Wilkinson makes the wrong call

You’re a leader and suddenly one of your team members veers off track in a public space into a wildly inappropriate anecdote that violates 21st century political norms about gender, sexuality and taste.

You’ve got a period of seconds to decide what to do.

Do you intervene to shut it down and limit the damage, embarrassing one of your loyal followers and stepping on the moment?

Or do you sit there mute, let it pass and hope no one ever speaks of it again?

Assuming Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson even realized that he had a major decision to make, he chose to be mute.

In the perfect incandescent light of hindsight, it was the profoundly wrong call. Now he and his struggling team are going to pay a price.

The phrase cringe-worthy was invented for moments like this.

BC Liberals candidate Jane Thornthwaite’s lurid misrepresentation of interactions between her former colleague Ralph Sultan and New Democrat Bowinn Ma leaves some people shaking their heads.

One explanation is that she was trying too hard for a laugh.

Thornthwaite was one of several Liberals appearing on a Zoom call a few weeks ago to roast Sultan on his retirement.

Someone was bothered by the tone and relayed it to podcaster Mo Amir over the holiday.

It turns out a lot of others are bothered, too.

Even giving her a generous amount of comedic license, Thornthwaite’s bit was a ghastly failure. But it’s about more than how oblivious Thornthwaite was to the dangerous ground she was on.

It’s about how she took such a gratuitous, insulting swipe at an innocent bystander when she was supposed to be roasting her colleague. It’s about the ripples of laughter from the several Liberal politicians, including Wilkinson, as the moment worsened.

And it’s about the clumsy, belated scramble to make things right on Sunday as the bit rocketed into viral territory (300,000 views and counting).

Thornthwaite’s bit involved her spotting Sultan and Ma — both North Vancouver MLAs at the time — at a public event.

“Bowinn is, you know, a very pretty lady and she knows that she’s got it,” Thornthwaite chuckled. “And she knows how to get Ralph going.”

Thornthwaite recounted how the two of them spent the whole event close together on a couch “very close together” with Ma “cuddling, cuddling, a little bit of cleavage there, and Ralph would be enthralled.”

Maybe in some world it is possible for a politician to poke fun in a public forum at an octogenarian male who has a friendly working relationship with a young woman.

But not this one. Particularly when most of the demeaning tale wound up aimed at Ma.

The B.C. Liberals supposedly have a full campaign team working seven days a week ready for anything. So what happened when it hit social media and their virtual campaign bus slid into the ditch?

Next to nothing.