Browsing through the used book store a few weeks ago, I happened on a copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel. I had heard the name over the years but never knew who or what it was. I imagined it could be a person of questionable reputation, perhaps a spy of some sort. Perhaps it was a story akin to The Three Musketeers. I thought of it as a literary classic of the 18th or 19th century. Wrong on all counts!!!

The book itself was classy. Hard cover, 8½" x 5¾", one inch thick, 256 pages, quality cloth binding, with a red ribbon bookmark sewn into the binding, a nice touch. Published by International Collectors Library, Garden City, New York. I was impressed. So much for the hardware. The software was something else again, which I'll get to in a moment.

Driving home with my treasure, it occurred to me that I didn't know who the author was. I was sure it wasn't Dumas, or Hugo or Zola. Why was I thinking of French authors? It was Baroness Emma Orczy, 1865-1947.

Baroness Orczy? Who? Full name: Emmuska Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczy. She left Hungary as a child in order to flee a peasant rebellion and eventually settled in London with her parents. Check out Wikipedia if you want more, which you probably don't. The Scarlet Pimpernel was her only claim to fame, as far as I can tell, and it can hardly be classed as great literature. The hero of her tale, published in 1902, is perhaps the 20th century's first superhero, although the action takes place in 1792 during the Terror in Paris.

Sir Percy Blakeney of London high society is secretly the Scarlet Pimpernel, whose mission in life is to secret to England the nobles of France who face the guillotine if apprehended. He is a master of disguise, deceit and cute tricks, and he has about 20 cohorts who form the league of the Scarlet Pimpernel, but he is the master. He pretends to be a simpleton so as to allay suspicion, his peers laugh at him behind his back and when he always wins at poker, it is attributed to idiot's luck. Although he is a tall and muscular man, he manages to disguise himself as an old hag who sits beneath the guillotine knitting, counting the heads as they fall. (The good Baroness read Dickens, of course.) When the fun is over, "she" drives her market cart through the gates of Paris with a couple of nobles hidden among the turnips. The guards keep their distance because the old hag has let it be known that there is plague in her village. There is the usual sacré bleu and curses when it is realized that Scarlet Pimpernel has struck again. And so it goes, you get the idea. He generally leaves his mark as a hand drawn little red flower, which is what a scarlet pimpernel actually is. Who was that masked man?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, his beautiful wife Margaret is scornful of him and wonders what she ever saw in this simpleton with the idiotic laugh, the butt of jokes. Later in the novel, when she finally figures out who he really is, we get the Harlequin Romance part of the story when her love returns in full bloom.

The tale doesn't hang together very well. Prior to 1792, did he always act the simpleton, anticipating the Terror? If so, why did he not rescue his charges a lot sooner? Why did he rescue only the nobles? The baroness has a lot to answer for.

The 20th century has been full of superheroes. Don Diego de la Vega, the son of a wealthy landowner in Spanish California, is actually Zorro who first appeared in 1919. This hero rode forth to right wrongs and rescue fair dansels; he could slice open your shirtfront in the form of a Z without drawing blood. In order to allay suspicion he acted spoiled and effeminate. "Oh father", he complained, "my bathwater was positively tepid!" Superman appeared in the comics in 1932. I remember one strip where two Streamliner passenger trains were heading toward each other on the same track at full speed. When they closed within six feet, Superman flew in, spread his arms and stopped both trains, saving countless lives. It didn't occur to most readers that hitting the other train or Superman would amount to the same thing. It's the sudden deceleration, stupid.

Bruce Wayne, wealthy industrialist, playboy and philanthropist, was secretly Batman, a 1939 creation. Then there was Captain Marvel in a red suit, Cpt. Marvel Jr. in a blue suit, Mary Marvel in red, Wonder Woman, the Green Hornet and on and on. All these many heroes made the world safe for democracy, I suppose, but didn't get around to stopping any of the wars.

I'll leave it to the sociologists to explain the significance of superheroes.

I never thought I would have to parse the words "wrong" and "legal", but this week's hearings in the Oliphant inquiry into the business dealings of Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber has educated me. The inquiry has affirmed that there is nothing "wrong" in accepting a quarter of a million dollars in $20 denominations in brown envelopes in hotel rooms from an alleged international crook who is wanted in Germany on corruption and other charges. There is also nothing "wrong" in waiting six years to declare the income to Revenue Canada after being caught. And all this is perfectly "legal".

Dictionary: Wrong - not in accordance with what is morally right or good; deviating from truth or fact; etc. Ergo, what Mulroney did was moral, right and good.

Dictionary: Legal - permitted by law; recognized by law rather than equity.
Equity - something that is fair and just. Ergo, legality has nothing to do with what is fair and just and hence Mulroney is safely within the law.

I've also learned that one can lie if it cannot be positively proved that one is lying. When Mulroney stated, with his bare face hanging out, that he never discussed his tax situation with his tax lawyers, but merely handed the whole mess to them and they took care of it without him knowing what they were doing, he's stretching credibility to the breaking point. But who can prove otherwise?

Is it any wonder that he seemd so pleased with himself at the end of his six days of testimony?

As pictures of the Ethiopian famine of '83-'84 emerged on the news, Brian Mulroney was shocked at what he saw. According to the CBC's Brian Stewart, he called Stephen Lewis, his newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations, asking what the UN was doing about it. Nothing, replied Lewis. Ethiopia had a Marxist government which was shunned by the western powers led by Reagan and Thatcher. Mulroney told Lewis to get things moving, which he did to remarkable effect. Within days the UN and Red Cross mounted a massive relief effort. Joe Clark rerouted his flight from India and was reduced to tears by what he saw. Our western farmers donated their product, school children raised money, labour unions set up special funds. Our goverment promised to match donations dollar for dollar and soon found itself on the hook for tens of millions. The world joined in. It is estimated that as many as 700,000 lives were saved.

Strange as it may seem, and in spite of his famous lack of modesty, Mulroney has not spoken of his role, nor mentioned it in his memoirs. As we listen to his rather pathetic and totally unconvincing defence in his cash dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber, perhaps we could spare a little sympathy for a man who is just as imperfect as we all are.

Poor Canada! We have a Prime Minister, a died in the wool conservative who hasn't a progressive bone in his body, but can change colours like a chameleon in a minute to retain his hold on power, and then we have a leader of the opposition, respected for his erudition, his published works and his academic career, who supported the Iraq war and whose book The Lesser Evil spoke of pre-emptive war, assassination and torture. We must traffic in evil to fight evil, he says. Sorry, Iggy, go bury your head, we've had too much of that shit. I've mentioned before that I'm not too fond of academic types as a result of having worked with a few. This is not to say that they're all mutton heads, but I'm wary of them.

So, which is the lesser evil, Harper or Ignatieff? One is as devious as the other, and just as much a chameleon. Iggy has no chance of defeating the government without the help of the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois. Both of these parties know that an election would squeeze them out, so Ignatieff, despite being right-of-center, is pushing for an employment insurance policy (nine weeks of work would qualify for benefits) which, if brought to a confidence vote, these two left-wing parties would be forced to support. The parry and thrust should be interesting. I'm not too sure that the nine weeks to qualify is a good idea, but it certainly is opportunistic.

So again, which is the lesser evil? Perhaps Ignatieff, because he has a Liberal Party behind him which he could never dominate the way Harper has done with his crowd. And Liberals are far too pragmatic to support crap. Nonetheless, I can't look forward to an Ignatieff administration with any great degree of comfort. Oh, whatever happened to the old Progressive Conservative Party?; it had its nut-cakes, but also a few decent people.