Sunday, May 29, 2011

"When the Gods Changed; the Death of Liberal Canada"

Jane Taber wrote an amusing piece for the Globe and Mail on Friday about an upcoming book by author Peter C. Newman titled "When the Gods Changed; the Death of Liberal Canada". When Ignatieff returned to Canada to become Prime Minister, Newman set out to write a book about Iggy which was to be named "Ignatieff: The Man In Full" about a brilliant intellectual, a knight in shining armour who would defeat Stephen Harper and become the next Prime Minister. Then sometime in the last year he suddenly decided to change course and write about the death of the Liberal Party.

What was not immediately clear in Taber's piece is whether Peter Newman will be releasing one book or two. One is supposed to be a biography, the other more of a novel, so there is very likely going to be two books. Amazon says that Iggy a man in full is coming out this fall, a book which was originally supposed to about his rise to leader of the country. I'm sure Peter had to rewrite a lot of material after May 2nd, and I doubt his working title for the second book was "the death of Liberal Canada" prior to election day. We also don't know exactly what happened to change Peter's opinion of Iggy from hero to zero. As Jane wrote:

"Several months ago, however, Mr. Newman, 82, realized he had to change course – and quickly. Mr. Ignatieff was not the “knight in shining amour and world intellectual” who he and his publishers expected to defeat Stephen Harper and become prime minister.


And with that, the ever-so-nimble Mr. Newman began writing When the Gods Changed; the Death of Liberal Canada."

4 comments:

  1. Newman claims that Ignatieff's demeanour changed in February concluding then that he was going to take down the government.
    But that can't explain how Newman nimbly switched to writing an obituary.
    At that point the coalition was still an option and a majority was not certain.

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  2. So how much in taxpayer subsidies will we be putting into the four copies of these books that will be sold?

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  3. off topic
    Speaker of the House is extremely important
    we all need to phone our Conservative MP's and let them know that we appreciate their thanks for all our hard work that each of us put into getting a strong stable majority Conservative Canadian Government elected
    please pay us back for our hard work by making sure the Speaker of the house they elect is CONSERVATIVE
    fh

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  4. Peter Newman,long revered, by his colleagues as the "dean" of Canadian political writers,has proven to be just another short sighted schmuck who made a massive miscalculation regarding the 2011 federal election.

    Like "wtf" said,"how much..........."

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