the blog quebecois

The sinistrosphere was ablaze last night with this tale of Stephen Harper's arrogance:

By way of illustration, on a recent trip, the Prime Minister was asked by a flight attendant to turn off his cellphone and BlackBerry. Mr. Harper declined. The pilot then made a request, saying it was for safety purposes. The PM relented. But, at the end of the journey, one of his staffers gave the pilot some news: His services would no longer be required on prime ministerial trips.

The aviator should have known that this is the new Ottawa. In Harpertown, you fall in line or fall from favour.

See here, here, and here.

I was just looking at opening paragraphs at the Canadian Blog Exchange; I didn't bother to click through on any of them. The story stuck with me, though. I looked for it today in the two daily newspapers I read. Nothing there. Nothing online about it.

Surely the press would be jumping all over this example of Tory high-handedness? I went back to the Exchange and found out that all the excitement was because of this column by Laurence Martin.

Oh. Chretien's hagiographer. I've got tile grout fungus with more credibility than him.

He of course provides no names, no sources. Is it believable?

First, I doubt that the Prime Minister bothers to fiddle around with a Blackberry or a cell phone. One of the perks of being the PM is that you get to have other people wreck their thumbs on your behalf.

Second, the alleged interference with airplane navigation and control from personal electronic devices (PEDs) is just that, alleged:

what the industry doesn't tell passengers is that there is no scientific proof to support these claims.

What also isn't widely known is that pilots have blamed portable voice recorders, heart pacemakers, electric shavers and hearing aids for interfering with their cockpit controls, yet there are no restrictions on their use during flights.

The industry's evidence of cell phone-caused interference is purely anecdotal -- instances engineers have tried but failed to duplicate under "controlled conditions."

[...]

Although there is no clear evidence that PEDs interfere with onboard instruments, the RTCA recommends against the use of PEDs during the "critical phases of flight" -- taking off and landing -- when the plane is most likely to be bombarded by signals from other sources, like industrial heaters, cable TV networks and FM broadcast stations.

"I guess we should all feel a little nervous during takeoff and landing," Sheehan said.

In fact, the FCC has lately been holding hearings on allowing cell phone calls from airplanes. Most of the remaining objections concern the annoyance factor of having the usual yakkers discussing their recent hemorrhoid surgery throughout a long flight:

While the FAA and DOJ raised safety concerns, most of the subcommittee's members raised objections to mobile phone calls during flights based on the potential nuisance to other passengers.

Third, Harper travels on a military jet, fully in contact with his office, Cabinet officials, and civil and military authorities at all times. Are we to imagine that he'd break off a call from, say, George Bush or Vladimir Putin because some bossy stewardess told him to?

Over, gnatroots. Do you copy?