Please Advise! Has a BC Conservative Found the COVID Cure?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Premier David Eby wrote an open letter to Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad urging him to drop seven candidates Eby said have “dangerous and extreme views.” But Rustad declined, and the deadline to do so has now passed.

Do you think Rustad should have taken Eby's advice?

Signed,

Prince George

Dear PG,

It certainly sounds like a missed opportunity. The BC Conservatives could have done a great TV ad: Rustad's Scrubbing Bubbles — they get the crazy out!

Meanwhile, BC Conservative candidates have been touting other household products. Hair dryers, for instance. PressProgress, a media outlet focused on critiquing conservatives, noted that, in 2020, Mike Harris, BC Conservative candidate for Langford-Highlands, posted a suggestion on his LinkedIn profile that COVID could be prevented by using a hair dryer to blow hot air up your nose.

“Take slow, deep breaths through the nose, with mouth closed for five minutes,” the post advised, “allowing the heat to penetrate deeply into the nose and sinuses.”

Now, there may be good reasons to stick a hair dryer up your nose. Nose-hair stylists probably do it all the time — you know how kids are about keeping up with the latest nose hairdos. Perhaps your furnace is on the fritz and you find, like the song says, “Jack Frost nipping at your nose.” Well, suck on this, Jack — a heat wave right up the old nostrils. That'll melt your post-nasal drip.

However, using a hair dryer to kill the coronavirus is not medically recommended. It doesn't work for constipation either, plus it's awkward.

Do not throw away your toothbrush — hot air is no substitute for flossing.

The best thing you can say about the hair dryer prescription from Harris is that it ranks higher than Donald Trump's bleach-injection remedy. In a scientific evaluation of COVID cures, the hair dryer method comes off no worse than gargling salt water, being showered with volcanic ash or axing the carbon tax. (That last one is Pierre Poilievre's remedy for everything.)

Harris now says the hair dryer thing wasn't really his idea at all. It was the staff who worked for him as a real estate agent. They apparently overrode his strong opposition to all dryer-based remedies and posted the story on LinkedIn without his knowledge or approval, possibly even restraining him physically as they did so.

Clearly, Harris's staff are captives of Big Hair Dryer. That's probably why they deny global warming. Big Toaster Oven must be in on it, too. They're all about bringing the heat.

David Eby says BC Conservative candidates with fringe views ought to have been dumped by the party. But really, Premier Eby, if you were going to start scrubbing out those fringy folks, particularly the ones with weirdo COVID ideas, would you really give the job to Rustad?

Rustad starred in a recent video saying he regrets getting vaccinated and implied it had something to do with a subsequent heart issue. Putting Rustad in charge of vetting the Conservative party's medical policy would be like hiring Woody Woodpecker to fix your sundeck.

There are plenty of other questionable Conservative candidates with a wide range of skeevy positions. It would take a very large hair dryer indeed to blow them all out of the party. One might end up mostly bald.

And if you are talking about cleaning, most of the actions advocated by people like BC Conservative party director Lindsay Shepherd and Vancouver-Langara candidate Bryan Breguet are the sort of scrubbing intended to leave everything white as snow. Get rid of those nasty brown spots on tiles and walls and boardrooms and cabinets.

It would seem the slates are locked in. Our provincial candidates are who they are. If you want to get sketchy politicians out of your hair, the best plan is not to put them there in the first place. Nothing cleans and conditions like a ballot.

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