Oh, The Humanity!

So Svend Robinson, former New Democrat MP, is blaming last year’s shoplifting episode on a mood disorder is he? This is not really surprising coming from the person who, after a hot handful of days following the theft, blamed it on his being human (meant to suggest, one assumes, that it was as much the glut of humankind that guided his hand that day; that we must all take a share of responsibility in this terrible, terrible crime: the end of Svend Robinson’s political career!). I always thought that was a fascinating bit of intelligence—as though the consensus up to that point was that he was something more in the nature of a god. Happily, I don’t think that that is, or ever was, the consensus. But it is clearly (in spite of tearful admissions and contrition-at-one-remove) how the man still sees himself, forcing the conclusion that while Svend Robinson may indeed be human, he is only just.