Please Advise! Burgess Counsels Closet Canuck Ted Cruz

[Editor’s note: Long-time culture contributor Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a Ph.D in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this and future columns, Steve will dispense PR advice to the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

I write to you as the next President of the United States. After years of Barack Hussein Ayatollah Stalin Obama, America is finally ready for a return to the values that made JP Morgan great. However, my past is darkened by scandal. I was born in Calgary. Should I renounce my Canadian citizenship? And if so, how?

Sincerely,
Senator Ted Cruz
Texas

Dear Ted,

Bad luck, chum. You came pretty close. There was a time when every child born in Calgary got an honorary American birth certificate. Even today, Calgary, like your own country, is ruled by a Muslim.

But still, it's Canada. Your Republican primary opponents will surely make hay out of your origins in the very country where socialized medicine was launched by Chairman Mao and Saskatchewan Premier Che Guevara. Just the simple fact that your parents were in another country at some point in their lives is suspicious. It makes you look like one of those types who hold a passport. Why would you need one unless you were planning to visit Sweden, or France, or Venezuela? Are you planning to study socialism, or eat snails, or in some other way betray America?

There's a simple solution here, Ted. Although you recently released your birth certificate, any Tea Partier worth his tinfoil hat knows those documents are bogus. Get Trump to say that yours is a tissue of lies and you were really born in Fort Worth, a love child of Ayn Rand and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach.

Renounce, and relax

But it seems being a closet Canadian has clearly been eating away at you for a while. You've been overcompensating, like a reformed smoker or a mass murderer who's found Jesus. Your tireless efforts against recognizing same-sex marriage or establishing any minimal form of gun control are obviously the work of a man running from his Canadian-ness. Renunciation may be the best strategy. Maybe it'll help you relax.

Renouncing your Canadian citizenship is not as simple as you might think, Senator. Although dressing up in an eagle costume and performing an unnatural act on a live beaver remains the best known method, it has proven fatal in too many cases to be recommended. Spewing lukewarm Tim Horton's coffee from your mouth and declaring their donuts overrated is not enough -- lots of Canadians do that and remain citizens. Walking into a bar and saying Don Cherry is giving circus clowns a bad name might actually win you some friends. The kind you don't want, Ted.

No, to truly renounce your Canadian citizenship you will have to sign a declaration that Bob Hope was funnier than Monty Python while spelling humour without a "u," laugh uproariously when a guy from Flin Flon, Manitoba pronounces "about," and sing Oh Canada to the tune of O Tannenbaum at a major international sporting event. Then you'll be an American, my son.

Take Duffy with you

We in the Great White North will be only too happy to expel you as though ejecting an errant airway pickle with the Heimlich. In return, perhaps you can do us a favour. Now that you have established that the stink of Canada is fatal for a presidential candidacy, can you convince a few other Canadians to renounce their citizenship and shoot for the White House?

Have a chat with Mike Duffy. Convince him that with his established history of shifting addresses it will be a small matter to claim primary residency in the great state of North Carolina.

Talk to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Tell him that New York mayoral candidate Anthony 'Dick Pic' Weiner has made the American political landscape safe for almost any sort of nonsense.

And one more thing: If a certain Prime Minister were truly interested in protecting Canada's arctic sovereignty, couldn't he do that a lot more effectively by picking up the Oval Office phone and calling in the US Marines? President Harper -- you know he'll love the sound of that.

He'd start as vice president, of course. First things first, President Cruz.