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Thursday February 21,
2008
Canadian politics - where's the drugs,
where's the sex?
If we're going to ape the Murkins, let's
get it right.
Ottawa
Mayor Larry O'Brien
has magnanimously
offered to step aside,
but only for a few weeks during his trial for influence peddling
scheduled for April 2009. The recent pre-trial apparently found
enough
evidence to warrant a trial, but it's over a year away - no doubt after
a federal election has taken place. Coincidence? Well, John
Baird
wants to get re-elected, doesn't he? (see The Baird
Connection)
In the
meantime, Larry continues to
have his way with City Hall. The lone voice of sanity among the
councillors, it seems, is Councillor Alex Cullen, who expresses quite
sensibly the
concerns of those of us who know the difference between running a
city with integrity and pushing through the corporate-driven agenda
that is oozing
downward through every level of government - clearing the way for
Canada to become a US state.
Scary Larry is typical of what it takes nowadays to get ahead.
Being
filthy rich is important. Being charged with a crime is even more
important. But Larry needs to beware - the wait for the trial is
too
long and public interest is already fading. Announcing plans
to marry a young trophy McBride
doesn't cut it. All silly old rich coots do that. She's
going to need
to tearfully confess, at some point as the trial date approaches, to
something really petty and personal, like shoplifting caused by being
high on prescription drugs.
Or maybe she could reveal that she's bulimic! Caught with her
fingers
down her throat in the washroom of Hy's Steakhouse - where Baird and
O'Brien met to discuss strategy - after wolfing down a second helping
of the house special - wouldn't that be special!
Chillingly,
right after the radio announcement of Larry's trial date being set,
there was a series of paid testimonials for John Baird.
"Sure he's loud - but that's how he gets things done for
Canada" says an "ordinary" Ottawan. Another confides that John Baird
saved Ottawa from an expensive transit
system.
Maybe that was better left unsaid, since it pretty much confirms being
sympatico with Larry and
interfering in municipal politics.
None of this is going to help the Conservatives gain a majority.
Influence peddling is a serious, but boring crime. So was Ad Scam
for
the Liberals. It's not being offset by sympathy bids.
Even the Mulroney/Schreiber/Harper
affair has worn thin. If Mila checked into a rehab centre, that
could
help. Otherwise, there's nothing for the "ordinary" Canadian,
steeped
in American reality TV, uninterested in complicated political
crimes,
and who doesn't usually bother to vote anyway.
Take Trudeau for instance. He made a splash that perpetual
wannabes
like Michael Ignatieff would give their eye teeth to be able to pull
off. But even he couldn't ride on his charisma forever, and he
would
have been too proud (arrogant some called him) to take or offer bribes.
As the mundane business of running the country dragged on, his
popularity waned.
But then Margaret
got all drugged up and did the Stones
(that's how it played on TV at least) and soon Margaret and Pierre were
the constant topic of conversation and the butt of juicy but
affectionate jokes at every vapid cocktail party and backyard barbecue,
and Pierre ended up with a new lease on the PM-ship.
Really, don't you think the problem with the Liberals is that Dion
shows no signs of having a young mistress, or a kid arrested for drunk
driving, or a wife who takes pills and shows off her underwear at
parties?
Don't you think it would help the Conservatives if Laureen Harper were
to steal money from the
kitten kitty
to feed a painkiller habit? Maybe she could coerce a doctor into
prescribing pills for her in the names of other Humane Society
volunteers. Cindy
McCain did something like that
and her husband's fortunes in the US primaries are sky-rocketing.
Mind
you, he was no slacker in the scandal department himself, having been a
member of the
Keating Five, so it's not his wife's credentials alone that are
moving him forward.
Not to mention that the news of John's latest
philandering (Cindy is the result of his having also wandered in
his first marriage) is
giving Obama supporters false hope.
Why John's even knocked off Rudy Giuliani, a fake 9/11 hero for gawd's
sake! And why? For the same reason that the National Inquirer is
a
much bigger hit than the National Post. People love it when
celebs
turn out to have the same icky flaws they do. That's why the Clintons
haven't had to keep low profiles, and why the current president is a
dry drunk who can't talk straight. And who can forget that Betty
Ford
was in rehab centres so often they named one after her.
Canadians are just about ripe for garbage like this. A good test
would be if Laureen
were to catch Steve in flagrant delicti with the devoted
woman who grooms his rug
and tell all to the media! Something, anything that would make
him
seem less like a hunk of plastic and her too much of a goody twoshoes
housewife. Let's face
it; nobody likes the perfect couple in any crowd - unless the woman has
cancer, say, and the husband stays by her side through it all.
Rudy made a mistake in getting cancer himself, and keeping his sexual
exploits a secret past their best by date.
"Battling"
cancer (even if it's only Ductal
Carcinoma In Situ
and not life threatening) and courageously "beating" it - that's a huge
media grabber! I had one of those myself 40 years ago and missed
my
opportunity. But we didn't have the influence of so many TV
doctor
shows and sad, sad croaker movies, and news outlets desperate to sell
copy, so we just called them cysts, and the cyst, not the breast, was
surgically removed, and recurrences were generally unknown.
Have you noticed that the snickers about Belinda's ill-fated
relationship with Petie Mackay have ceased? And her sneaking
around with married Tie Domi hasn't hurt her a bit. It's
verboten to speak ill of the dead (not even of Nixon and Reagan) or of
people "battling cancer".
Everything in medicine is a big drama nowadays - Canadian politicians
need to take more advantage of that. When it turns out to be no big
deal after all, the rewards will already have been reaped.
Harper is mistaken if he thinks he can get by with just TV ads that
make Dion out to be weak and stupid. At the very least, he might
try
getting caught on camera eating his own ear wax and tossing in a
drunken blackout that includes lap-dancing for good measure. That
did
wonders for Australia's new PM.
Big
complicated financial sins have only so much mileage; juicy
indiscretions are the way to go! Let's get with it, Canada!
HarperWatch
O'Brien/Kilrea/Baird
Scandal
=================
Okay, for those who prefer to stick to the issues, the Harper Index has
a good list of Harper's shortcomings or assets, depending on who's
looking:
Harper's
Framing: Review of eleven key issues reveals mixed results
And the CBC reports that Harper has announced a
"hard" end date of 2011 for the troop deployment in Kandahar,
but not for deployment in Afghanistan. This is just cute little
trick
that the Allcons and the Libcons are jointly playing, stressing the end
date but leaving the door wide open for unending war.
yayacanada
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