Human ingenuity has designed blogs to satisfy the universal appetite for irresponsible, unsubstantiated and malicious rumours. Cyberspace is filled with millions of blogs, so it is not hard to imagine that the number of such rumours floating in the atmosphere is (almost) infinite.
Therefore, it cannot do any harm to add another one. Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Harper have split up. Ottawa, it is said, is full of it. Of course this is impossible to believe.
Where is the evidence that it is true? Some say that his irascibility and intransigence in the Afghan detention issue is plenty of evidence. But surely that is ridiculous – he is acting entirely in character. Anyway, how come it has not been leaked to the conventional media?
The reason must be that reporters in Canada rightly pride themselves on their discretion and good taste which, they say, distinguishes them from their American colleagues. In Canada, they say, the private lives of politicians are sacrosanct. That is absolutely as it should be. Let us keep it that way.
So, whatever you do, please do not spread this absurd rumour.
Eric Koch’s new book, The Golden Years: Five Stories, was launched on Saturday, March 16. The book is available from the 
I’ve just now sent it to everyone I know.
I am amazed that you know who Stephen Harper is. Everyone you know I am sure does NOT.
Reminds me of John Baird’s cat, Thatcher, whose death alarmed a room full of conservatives.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/11/margaret_thatcher_is_not_dead.html
This one is quite ancient. There was a rumour once, sometime back in the 1990′s, about a Canadian governor-general having an affair with a Nordic ambassador. This rumour was printed in a national newspaper by a freelance columnist. The newspaper had to grovel in its apology. The columnist, who may have been fed the rumour by a spouse, was fired and has never published a word since.
I am a freelance blogger, not a freelance columnist. I cannot complain about anything my spouse feeds me, least of all this outrageous rumour.
Was that Jeanne Souvé to whom you were referring? I once had lunch with her à deux, in Montreal, before she had entered politics. Nobody spread a rumour about that occasion. She was organizing a Quebec Couchiching in Ste. Adèle.
I’m afraid I don’t see the point in spreading silly rumours, even about people whom one does not like – and especially when the truth will be pretty darn clear if it turns out to be true, and why would we ‘need’ or even want to know it before it does come out clearly? Even a person who does as much harm to his country as Harper has been doing (and with a minority) deserves a bit of privacy, and this rumour is not of a kind with the character assassination that he has largely made a routine part of Canadian political discourse. But I wish him political misery, not marital misery.
Twenty-five years ago a Hungarian friend of mine criticized the erotic passages in a novel of mine on the CBC on the grounds that the author obviously did not know anything about lovemaking. Then, when I saw him, he told me how much he enjoyed my book, even the very convincing erotic passages. When, full of righteous indignation, I challenged him, he replied: Ah – this country is so BORING – it needs a little SPICE.
Stendhal said: Without gossip we would have no literature. (I think he used the word scandal.)
Re Fred’s comment: I heard about it too. Is the free-lancer anyone we know?
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Probably. Don’t we know everybody?