{"id":5260,"date":"2013-07-09T11:27:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T15:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=5260"},"modified":"2013-12-09T21:47:29","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T02:47:29","slug":"politicians-in-cowboy-hats-come-hell-or-high-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=5260","title":{"rendered":"Politicians in Cowboy Hats: Come Hell or High Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a brief history of Stampede fashion, you can read the 2006<\/a>, 2007<\/a>, 2008<\/a>, 2009<\/a>, 2010,<\/a> and 2011<\/a> round-ups – or last year’s “100 Years of Bad Photo-Ops<\/a>“<\/em><\/p>\n

Flood waters cannot stop the Stampede and flood waters cannot stop politicians from the annual ritual of self humiliation known as the cowboy hat photo-op. Indeed, if there’s one photo op even more irresistible than the Stampede, it’s a post-disaster zone tour.<\/p>\n


<\/code>
\nThe Flood Aftermath<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stephen Harper was the first on the scene, playing dress-up in a Canadian Forces flight jacket, complete with pilot wings. Harper defended his wardrobe choice by saying he was honouring the military – I<\/em> tend to think a better way to honour them would have been allowing Afghanistan troops to keep their danger pay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Stephen<\/a>
<\/code><\/p>\n

Next up would be Thomas Mulcair, sporting the official Stampede “hell or high water” t-shirt – four words that in southern Alberta usually follow “I’m never voting NDP come<\/em>…”.<\/p>\n

\"Mulcair<\/a>
<\/code><\/p>\n

Justin Trudeau put on his coveralls, got his hands dirty, and made history becoming the first aspiring Prime Minister to ever sport a backwards baseball cap:<\/p>\n

\"trudeau<\/a>
<\/code><\/p>\n

While I have no doubts the Tory war room was dreaming up attack ads<\/a> to use this picture in, at least Justin <\/em>didn’t ruin a perfectly good pair of jeans:<\/p>\n

\"harper<\/a><\/p>\n


<\/code>
\nStampede Round-Up<\/strong><\/p>\n

But we were told come hell or high water the show must go on, so it was time for the politicians to pick up a cowboy hat and flip some pancakes. Alberta Premier Alison Redford proved to be a bit over eager on this front, sending her pancake into orbit, in what I can only assume was an attempt to out-flip Danielle Smith.<\/p>\n

\"redford<\/a>
<\/code><\/p>\n

Although Chris Hadfield<\/a> was the Stampede grand marshal this year, it appears that Justin Trudeau once again<\/em> managed to overshadow an astronaut. Because everywhere you looked this weekend, there was Justin. At one point yesterday the Calgary Herald had three <\/em>separate Trudeau stories on their website – this likely isn’t the first time that\u2019s ever happened, but I suspect it’s the first time none of the stories involved effigies. <\/p>\n

\"trudeau<\/a>
<\/code><\/p>\n

Mercifully, Justin decided to forego cargo shorts<\/a> in favour of jeans and belt buckle. It remains to be seen if he’s a big thinker, but the “XL” tag on his hat at least shows he’s got a big head.<\/p>\n

\"trudeau<\/a>
<\/code><\/p>\n

And here’s Justin – again – with Calgary’s mayor and international Twitter superstar<\/a> Naheed Nenshi. I’m not sure I agree with the FastForward survey which named Nenshi the “sexiest Calgarian<\/a>“, but he’s certainly the most huggable. <\/p>\n

\"trudeau<\/a>
<\/code><\/p>\n


<\/code>
\nAlso Pictured<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Devinder<\/a>
Devinder Shory, Joe Oliver, Michelle Rempel, and Danielle Smith. (Thanks to MC for the tip on this one)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"If<\/a>
If recent scandals take down Alison Redford, she will at least have a fruitful career as a children’s entertainer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Kidding<\/a>
Kidding aside, Redford actually gets my vote for “Best Dressed” this year. Not only did she cycle through a series of outfits, she is the first politician I’ve seen pull off a “Stampede skirt”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"There<\/a>
There were no disasters this year, but Jean Charest take home the “Worst Dressed” honours – it’s a nice hat, but he looks completely out of place in the suit jacket.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a brief history of Stampede fashion, you can read the 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 round-ups – or last year’s “100 Years of Bad Photo-Ops“ Flood waters cannot stop the Stampede and flood waters cannot stop politicians from the annual ritual of self humiliation known as the cowboy hat photo-op. Indeed, if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28,1101],"tags":[981,1000,1016,991,979],"class_list":["post-5260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-posts","category-humour","category-politicians-in-cowboy-hats","tag-alison-redford","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-naheed-nenshi","tag-stephen-harper","tag-thomas-mulcair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5260"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5300,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260\/revisions\/5300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}