On Sunday night, Conservative Party finance critic and Medicine Hat, Alta. MP Monte Solberg put up a post at his blog that criticized Paul Martin, dubbing him Paul Martin Luther King. It’s difficult to follow Solberg’s point but one could read it and get a sense that Solberg is insulting the memory of the U.S. civil rights leaders.
Elizabeth Thompson reports in this morning’s Montreal Gazette that:
Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine Liberal MP Marlene Jennings said she was left speechless after reading it.
“It's actually quite despicable on his part because he trivializes the civil rights movement. He trivializes Martin Luther King Jr.'s contribution to the whole notion of tolerance, of peaceful resistance, of peaceful civil disobedience and, literally, the pain and the suffering that many blacks and whites underwent in order to remove segregationist legislation.”
Solberg was definitely trying to denigrate the Prime Minister, calling him, for example, a “knuckle dragger.”
Apparently, the Prime Minister’s Office complained about the post.
Solberg subsequently put up another post in which he called the PMO’s office staff who complained a bunch of cry babies and refined his explanation of the “Paul Martin Luther King” metaphor.