Today in the house, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre said,
“On that side of the House, they have the man who fathered the carbon tax, put it up for adoption to his predecessor and now wants a paternity test to prove the tar baby was never his in the first place”
This caused a stir on the opposition benches and caused Liberal House leader Ralph Goodale to ask Poilievre to withdraw and deemed the term “racist”.
Here are some recent uses of the term by journalists including Chantal Hebert.
“The nasty legal squabble over who owns the cash-strapped Phoenix Coyotes and whether they can relocate to Hamilton is hardly the first such tar baby the NHL has dealt with, and it won’t be the last.” (John Mackinnon, Edmonton Journal, May 18, 2009).
“It’s a Tory/Liberal tar baby and I’ve lost faith that they can do anything but keep changing the minister and pretend everything’s under control.” (Ralph Surette, Halifax Chronicle Herald, February 14, 2009).
“At this stage, the McTeague bill looks more like a Liberal tar baby than a party brainchild.” (Chantal Hebert, The Toronto Star, March 12, 2008).
“Along the way, Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois has got herself in trouble with the usual suspects as she fumbles with the language tar baby and prepares for one of those gawdawful national council meetings the PQ caribous use to exasperate and humiliate the unfortunate chief of the moment.” (Norman Webster, Montreal Gazette, February 17, 2008).
“Marois’s effort to shake off the referendum tar baby is good news…” (Editorial, Cynical PQ bid to rebrand party, The Toronto Star, Friday, March 7, 2008).
“Same-sex marriage has generally been treated like a political tar baby over the past few years, with most parties reluctant to whip up highly sensitive arguments touching on religion and deeply rooted social values.” (Susan Delacourt, Martin could exploit gay-marriage gift, The Hamilton Spectator, Friday, December 10, 2004).
“Nobody is saying you toss over your U.S. relations. Of course you don’t. But it doesn’t mean to say you have to become slavishly connected like some kind of tar baby with them.” (Lloyd Axworthy, Canada’s new leader to improve U.S. ties, Detroit Free Press, Thursday, December 11, 2003).
h/t: David Akin
Stephen Taylor is a scientist, political analyst and a blogger. Taylor writes here regularly and is the founder of bloggingtories.ca. Taylor has contributed to Macleans, CTV, talk radio and has been a featured speaker on new media at numerous events including the Western Standard Cruise and the Forum for Public Policy. In December 2008, Taylor organized Rally for Canada, a series of rallies held coast-to-coast to protest the proposed coalition government.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Ralph Goodale should rethink this strategy. Not his finest hour. I cannot believe he is unaware of the context.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Ralph is really in a state of extreme desperation, there are signs it's affecting his thought process.
File this under grasping at straws for something to be offended at. Truly pathetic.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Oh, good G*d.
Too many thin-skinned idiots on the Opposition benches, not to mention illiterate numbskulls.
We're going to see more of these asinine accusations as literate commentators are tarred and feathered (am I allowed to say THAT?) by uneducated, uncouth, illiterate ignoramuses.
I occasionally get these kinds of reactions in a classroom. Case in point: When students aren't listening, I've said, “You're the loser for not listening as you might have this on a test next week.”
The first time I said this, I got a chorus of “You just called us losers,” said with venomous rage.
I had to explain to the class of grade 7/8 students that the expression “you're the loser for…” not being here, not being there, not listening, etc. doesn't mean “you're a loser.”
They didn't know and were not able to make the distinction.
Have we got a train wreck hurtling down the track …
May 29th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Re the train wreck hurtling down the track:
It would seem that Ralphie Goodale's in the engineer's seat and has actually just jumped the track.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
To be honest I've never heard that expression before and have no clue to it's meaning.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
I can't apologize for your poor reading comprehension.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
paulsstuff, here's an explanation of “tar baby” that fits this bill:
Tar-Baby was a doll made of tar and turpentine, used to entrap Br'er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories. The more that Br'er Rabbit fought the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he became. In contemporary usage, “tar baby” refers to any “sticky situation” that is only aggravated by additional contact. …
It's a literary allusion, for crying out loud, completely free of racist overtones or undertones, unless you want to fabricate a racial subtext for it.
All Ralph Goodale has proven with this gaffe of his — there's no gaffe on Pierre Poilievre's part — is how illiterate and uncouth he is, and what a fast trigger finger he has when it comes to shooting down MPs on the CPC bench.
