Canada has had more than its share of silly media pundits.

Hockey analyst Don Cherry has made a rich living by sounding off on European and French-Canadian hockey players and calling critics of the game "pukes".

When I was a kid growing up in Victoria, a local columnist named Gorde Hunter used to blow a gasket over three issues: the metric system, official bilingualism, and Cuba.

Then there's the National Post's Christie Blatchford, who penned an unforgettable column about Jack Layton shortly after his death in 2011. She criticized the former NDP leader's final letter to Canadians, calling it "vainglorious" and full of "sophistry". Blatchford singled out this Layton sentence for special criticism: "We can restore our good name in the world."

I've sometimes felt that Blatchford and others (i.e. Rex Murphy and Ezra Levant) deliberately write provocative twaddle just so their critics will pass it around, boosting the number of page views.

Now, it appears that Blatchford has some competition on the Prairies. The StarPhoenix recently published a column by Les MacPherson, who likens hating Stephen Harper to a reverse form of Beatlemania.

"Harper-haters condemn him for emasculating Parliament," MacPherson wrote. "Never mind that he decisively won a majority in Parliament and that he continues to hold the confidence of that majority and of Parliament itself."

You get the picture.

Here's MacPherson's final paragraph: "As with teenage girls stricken by Beatlemania, Harper haters are working themselves and each other up. By election day in October, they will be weeping and swooning."

As one might expect, MacPherson's critics are passing his fawning article about Harper over Twitter. No doubt, this is increasing the number of eyeballs landing on the StarPhoenix website.

Mission accomplished, Les. You get to keep your job.