Is imitation truly flattering? part 2

For those of you that follow politics, you will have read much of late about the price of unflattering amorous relationships. You might recall a not-so-prophetic May 9th post on Maxime Bernier (see prior post “Maxime Bernier isn’t Pierre Sevigny” May 9-08) about the lack of parallels between he and the Hon. Pierre Sevigny. (At least there were no parallels until Mr. Bernier found himself in the unfortunate position of having to resign his cabinet seat; but that didn’t flow from the romance per se.)

In a display of utter timeliness, the DTM’s Michael Valpy had the same Bernier/Sevigny epiphpany a couple of days ago:

The case of the left-behind documents in the minister’s love nest is a political disaster of seismic dimensions, but as a sex-and-security breach, it falls well behind the Munsinger scandal that rocked Ottawa in the 1960s.

Former foreign minister Maxime Bernier was hanging his hat in the apartment of Julie Couillard, a woman associated with outlaw biker gangs. Pierre Sévigny, on the other hand – the associate defence minister in John Diefenbaker’s government – had a steamy affair with Gerda Munsinger, a suspected Cold War-era spy.

Where the Bernier and Sévigny stories cross paths, incidentally, is that the two women, in addition to having ministers between their sheets, also apparently had microphones in their Montreal bedrooms – in Ms. Munsinger’s case, courtesy of the RCMP; in the case of Ms. Couillard, if she is to be believed, placed there by persons so far unknown.

Canadian historian Denis Smith recalled yesterday being told by Mr. Diefenbaker that he had listened to the Sévigny recordings, which included the sound of his minister’s wooden leg being removed (he had lost a leg in the Second World War) prior to intimate engagement.

The similarities between my post and the Valpy piece don’t touch the original laugh/cry “Is imitation truly flattering?” experience of June 2007, or the February 2008 “DTM copycats at it again“, but it’s still kind of funny.

With 50 million blogs out there, it may well be that there are just not enough new ideas left for the DTM to write about on any given day.

To the credit of Andrew Coyne at Macleans Magazine, he appeared to notice the pairing of the two pieces, as you can subtly deduce when he positioned the two links side by side in the final sentence of his own blog post yesterday.

Oh well. I suppose it could be taken as a compliment. Sort of, anyway.

MRM