![\"JT](\"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/JT-at-Eulogy.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nYou could count me amongst the latter.<\/p>\n
The first three words of the eulogy were, \u201cFriends, Romans, Countryman,\u201d and the emotional performance was so rehearsed and needy, so over-wrought with technique, that it completely turned me off. His slight lisp made him enunciate each word with greater force, and the stresses felt unnatural, built for manipulation rather than a natural expression of feeling and sentiment.<\/p>\n
It was as if as a child of celebrity, he craved the burning light of fame, and that there was no circumstance, even that of his father’s funeral, in which he would not step into the light of another life. He just seemed to enjoy this day in the spotlight more than was appropriate, you know?<\/p>\n
So I was a hater, dismissing him as a \u201chigh school drama teacher,\u201d and lumping him in with Ben Mulroney, host of a breezy celebrity news show, whom I saw as another shallow, attention-seeking child of a Prime Minister.<\/p>\n It was easy enough to resent Trudeau his ready-made celebrity. He was good looking, naturally charismatic, had the touch of aristocracy, and people seemed as desperate to make a star of him as he seemed as desperate to become one.<\/p>\n Of course, we are admonished to be kind, for everybody we meet is fighting a hard battle. That Trudeau grew up wealthy and famous is true, but he also grew up in the toxic, corrosive glare of fame. His mother, suffering from mental health issues, was often absent, luridly splashed across papers and viciously mocked,<\/p>\n while his father was doing the nation’s business. It must have been lonely and strange for young Justin, and then he lost his beloved brother, one of the few people on the planet who might understand. Surviving this upbringing intact is actually entirely heroic, a testimony to character rather than a \u201cfree ride\u201d.<\/p>\n Throughout the campaign, throughout Trudeau’s life, he was made light of. People challenged his intellect, although it was never exactly clear why, they condescended to him by calling him by his first name and sneered at his hair, as if trying to feminize him, as if they were schoolyard bullies calling him \u201ca girl.\u201d As if that was an insult.<\/p>\n Justin Trudeau took it. He did not get bitter, he did not change or become angry, he remained the same optimistic, essentially happy and earnest person that he had always seemed to be, and he continued.<\/p>\n A few weeks ago during the Munk debate on foreign affairs, something the girlish and daft Trudeau was presumed to know nothing about, somebody was riding Trudeau for one of his father’s policies, again, imperiously, as if lecturing a child. And as this was taking place, Trudeau let his back stiffen just a bit and interrupted him. As if taking a step forward somehow, he asserted that he was proud to be his father’s son, and that he hoped to continue to build on the Canada that his father helped create. He was not furious or panicky. He was simply sure of himself.<\/p>\n And in this moment something changed. All the flimsy, lazy insults were unmasked, all the sniping and juvenile attack ads fell away.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n