Surreal scene shows Harper frozen with fear in field, Conservative staff have police push reporters back

Picture Stephen Harper standing out in a field during his latest photo op (one assumes its right field not left field) while some media and their cameras were trying to get closer to Harper to have him address the latest Conservative bird-brained gaffe.

[Conservative staff had the] RCMP to pull us away, to push us away so that we couldn't ask the Prime Minister any questions.” Bob Fife, CTV journalist

What gaffe? No less than insulting the family of the dead. Ryan Sparrow, the party's communications director, has since been suspended for attacking, via an email sent to the media, the motives of a father of a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan.

No, I'm not making this up.

Its times like these where the Harper war room shows the true colours of Harper H.Q. They consider anyone who doesn't share their particular fervour for all things Harper/Conservative as being something less than a true Canadian. Imagine insulting the integrity of a father who has lost his son to the Afghanistan war.

Conservatives suspend official over comments about dead soldier's father (Sept. 11 2008, CBC)

The Conservative campaign suspended a top official indefinitely on Thursday and ordered him to apologize personally for comments he made about the father of a soldier killed in the Afghanistan mission.

The interesting bit here is that Harper was too afraid to come out of right field and talk to the press and address this issue head on, so his team had the RCMP push reporters back. According to both CTV's Bob Fife as well as a CBC reporter at the scene, Harper's staff wouldn't allow press to approach Harper and in the end the Conservatives had RCMP create more space between Harper and the press.

One reporter rightly called it "unseemly".

Update: Here's a transcript (from the Closed Captioning feed) of CTV reporter Bob Fife and a news anchor.

Well we're going to try again before the rally. But -- anyway, for some reason they do not want the prime minister to comment on this controversy. And as i said, the political aides to the prime minister refusing to let us nearby. Ordering the R.C.M.P. To keep me and -- particularly me and the camera crew away from the prime minister. CTV reporter Robert Fife