Sycophant of the Month: July 2010

Total number of ProvGov press releases issued in July: 161 (-62 from June).

Total number with the phrase "Williams Government": 18 (+8 from June).

Sycophancy index: 11.2% (+6.7% from June).

The numerator goes up, the denominator goes down, and so for the fourth time in eight months, the monthly sycophancy index nudges north of 10%. Happy times!

Danny Williams-Government Himself kicked things off on the very first business day of the month, when he, not his long-suffering Minister of Fisheries, whoever that is, got to bask in the reflected glory of fisheries scienticians.

Before the day was out, the entire Tom Committee of Cabinet had joined DW-G on the big board. Jerome Kennedy knocked in his first of the month on the fifth, followed the next day by Clyde Jackman – that’s the guy’s name – who was finally allowed issue a press release, a weird, weird, press release, under his own portfolio. (Given the number of times it name-drops you-know-who, that may have been just a formality.)

Felix Collins added another name to the scoreboard later that day, complete with potentially unfortunate visual. Terry French and Jackman each tipped one in the next day, Jackmans’s making him the first to break from the pack of singletons.

The next day Susan Sullivan, with another triple-dollop of WilliamsGovernment, announced that DWG “invests” in youth, perhaps in the same way some people “invest” in derivatives or Beanie Babies, while SuperJerome, tying Jackman for the lead, made sure the day after that didn’t go WilliamsGovernment-free.

It was a breathtaking start, with at least one does of WilliamsGovernmenty goodness for every working day of the month to date. The whirlwind of Williamsosity could not go unrecognized, as this corner obligingly did on the eighth, and the anti-Newfoundland Premier-Negative Quebec Daily Newspaper on the twelfth.




















It is, of course, entirely coincidental that the match promptly went into a lull that was not broken until the 16th, when Tom H., on behalf of something called “Newfoundland Labrador Housing”, put one between the posts.

SuperJerome consolidated his lead on the 20th, with some happy health-care related news for St. Anthony. Heck, he may have even started returning the Northern Pen’s calls in his exuberant state. French, Jackman, Hedderson, and SuperJerome again turned the third week of the month into another in-your-face every-day barrage of WilliamsGovernmentium.

The final week of the month started off quiet, but Jerome on the 28th, and Felix Collins on the 29th saw to it that Our Dear Ego got stroked to a happy month-ending.

Final tally: Sullivan, Tom M., and DWG Himself, one each; French and Collins, two; Tom H. and Jackman, three, and Kennedy, five. Snatching the title back from Hedderson, and owning or co-owning the podium for the third time in five months, your July sycophant of the month is Jerome! Kennedy! Congratulations!