What is up with Klein?

The latest from the Alberta campaign trail:

AISH comment continues to haunt Klein campaign

“Wednesday night at a Tory rally in Calgary, Klein related a story about two AISH recipients who approached him at a sod-turning, saying the money provided by the program wasn’t sufficient.

“They didn’t look severely handicapped to me. I’ll tell you that for sure. Both had cigarettes dangling from their mouths, and cowboy hats,” Klein said.”

His first round of comments was unthinking and betrayed a lack of sensitivity toward handicapped people. But Klein is not a poster-boy for sensitivity (that is an aspect of his charm, or so I’m told), so I gave him a pass for that one. Later on, though:

“Before a speech in Grande Prairie Thursday, Klein refused to clarify for reporters his remarks on the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped program.

“I’m sure none of you want to talk to me about AISH, do you? No, because you’re normal,” Klein then told the crowd. “Severely normal people.”

This comment, I think is more serious, for two reasons. First, it was not an off-the-cuff comment. Klein had had plenty of time while touring across the frosty north to reflect upon his earlier comment and craft how he would address the issue. Second, it reflected a genuine mean-spirited streak in Klein. Are people with mental handicaps abnormal, in the sense that most people are not handicapped? Of course. Are such people abnormal in the sense that they are human beings and that, at base, they pursue the same goals in life (ie: happiness, comfort, security, joy) as any other being? No.

Now, if Klein was mean-spirited in his comments, I would not condemn them on that basis alone. That is what the shrills like Kevin Taft fail to realize. If Klein was mean-spirited and whupped Taft’s behind up and down the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor, I would be cheering. Politics is a mean business. But Klein made such comments towards a sector of society which has little means for defending itself, and which provides no incentive for this sort of treatment.

At base, Klein’s comments are disappointing because they reflect the sort of indifference toward the handicapped that is derived from the view of them as a residual category of society, people that need to be managed and have money spent on them, but little more. It is, to put it mildly, not a view that a great people or a real leader would partake in.

And after all this, Klein’s reaction was, unbelievably, to blame the media:

Klein, visibly irritated, said he was frustrated by media attempts to bully reaction to “reaction to reaction to reaction to reaction” instead of focusing on real issues and talking to real Albertans like his government has been doing.

“I’m not going to get into the game of reacting to the CBC,” he said.
…..
He was once again asked by CBC reporters, this time the French language service, if he would answer a question.

“No. I’ll tell you what CBC can do. CBC and the very few listeners you have can do what you want to do to appeal to those listeners.”