Using corks on the end of strings, however, isn't going to get him many notches on his gunslinger's belt.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
“Surface Stations project, he is a legitimate scientist, a respected climatologist who is probably uninterested in seeing his reputation suffer by being observed in close proximity to what seems to be fast becoming a Climate Denialist tar-baby.”
Who said that??
Big City Lib
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archi...
Looks like we have returned to the Dion smear contoversy a minute.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
WTF, are you kidding me..
SMH…
May 29th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Stephen, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember any Liberal politician feigning outrage over this:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_zolf/archiv...
May 29th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I felt sorry for Pierre, it was obvious he didn't has a clue what Goodale was going on about. It's been years since those racist's types of remarks have been used, mostly down in the Southern States, way before Pierre's birth. It's stupid that Goodale even brought this up, it reminds me of soldiers, with guns, in our cities.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
So it's a racially charged term, yet it's acceptable to have it on your blog? I refer to comment #6
http://myblahg.com/?p=1867 By the way, use your blos search feature for the term Tar Baby.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Yeah there's a problem for GrrrrrrRalphie here. He's such a brown noser to all his leader's, it's almost a brain free exercise for him. He's the one with the experience but he's acting like a student in Professor Iggy's class.
Pierre said nothing wrong, tar baby is a term for a sticky situation, it has nothing to do with race. Only the desperate Liberals could conjure up such a connotation.
Has anyone any recollection of any political party so desperate for power as the LPC in out entire history?
May 29th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
This has zero to do with race, it's a fairy tale for goodness sake. How the likes of goodale could even conjure up such nonsense is telling more about his mindset than anything else.
I hope the PC's go after the silly man on this. It's Goodale and company who have made the connection to racism that's NOT there. They have some explaining to do and fast.
You know, this has to be the most dumbfounding reaction to a statement ever.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I agree, I would suggest Goodale is in a sticky situation, maybe more than Br er Rabbit.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
What can you say..it's Ralphie. Don't be too hard to the pompous windbag, he's doing his best to do his worst. It's not his fault that he's dumber than a sack of hammers.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Iffy's new love affair with the Tar sands,
and the love child was a Tar baby.
'Canada caught on its own tar baby. Tar sand investments now a dead duck?'
http://oilsandstruth.org/canada-caught-its-own-...
May 29th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
…..This could make Canada a global tar baby.
Tar sands oil is the worst type of oil for the
atmosphere….
Sierra Club of Canada
October 4, 2006
May 29th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
'Rapidly but surely, Stockwell Day is becoming the tar baby of Canadian politics and is dragging a reluctant Preston Manning and the new Alliance Party into the tar pits with him.'
But Paul, that's a Liberal journalist calling a Conservative a Tar Baby,
that's didferent…right!!! lol
I'm sure Marlene Jennings was outraged then too.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
oops forgot the link
http://www.oilsandsconsultations.gov.ab.ca/subm...
May 29th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
You are assuming that Goodale is important….
May 29th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Nobody is forcing the world to buy our oil.
May 29th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
This whole kerfuffle is the unfortunate result of the hijacking of certain words and phrases by interest groups who bastardize their original meaning to suit their own agendas. 'Tar baby' and 'gay' are prime examples. Anyone who dares to use the hijacked word or phrase to reflect anything other than the new meaning is criticized as racist or homophobic. Political correctness run amok.
May 30th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Damn, you can't be serious. Tar baby is a racist term? You're way down the Br'er Rabbit hole on this one.
Would Goodale and Jennings ban the word “tar” altogether , it can have black connotations, it is black?
May 30th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
This proves yet again that the Liberals and their MSM enablers are idiots.
May 30th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Stephen, you are getting as petty as the politicians with your stuff. Is that a hint you will run for the party leadership once you learn all the dirty stuff and cheap tricks? LOL
May 30th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
I don' think he is at all. John McCain apologized for use of the same words during the last election. Might be something to that don't you think?
