Conservatives Attack Canadian Prime Minister Using ‘Seinfeld’ References
Politicians rarely discuss Seinfeld, which is presumably why the government has yet to address problems such as lengthy Chinese restaurant wait times, mutant pig-men and masturbation contest fraud.
But now Canada’s embattled Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre is hoping that references to the beloved NBC series will help revive his political career.
In this past April’s federal election, the Conservatives lost to Mark Carney’s Liberal Party, making Carney the new Prime Minister. Poilievre did especially terribly, even losing his own Ottawa-area riding, costing him a seat in parliament. That is, until a Conservative member of parliament in Alberta “stepped aside” purely to give Poilievre a second chance.
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He ended up winning the by-election because the province is a Conservative “stronghold” and also because he came up with a winning strategy of suddenly wearing giant cowboy hats.
More recently, Poilievre has been attacking Carney via Seinfeld-based insults. At the beginning of September, the politician asked reporters, “What kind of summer has it been for Mark Carney?” He then proclaimed that “it has been the Seinfeld Summer’ — a big show about nothing.”
The next day, Poilievre held another press conference and doubled down on the Seinfeld material. “I think specifically about George Costanza, remember George Costanza? He was a legend,” Poilievre told reporters who somehow didn’t leave. “George Costanza had this great episode where he had this fancy high paying job with a corner office. And he didn’t do any work, like literally none, but he wanted to look busy so he would storm up and down the hallways carrying file folders. He would leave the lights on and his car in front of the office building on the weekend even though he wasn’t there. He would yell into the phone even though no one was on the other end of the line. And they kept paying him because he looked so busy!”
“I have to admit, Mark Carney has looked really busy this summer,” Poilievre concluded. “He’s almost as busy and as useless as George Costanza.”
Okay, there are a few problems with this. Politics aside, Poilievre seems to be mixing up several different episodes of Seinfeld. He starts out describing a scenario that sounds like a storyline from “The Barber,” in which George shows up for an office job even though he’s not sure if he was hired. And his work on the “Penske file” is merely transferring it to an accordion file folder.
In a whole different episode, “The Caddy,” George leaves his car parked outside Yankee Stadium in order to make it seem as though he’s burning the midnight oil (when really he’s on vacation).
By the way, George doesn’t succeed in either scenario: He leaves the office position for a better job he can’t have, and the parking lot scheme ends with the Yankees believing that their assistant to the traveling secretary has died.
How could anyone vote for a politician with such a flimsy, yet overconfident grasp of ‘90s sitcoms?
