When the news first broke that Justin Trudeau had cavorted in blackface back in 2001 it was the incredible hypocrisy of the whole thing that likely struck most people as the big problem.
Here’s a man who has spent the past four years using the highest office in the land to tsk-tsk Canada as an intolerant place – one that can only be salvaged by his own white knight feminism and commitment to diversity – when we learn that he was merely projecting, that his hectoring was all just an exercise in psychoanalysis to make him feel better for his past sins.
Trudeau has turfed candidates for lesser transgressions. And yet here he is proving to be the biggest offender of them all.
But then things got worse. We learned there were more. Two more confirmed cases, at least. And there could be many more, because the PM is refusing to clarify. We’re now at the point where major news outlets are running with headlines such as this BBC instant classic: “Trudeau can’t remember how often he wore blackface”.
This goes beyond hypocrisy. It goes beyond being hoisted by his own petard. It’s just outright bad and wrong. Trudeau now has a documented history of performing in blackface from at least 1994 to 2001. That’s throughout most of his 20s.
He was also evidently quite serious about it. The pictures and video we’ve seen aren’t those of someone who quickly tossed on a bit of face paint as some sort of last minute poor decision. He’s covered his knees in one of them. He’s done his full neck, ears and hands in the other. That takes work. That takes planning. It takes commitment.
