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Senator Mike Duffy: Imitated, humiliated and obliterated

On Friday evening I joined a few buddies for some pops at the local public house.

Granted, it wasn't a Mensa reunion, but between the four of us we couldn't think of another Canadian politician ever criticized with as much intensity than Senator Mike Duffy is being criticized now.

If you've read any of our message board comments at Yahoo! over the past month, you'd see that the anti-Duffy sentiment is almost unanimous. The public is angry that Duffy falsely claimed a Senate living allowance and furious that he received a $90,000 cheque from the prime minister's chief of staff to reimburse taxpayers.

But it's not just the public that's peeved. Over the past two weeks, the Conservative caucus has turned on him with some of them openly calling on him to resign his Senate seat.

[ Related: Senator Mike Duffy mused about becoming a minster: report ]

And his former friends at the media aren't pulling any punches either.

The likes of Rex Murphy, Andrew Coyne and Tim Harper have been critical of the former broadcaster.

The most sharp tongued attack came on Friday when CTV News' Don Martin had at him:

"Let's talk about the true political sorcerer who has elevated fakery to a dark art. Yes old Duff that's you.

For starters he faked being a neutral journalist while shilling for a Senate seat for decades. A fact confirmed to me by no fewer than four prime ministers or their aides.

...In the last year Mike Duffy has become the all-Canadian poster boy for Canadian fakery.

Auditors have proven him to be a fake Price Edward Islander pretending to represent a province he considers too dangerous for his fragile heart. Expensive claims that he falsely claimed to work as a Senator in 2011 when campaigning as a Conservative shill filing improper receipts for doing both simultaneously.

And when his bogus housing subsidies were exposed he faked being so broke that a relative stranger named Nigel Wright -- who was the prime minister's Chief of Staff -- had to bail him out.

...the sole preoccupation behind Duffy's conduct is to do what's best for Mike Duffy."

Video of Martin's closing monologue was apparently removed from CTV's website but someone posted it on YouTube here.

[ Related: Former senator says Senate expense shenanigans are nothing new ]

Duffy is also being mocked by the creative types.

As explained by CBC News, a PEI radio station has a "do ya a Duffy" contest.

"Each day, the station will cut one listener a cheque for $20 to pay back a personal debt, 'no questions asked.'"

Earlier this week, Yahoo! Canada News reported about the 'Duffy Buck' meme.

[ Related: Bank of Canada tries to kill the $90,000 ‘Duffybuck’ ]

And last week we did a story about PEI resident Lloyd Kerry who has created and is marketing a new T-shirt with a design of Mike Duffy in a garbage can next to bag full of money and the caption 'Stuff the Duff.'

Has any Canadian politician been this maligned? Certainly Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is taking a lot of heat but even Ford has his defenders.

Right now Duffy is political public enemy number one.

He's become the symbol of government waste and a lightning rod for Canadians who are fed up with the sense of entitlement that exudes from the red chamber.

Does he deserve all this vitriol?

Probably not all of it.

But he continues to be cocky, arrogant and refuses to publicly explain his expense claims. Remember the time, at an event in Halifax, when he ducked out the back entrance through a kitchen telling reporters that they should be doing "adult work"?

It's behaviour like that which makes it easy to dislike the Duff and ultimately mock the Duff.

And hey: If he can't handle the heat, he can always get out of the kitchen, right?

(Photo courtesy of Canadian Press)

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