoken statements that resonate enormously with the public.

But then that individual turns all the resulting attention onto themselves instead of directing it to the issue that scored so big with that public, allowing the statement to drift back into obscurity, even while the individual who made it rises in public stature.

Carolyn Parrish is the Toronto MP responsible for nailing those countries that chose to join the US in developing a missile defence scheme as the “Coalition of the Idiots.” Parrish first rose to national prominence in the spring of 2003 when she was apparently accidentally picked up on a boom microphone saying, “Damn Americans, I hate the bastards.”

Parrish said on November 19, a day after being fired from the Liberal Party caucus by Prime Minister Paul Martin, that none of her public and controversial comments were picked up accidentally. She indicated that even the initial comment about the Bush cabinet and their rush to war was not picked up by reporters without her knowledge, implying she had planned it that way.

Parrish more recently brought more controversy to herself by accounting for the results of the US election in November by referring to “extreme psychological damage” Americans suffered on September 11, 2001. She added that Americans appeared to be out of touch with the rest of the world, judging by how they voted.

The “bastards” comment zoomed around the world and appeared not only on CBS television and innumerable newspapers in America and Europe, but was also, apparently, found quoted in Iraqi newspapers controlled by loyalists to Saddam Hussein. Her “idiots” comment did not travel so far, but it certainly drew significant attention across Canada at a time when the new Prime Minister, Paul Martin, indicated Canada would join the US in developing the missile shield.

Her characterization of American voters as victims of trauma received even less attention, but Parrish was still resonating well with a large part of the Canadian public who had grown unaccustomed to hearing any politician utter any personal or national interest-damaging statement, however true.

It was clear to Parrish in later November that her time in the Liberal Party caucus was coming to a close, whether through firing by the Prime Minister or by her own resignation. She had by then boxed herself in as the anti-American MP, by her own admission.

It should also have been clear to Parrish that when the other shoe fell and her removal from the governing party was announced, she would get one last time in the spotlight before drifting back into the obscurity from which she sprang only 18 months ago.

Rather than use this final opportunity to draw Canada and the world back to the point she initially had attempted to make way back then, Parrish chose to squander her last stage appearance on a vain attempt to salvage her own waning profile.

That's too bad, because Canada and the world needs to be reminded that those damn Americans just won re-election, and their leader, the bastard George Bush, considers himself unleashed to spend all his political capital on realizing the severely twisted neo-conservative dream of converting the Middle East into an archipelago of American vassal states. By contrast, Canadians do not need to know how quirky and bubbly Carolyn Parrish can be—only Parrish needs that.

Canadians need further reminder that Paul Martin's choice to join Canada to the American missile defence shield is a short-sighted and highly destructive policy that destroys Canadian sovereignty while achieving only a minimum of industrial contracts for Canadian companies. They do not need reminding that Parrish is a humorous person willing to help make jokes on popular CBC television comedy shows.

While our own neo-conservative collaborators plot the extinction of Canada from the Conservative opposition side of the house, it would have been timely of Parrish to reiterate on her way out the door that the November election in the US returned such globally disastrous results because too many voters were still caught up in unthinking reactions to the fear spread by the US administration (as much as by terrorists). We have elections in Canada too, and Parrish would have done well to note who can end up being elected here if fear is allowed to be spread through this country as well. Instead, Parrish left us with an image of her driving a pin through the head of a George Bush doll (“where it would have least effect”), a scene from the show This Hour has 22 Minutes that she complained did not include her kissing the doll on the head.

Parrish could well have predicted what sort of trajectory her political career would take beginning with her initial, widely-broadcast, comment regarding the “bastards” in the White House. She knows who she is: she speaks out, she enjoys a public profile, and she learned what effect comments like hers can have when picked up by the media. She could easily have projected ahead and planned what she would have to say upon being tossed out of the governing party, an event that was an absolute certainty, one she had complete control over when it would happen, and an event it was in her power to cause to be picked up around the world.

Instead, Parrish appeared surprised and unprepared. In what will certainly be her last time on the stage, she drew attention to her own personal battles with the Prime Minister and the unknown staff in his office, and she complained about riding redistricting and stocked candidate nomination meetings, all of which has to do mostly with her, and all of which happened prior to the past federal election.

Here we thought we had someone within the ranks of the governing Liberal Party, someone who earned re-election three times in the biggest, most high-profile city in the country, someone who knew how to command global attention, and someone who, most of all, seemed to see the world the way we saw it, only to learn, with heart-crushing depression, that she reached her zenith at the very start and was already sliding downhill by the time we heard of her.

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