There’s no doubt about it now, the dog days of summer are here.
Everything slows down a bit. Even, apparently, traffic on the Cut.
People tend to — with white knuckles— cling to their hammocks as their holidays expire.
Restless kids mourn what remains of their days off and grumble at their parents’ back-to-school shopping-induced schadenfreude.
In other languages, it’s colloquially known as “cucumber time.” Yours are probably ready to harvest, by the way. That is if they didn’t wither on the vine thanks to a lack of water this year.
The dog days in the middle of August also mark the time of the year when the news cycle slows down, and more frivolous stories tend to dominate the headlines. No surprise, they’re often about dogs. Bears too, judging by the story making the rounds this week about a bruin lounging in a local couple’s pool.
But here to save our newsrooms from the dog days is another alliterative time: silly season.
Though the term’s origins also lay in the dullest days of summer, in North American tradition, it has come to mean the run-up to an election when politicians do their silliest posturing in order to woo the media’s and public’s attention.
And a silly one it has been so far, especially with Mike Duffy’s ongoing bribery trial in Ottawa dominating the headlines.
Each day of testimony provides reporters with a new round of questions to ask the prime minister about who knew what and when. The responses are sounding, well, sillier and sillier.
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