PMSteve Unplugs

I am not Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He is a persona, an artifice created by party handlers, marketing wonks and image consultants. I am tired of kissing babies, flipping pancakes, posing as a celebrity hockey dad, smalltalking barbeques, mouthing warm and fuzzy holiday greetings, pretending to support Medicare (which makes me gag), and going through the motions of caring about people stupid enough to vote for other parties.

I miss the glory days of the Reform Party and the NCC - I could say what I believed, and walk all over the idiot reporters who didn't have a clue about economics (which is all of them by the way). I was able to inform Canadians they were content to be a second-rate socialist country and tell Conservative US Republicans they were a beacon of light to inspire me and the rest of the world. I could call for scrapping the Canada Health Act and fight for US-style private healthcare in Canada.

I am proud to have been Chief Policy Officer of Reform before I was 30 and the most effective president the NCC ever had. We pushed the Cretinites kicking and screaming into deficit reduction and tax breaks and today even the satanic NDP toe the tax-cut line. But now I'm not even allowed to mention Reform or NCC in my bio because it might scare off some crazy socialists.

Now my every word, facial expression, gesture, bodily elimination, is focus-grouped, image-massaged and push-polled by consultants, media gurus and spin doctors. My every public appearance and utterance is dissected, probed, analyzed and pronounced upon by the same drooling media hacks that I used to belittle with one brain cell.

I feel like Sir Humphrey Appleby in the Madness of King George - all the functionaries have an inane theory about my stools but miss the blue stream of obviousness. In the end I have to figure out how to seem to be Prime Minister anyway.

Not that it's all bad being PM - I get to hang with the real world leaders like George and Bill Gates while blowing-off sanctimonious celebrity do-gooders like Bono. I get to wear cool military flak jackets to review the troops - eat your heart out Conrad - and I get to torment the eco-freaks and communist academics who irrationally hate the oil industry and the military.

But I am tired of having to contort and squeeze myself into every message box, sound bite and news hole. Hence PM Steve Unplugged: just me - raw and unexpurgated.

No doubt some cynics will say it's just another sleazy Bulworth-esque marketing ploy to seem edgy and reach the cynical youth demographic using serious attitude and a hip-hopish handle. Meanwhile the marketing-nannies will say I'm committing political suicide by exposing myself unvarnished and uncut. Whatever.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is history. Long live Headbanger PMSteve. Unplugged.