May 30th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
And here are a few other people who have used the term:
- John Kerry (discussing John McCain during last year's election)
- David Reynolds (May 15 in the Augusta Free Press, a Progressive News service)
- American Senator Bob Corker (this year in discussing the AIG bailout)
- Ron Faucheux (US Democratic Party strategist in discussing the impeachment of Bill Clinton)
- Al Gore (in 1987 discussing military build up in the Persian Gulf)
- Arianna Huffington (Salon.com May 28, 2003 describing the Iraq War)
- the Center for Media and Democracy (April 3: “Alberta Lobbies for its Tar Baby”)
May 30th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Look down at my list and you might see that this comes from all sides of the political spectrum. And here are a few more examples:
“By then, three out of every four barrels of oil produced in Canada will come from the tar sands. This could make Canada a global tar baby.” – Stephen Hazell, Sierra Club of Canada
“I am not going to argue with you about the start of the war in Afghanistan. It is a tar baby that I would not have gotten us stuck onto.” – Bill Hulet, Green Party candidate (July 19, 2008 blog comments on the Green Party website)
” If Campbell is returned we will be, like Bre’r Rabbit, stuck to the American Tar Baby. There is but one other choice, vote NDP.” – Rafe Mair, Canadian broadcaster
“Rapidly but surely, Stockwell Day is becoming the tar baby of Canadian politics and is dragging a reluctant Preston Manning and the new Alliance Party into the tar pits with him.” – Larry Zolf, CBC Politics
” What few people remember is that Jean Chretien handed him that particular tar baby, an order Mr. Manley could not countermand, and that as he spoke to reporters about it during the closing days of 1999, he was invariably in a vile mood.” – Paul Wells,
May 30th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
John McCain is a Great war hero. He was intimated and apologized for something that didn't need it.
May 30th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Nova dog…A great war hero gets intimidated? Give your head shake..he is simply a decent man who realized he made a mistake.
May 30th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Does that make it right?
May 30th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Bat B….illiterate ignoramuses would indicate a group of tories to me. so what are you saying?
May 30th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Right? Wrong? The overwhelming majority of things in life simply are what they are.
It's human nature that if somebody wants something to be wrong, they will ALWAYS find a way to see it as wrong.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:55 am
surecure…and there froe the reaon for negative politicial advertising that suck some Canadians down a rat hole of Tory deceipt.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:11 am
It's not a racially-charged term. Stop trying to cause trouble where no trouble exists. I've heard black people use that term…and worse terms, to be honest. There is no way that these people meant it in a racist manner. People like yourself use the terms so frivolously that it has lost its meaning. I even know one black woman who was accused by another black woman of discriminating against her in a racist manner. See what I mean? It has become an all-purpose term which no longer means anything. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:48 am
I guess GOODALE was angry at Polievere for insulting the 'OIL SANDS by calling it 'TAR BABY' when there is no TAR in the 'Oil Sands'
May 31st, 2009 at 6:57 am
Yeah, that was an offense to women apparently, and when Peter alluded dogs were more loyal, in reference to his main squeeze betraying him was another pathetic display of fake outrage.
It will be interesting to see if this tar baby nonsense has a longer life than Ruby's nannygate fiasco.
May 31st, 2009 at 7:05 am
Thank you for proving my point.
June 1st, 2009 at 5:04 am
Have you ever noticed that the people who most loudly proclaim racism are white anglo-saxons? I think they're just trying to appear “inclusive” and, in doing so, create a problem where no problem exists. It's usually good old white charlatans who cry racism or human rights. The real victims of racism or discrimination usually have no voice and the outrageous white folks who talk about anti-racism and human rights are the same type who would not even shake hands with the real victims. Hypocrites and liars. Who do they think they're fooling? Certainly not the real victims.
June 1st, 2009 at 5:06 am
You are the very first LIberal supporter I've ever heard to say one nice thing about McCain. The rest of your gang has called him every name under the sun.
June 1st, 2009 at 5:08 am
I remember some years ago when Ralph Klein was accused of being racist against Aboriginal people…and then somebody pointed out the heritage of his wife. The ones who scream racism usually either don't know what they're talking about or they are overcompensating for their own prejudices. I thought it was very ironic that Mrs. Klein just happens to be Aboriginal. Talk about egg on the accusers' faces. I loved every second of that one.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:10 am
“the man who fathered the carbon tax, put it up for adoption to his predecessor and now wants a paternity test to prove the tar baby was never his in the first place”
adoption of a tar baby? paternity test of a tar baby?
sounds like he's describing a baby that is dark skinned.
this is why it's racist… it's not TERRIBLE, but it's not appropriate either.
if the member doesn't apologize, fine, it's not a biggie.
it does, however, demonstrate his character and lack of class.
Why is it so hard to simply say “I apologize for comments that people may construe as racist”?
Oh, because a member of a different party is asking, and he doesn't want to look like he's taking orders.
GROW UP!
June 8th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Call yourself waaaambulance. As you can see, others have used the term freely without people like you screaming for a retraction.
You're invoking the racism here, not the Tories. Take your own advice, Grow up!
June 8th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Call yourself waaaambulance. As you can see, others have used the term freely without people like you screaming for a retraction.
You're invoking the racism here, not the Tories. Take your own advice, Grow up!