SPECTACULAR SPECTACLE. ROBSON

‘Gerald Butts Out” is a hard headline to resist. But he didn’t extinguish all smoking material as he left. Not even his boss.

It feels like you’re Corey Feldman’s character in The Burbs watching an irresistible spectacle from his porch that just keeps getting wilder and funnier.

It starts with this big shiny building across the street full of self-important people and bags of money and suddenly there’s a loud muffled bang from inside.

So you’re looking up wondering if you imagined it because buildings don’t go “Boom!” much. Then you see a few wisps of smoke from various cracks and the boss leans out and says “Everything’s fine. No problem here.” Suspicious.

It calms down briefly until there’s some sort of weird scuffling noise and a woman runs out the door while various occupants cheer or jeer her from the windows. Then more people shout that nothing is going on. That woman was just difficult, they loudly insist, but not — as the French say — difficile. Then someone hastily yanks those people back inside.

At this point the burning smell gets stronger. You think you spot flames. The people inside keep shouting that there’s nothing to worry about. Also, that they’re calling the fire department to investigate. But the investigators can’t come into the building or talk to anybody important. Nothing to see here. Except, then the No. 2 guy in charge suddenly jumps out a window with his hair smouldering.

He lands awkwardly, wobbles a bit, then brushes himself off and launches into some off-kilter routine about how much he liked working there and what a great building it is. And you’re like, “Dude, your shirt’s on fire!” and he’s like, “What fire, dude? I’m just on a break. Permanently. Because there’s no fire. That’s why I left.”

And you’re thinking, I can’t wait to hear what he says next.

Which turns out to be that any suggestion that anyone put any heat on that woman who spontaneously got demoted then ran out the door is “simply not true.” As for what really happened, well, everyone was excellent.

“At all times, I and those around me acted with integrity and a singular focus on the best interests of all Canadians,” Butts said in his resignation statement, Monday. “Canadians are rightly proud of their public institu- tions.” Oh really. I thought most of us were fed up with their basement furnace that runs on tax money; and Alberta’s goose being not just cooked but charred; and the hint of sulphur emanating from many politicians and bureaucrats. A lot of us certainly weren’t feeling at all proud of this particular management team whose colourful garments ignited quite the controversy in India and who now seem to have set a building on fire and won’t even admit it’s getting warm in there.

Butts previously worked in another building, Queen’s Park, where, a few years after he left, the kerosenescented denizens had their own suspicious billion-dollar gas fire. But having left well beforehand, Butts came out smelling like all outdoors.

This time, he made an amazing admission of nonguilt about allegations that someone in his office had tried pressuring the attorney general to help throw a criminal case: “the fact is that this accusation exists. It cannot and should not take one moment away from the vital work the prime minister and his office is doing for all Canadians.” Possibly it escaped Butts’ notice, unaccustomed as he is to the dark arts of politics, that damage control around this file is already taking more than a few moments away from whatever vital work the prime minister thinks he “is doing for all Canadians” (not that clichés enter the soul eventually) like, say, protecting SNCLavalin from prosecution.

Or maybe Butts concluded, based on the staggering ineptitude of the ever-changing stories, that nobody was doing damage control, just damage, with a bucket of gasoline they inexplicably mistook for water. On warships sailors label the different pipes to avoid such mishaps. Maybe the PMO should, too.

Or maybe there was a pipe marked “Her presence in cabinet should actually speak for itself.” And they misunderstood what that meant. They thought “On” was “Off,” or turned the valve the wrong way. But no matter. The key thing is, there is no fire. I just left because it felt hot. For no reason.

“It is in the best interests of the office and its important work for me to step away,” Butts explained in his statement. Not that the building is on fire, you understand. Or the hem of my pants. Nothing is alight. We don’ t have matches. Smoking isn’t cool.

Neither is jumping out a window trailing clouds that aren’t glory, mind you.

But maybe, in that building, there now other people looking out other windows, judging the height and asking colleagues if they have a ladder, a rope, a hose or something.

Somebody order a pizza. This spectacle is just getting going.

THE PUBLIC STILL DOES NOT KNOW WHAT ALL THIS IS ABOUT. — MURPHY