Too many Dannies

Premier Williams, in conversation with CBC Radio's David Cochrane on the Thursday edition of Crosstalk:

I'm the eternal optimist, that's why I do the job I do, that's why I'm in the job, because I believe we can make it here, and I really believe there's a great future for this province and its people. And I get negativity, y'know, which happens all the time, but on a day when there really should be none, when there's an opportunity to put, y'know, a lot of new money into the provincial coffers that we can do a whole pile of things, all the wonderful things in schools and hospitals and roads and everything that needs to be done, and I heard the negativity, well, I just had to react. That's me.

This Danny Williams really ought to talk to the Danny Williams who set himself on fire live on the air with Randy Simms two days earlier. The Danny Williams who appeared on CBC said that he had "heard the negativity", that horrible, horrible negativity, and, moreover, on a day when Danny Williams decreed that there should be none at all.

The VOCM Danny Williams, however, suggested very strongly that Danny Williams did not, in fact, hear the negativity himself, but that it was related to Danny Williams second-hand:

I'm calling 'cause I had several calls from people who heard your opening comments.

(Someone really oughta ask that Danny Williams: who were those "people"? But anyway...)

In fact, it would appear that there is a third Danny Williams at loose. The Danny Williams who was on Crosstalk with David Cochrane, who, unlike the VOCM Danny Williams, actually heard the nasty, nefarious, negativity, is a Danny Williams with hair-trigger reaction time to negativity: "I heard the negativity, well, I just had to react,", Danny (VOCM) Williams said. "That's me."

The reactive, bombastic, hair-trigger Danny Williams surely can't be the Danny Williams who, on the eve of entering provincial politics, resolved to grow a thicker skin.

But wait! There's more! Danny Williamses!

There's also the Danny Williams who said he wouldn't explode, because he had learned to deal with the stuff that comes with being messed up in politics. This Danny Williams might even be the same Danny Williams who has, in fact, grown that thick skin, and for whom criticism is "like water rolling right off my back".