It's Official. Heather Mallick Admits That Harper Derangement Syndrome Has Turned Her Brain to Mush

Heather Mallick, the Toronto Star fixture who suffers from perhaps the worst case of Harper Derangement Syndrome in the country, has emerged from her decade-long funk now that the "dark days" of Tory rule, as she calls them, are finally over. Here's a sample of the now-jubilant Heather's writing post-Trudeau win. And even considering that for some unknown reason she's caring for a newborn baby, and that sleep deprivation may therefore be a factor, these lines reveal her, ahem, unique thought processes in all their deliciously--deliriously--unhinged wackiness:

I tire. After 10 years of fighting Harperism, my skull is sieve-like and my brain leaking, chunk by chunk, into something like those drip pan arrangements underneath the fridge. Doctor, prescribe me a census, marijuana legalization, an assisted-dying law by the Supreme Court’s February deadline, wise and abstemious Senate appointees, fence-mending at the G20, help for the planet at the Paris climate conference ... it’s a long list.  

On Election Day morning, I tried to calm a fussy newborn baby with happy songs. I tried jingles like the WKRP bait shop ad, “Red wigglers, the Cadillac of worms” and the theme song to the Beverly Hillbillies. It didn’t go well. And then I quietly sang O Canada to the baby, naturally replacing “sons’ command” with “daughters’.”  

The baby relaxed in my arms and listened quietly, intrigued. “Our home and native land,” “glowing hearts,” “glorious and free,” I sang breathily.  

And then the day ended very very well.

There's no point in waiting for Ms. Mallick to regain some semblance of sanity: clearly, at this stage of the game, she is much too far gone. However, I think it might be an act of kindness to say a prayer or two for the poor bambino currently in her care, an innocent being forced to endure the onslaught of Heather's archaic, not to mention downright bizarre, pop cult references. ("Red wrigglers?"--wow, that really is cutting edge baby entertainment, Heather. As I always say, who needs Abby Cadabby of Sesame Street singing "Hurray-Hurray for Broccoli" when you can lull the babe to sleep with a fake ad from WRKP in Cincinnati? Although, speaking as a mom who was a whiz as singing sleep-inducing lullabies back in the day, I were you, I think I'd go with a different 1970s ear worm--The Captain and Tenille's "Muskrat Love." It always had the designed soporific effect on my son, even though looking back at it now, falling asleep a.s.a.p. could just been his way of drowning out my really awful singing.)

I wonder--does singing "Red Wrigglers" and "The Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song" to a baby constitute a form of child abuse, (or, at the very least, a kind of cruel and unusual punishment?).