Muguette the Moocher

Muguette Paille is a hero in Quebec — at least according to the consensus media.

During the French-language election debate last week, the unemployed 53-year-old asked the party leaders what they would do to help her find a job. After all, her Employment Insurance is about to run out. Somebody’s got to help her find a job, and she thinks it ought to be the government.

The question made Paille a hero to the chattering classes; she was swamped with interview requests from reporters. Which is handy, given that Paille’s question to the party leaders was chosen by reporters in the first place, pre-taped and edited, and played during the debate. They created the “news” of her question, and then reported it afterwards.

Paille gave the media exactly what they wanted. Asked by reporters about Stephen Harper’s response, she said, “I didn’t like him at all.” But what about the opposition leaders? “I liked Mr. Layton and Mr. Ignatieff, who answered well,” she said.

Give this woman an honorary membership to the Parliamentary Press Gallery!

Some pundits actually compared Paille with Joe Wurzelbacher, nicknamed “Joe the Plumber” in the last U.S. presidential election. Back in 2008, Barack Obama was campaigning in Wurzelbacher’s neighbourhood in Ohio, and stopped to talk with him in his front yard.

Instead of swooning in Obama’s presence, Wurzelbacher said he wanted to buy a small plumbing company, and asked if Obama was going to raise his taxes because he’d be “rich” by Obama’s definition. Obama’s stammered answer became a PR disaster. “It’s not that I want to punish your success,” Obama told him, TV cameras running. “I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance at success, too.”

Translation: Yes, your taxes are going up, and you’re a greedy capitalist if you make a fuss about it.

The mainstream media – which was then at the absolute depths of their crush on Obama — immediately went to war against Wurzelbacher for his high crime of interfering with Obama’s photo op.

They revealed shocking details about him, including that Joe was actually his middle name, not his first name. A government official in Ohio, who happened to be a Democrat, outdid that, by illegally searching government computers for embarrassing information about Wurzelbacher, incuding police computers and family services databases.

Wurzelbacher’s question was a real political moment. He wasn’t scripted. He wasn’t chosen by the press. He just happened to be playing with his son when Obama came by. And he asked a question the media didn’t want to have asked.

Wurzelbacher is severely normal in every way — a middle class guy trying to make a better life for himself. He was the American dream in action.

Canada’s journalists — monolithically liberal — want to propose Paille as our answer to the American dream. Instead of Paille making a job for herself, let alone creating a company to hire others too, she wants politicians to help her find a job. Not a drop of entrepreneurialism, but a double helping of entitlement.

Is that really the Canadian way? Judging from the reactions to her by the party leaders, it certainly is. Layton and Ignatieff salivated over her, outbidding each other in terms of putting government to work for Paille. Stephen Harper didn’t quite join the frenzy, but neither did he disagree with the central premise that it is the role of the government to help Paille find her job.

If Harper had tried to dissent — if he had told her that there are already too many people riding in the wagon, and not enough people pulling the wagon — it would have been counter to the entire spirit of the French-language debate, which has become an auction in which the party leaders demonstrate how much money and special concessions they were willing to spend to placate Quebec voters.

Canada’s Joe the Plumber? Hardly. Try Muguette the Mooch.