Canadian Sex and Biker Scandal Comes Alive on YouTube

Finally, an inventive new use for YouTube that doesn't involve a kid practicing Star Wars moves or Kobe Bryant jumping over a pool full of snakes. Someone by the screenname BLABLABLAPQ has posted a musical montage that starts with the phrase "Le Scandale de la Semaine au Quebec" ("The Scandal of the Week in Quebec"). The video, which is comprised of screenshots and French pull quotes, highlights the sex-politics-and-biker-gang scandal currently engulfing Canada, all set to a poppy Francophone soundtrack. (Minus a random Britney Spears vamp.)

According to Ian Austen in today's New York Times, Canadian minister of foreign affairs Maxime Bernier has resigned because "his former romantic interest, Julie Couillard, was linked to Quebec’s motorcycle gangs, which have long tried to infiltrate politics and the justice systems. ... Biker gangs in Mr. Bernier’s home province of Quebec have, among other things, killed prison guards and shot one prominent crime journalist." (Who knew our neighbors to the north were so hardcore?)

The music video is a response to an intense clip in which members of Canadian Parliament fight among themselves about Mr. Bernier, which includes footage of historian/journalist-turned-Canadian Parliamentarian Michael Ignatieff denouncing a "pattern of embarrassment in the conduct of this minister of foreign affairs" and insisting that questions of "ministerial judgment and national security are not a private matter, they are everyone's business and we will raise them in this house."

The second video is all right, but you sure can't dance to it.