He's in love

Read this out-take from Ignatieff's bus tour.

Let us put aside, for a moment, the strangeness of Ignatieff using a rural bus tour to announce arts funding (clearly the man went off script). Instead of focusing on the substance, let's look at how the man talks when he's "connecting" to "real people". What does he talk about?

You tell me what he's really talking about. Here are Ignatieff's verbatim quotes from the story:

“It’s personal. People think I spent my life up there in the ivory tower,” Ignatieff told about 100 Liberals gathered on Wednesday in Kingston for lunch with the leader.

“I actually spent 20 years as a freelance writer and journalist. I wrote screenplays. I wrote a couple of films. I lived by my wits. The writing life is a world of six-month contracts, Ignatieff explained, “and that’s the reality of life for many in the arts community in Canada.

“For 20 years I lived six months at a time. No safety net. No pension. No coverage. That’s the life of an artist, he said. I lived the insecurities of it, I lived the thrill of it. The thrill of being your own master. I lived the thrill of reaching an audience with no help from anyone except for what was coming out of my pen. I understand this world. I understand its risks; I understand its perils.”

...“At critical points in my development as a writer, the Canada Council was there for me. It must be there for all Canadians,” Ignatieff said. “At critical points in my career, I made television documentaries for the CBC. I made radio documentaries for the CBC. The spinal column of public culture in this country is a well-funded and sustainable public broadcaster.”

What's that -- 20 I's and me's in four paragraphs?

He wasn't talking about the arts. He was talking about himself.

When he's off-the-cuff, as he obviously was here, it truly shines through. But even in his scripted, planned speeches, the man just can't stop talking about himself, as if no fact or argument or event is valid without somehow first passing through him. I refer to his recent speech at a Beijing University. The speech was appaling for its moral equivalence -- he actually says China and Canada can learn from each other about human rights and justice. But just as strange is his personal obsessions: he starts out by talking about how his great-grandfather had helped enslave China many years ago. That's literally the first thing he talks about. No speechwriter would have put that in -- that's Ignatieff insisting on making every damned thing about himself.

These are not personal tics that can be unlearned easily. This is hard-wired into his personality. Don't think his self-regard has gone unnoticed -- in fact is has been his most consistent message this past year.