The weirdest thing about Green Party Leader Elizabeth May’s “bizarre” press gallery dinner speech is that she was right.

Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr does have more class “than the whole f---ing cabinet.”

That’s what May said to dining scribes and their political guests Saturday at the annual Parliamentary Press Gallery feast.

For that she received a lot of flak.

Her nine-minute speech was described by some present as bizarre, awkward, rambling and profanity-laced.

She has been mocked in editorial cartoons, attacked in print and subjected to intense interrogation on CBC Television.

There have been suggestions that she should quit as Green party leader.

May herself has apologized and said she was overtired.

But here’s the thing: in a strange way, she made a lot of sense.

First, understand press gallery dinners. They are annual bashes where journalists accredited to cover Parliament invite guests (usually politicians or other luminaries) to a kind of jovial roast.

I haven’t been at one since Justin Trudeau’s father was prime minister. Except for the fact that they are no longer off-the-record, they don’t seem to have changed much.

For journalists, the ability to invite someone deemed important — like a cabinet minister or party leader — can be a mark of status

For backbench MPs and lesser aides, being invited at all can bestow importance.

Usually, alcohol is consumed. A certain amount of sophomoric behaviour, such as bun-throwing, is considered acceptable.

Party leaders, if they bother to attend (Prime Minister Stephen Harper doesn’t), usually try to deliver witty, self-deprecating performances designed to show they are regular folk.

New Democratic Party Lader Tom Mulcair’s speech this year, for instance, took the form of a fake interview with a Tom Mulcair look-alike.

Apparently that went over just fine.

May’s speech, it seems, didn’t.

As my colleague Tim Harper noted, she broke all of the unwritten rules. She wasn’t funny; she wasn’t particularly self-deprecating and she did make overtly partisan jabs.

Her entire speech is available online. But here, in a nutshell is what she said.

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First she said she was surprised that previous speakers hadn’t acknowledged that the dinner was taking place on land claimed by the Algonquins.

“What the f--- was wrong with the rest of you,” she said.

This, incidentally, was one of only two times she used vulgarity in what has been labelled a profanity-laden speech.

Then she noted that the prime minister, as usual, wasn’t attending. Maybe he fretted about being hit by flying bread rolls, she mused, before suggesting that such fears were unfounded because “there’s got to be a closet here somewhere.”

I confess I found that rather amusing, in a mean sort of way.

Then May went into an extended riff about her artificial hips, one of which she said squeaks. I think that was supposed to be a self-deprecating reference to her age, which is 60.

From that she segued into Harper’s seemingly artificial hair and the Liberal decision to iron out Trudeau’s curls.

This was followed by an extended Freudian joke in which she said that, because she’s allowed to take part in televised leaders’ debates, she no longer suffers from the female complaint of debate envy.

Finally, as Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt tried to manoeuvre her offstage, May made her most serious point. She praised an Alberta judge’s decision to release Khadr on bail while he appeals war-crimes charges in the U.S.

“Welcome back Omar Khadr,” she said. “It matters to say it. Welcome back. You’re home. Omar Khadr, you’ve got more class than the entire f---ing cabinet.”

And in fact he does. Khadr’s response to being jailed almost half of his life for the crime of being a child soldier has been gracious and measured. The Harper government’s response to Khadr has been anything but.

This was one of the truths May told Saturday night. She may never make it on the after-dinner circuit. But in this instance, she did tell it as she saw it. Is that so awful?

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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