Web politics and onion rings

Image by stu_spivack via Flickr

The latest online attack on Prime Minister Stephen Harper has begun, and it’s from an unlikely source: an onion ring. The Facebook group “Can this Onion Ring get more fans than Stephen Harper?” is now home to over 70,000 members and growing quickly. Its page has become another forum of Harper hatred, with a few people stating that they’d prefer to vote for an onion ring any day rather than Harper. So, the contribution to the national political conversation is clearly going in the right direction…

Anyway, the group is already receiving a bit of media attention here, with CanWest News publishing onion ring-related stories in some of its major daily papers. From the Vancouver Sun:

With hundreds of members joining each minute, the group surpassed the prime minister’s fan count in just two days, garnering more than 63,000 fans by Friday afternoon — which is more than double Harper’s 30,074 fans.

Of course, its rising-star status on social networking websites is not a valid measuring stick for the prime minister’s political popularity.

Well, obviously.

In fact, despite his dip in popularity after proroguing Parliament in late December, it still appears as though Harper will survive. And until either Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff or NDP leader Jack Layton can make a concerted effort to re-frame the Tory-constructed political narrative in the next few weeks – or until one of them turns into an onion ring – Canadians will most likely be apathetically content to stick with Harper post-Olympics. But let’s hope it’s not as predictable as that.