I’ve generally found Jane Taber’s new “morning buzz” blog to be an interesting read and I’ve bookmarked it.

However, I do have to take issue with her first point today:

But [Peter MacKay’s] office is taking some solace now in what Canadians outside of the Ottawa bubble are saying. In fact, his staff found this comment on Aaron Wherry’s latest Question Period sketch at Maclean’s, which they showed to the minister:

“I’m sure there are a few other examples of suspected or confirmed Taliban who passed through the hands of Canadian forces before being beaten by their fellow Afghans wearing uniforms. There are also millions of examples of Afghans who were beaten by fellow Afghans without ever coming into contact with a Canadian – but we don’t care about those people, because they’re irrelevant. We only care about the three or four that could possibly prove useful in the eternal quest to embarrass the Canadian government. This is about politics, not morality.”

Now, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Canadians outside the Ottawa bubble are rather blasé about this story – it doesn’t affect their lives personally, so I’m not sure this will be much of a game changer. MacKay comes across looking rather bad, but he certainly wouldn’t be the first Harper Cabinet Minister to be shuffled out of his portfolio for gross incompetence.

I would, however, like to caution Mr. McKay’s staff and Jane Taber that those outside the Ottawa bubble do not tend to read Macleans.ca recaps of Question Period. They probably don’t post on them, and they certainly aren’t people who have left 2,258 comments on the site.

I guess this is a step up from the annoying “people I talk to in my riding” anecdotes politicians are so fond of but, truth be told, the taxi driver or waiter in an MPs home riding is a lot more indicative of “outside the Ottawa bubble” thought than what bloggers and fanatical blog readers are saying.