On the one hand we have our famously
reclusive Prime Minister, holding down the nation's most visible job
and, beyond tweeting a few shots of his beloved cat, keeping his
daily dealings as hush-hush as possible. He lards a Senate he once
offered to abolish — nothing new, that, and voters expected no
less. And of course it takes some time, as these stories tend to, but
eventually it comes out that some of these appointments are indulging
either in some creative accounting, or are being spectacularly sloppy
with their expense claims. It takes a little longer — some think a
little too long — but
eventually heads are rolling.
On the other hand we have the Mayor of
Toronto, who can't seem to do anything privately — including,
ostensibly, taking a toot off a glass pipe. His sense of entitlement
is wildly evident, his capacity for self-indulgence and bold
ineptitude a matter of public record. But he got to where he is by
being “just folks,” and — more importantly — by capitalizing
on a garbage strike that really, really, really pissed off the
people who actually vote.
I never dreamed the stink of that
strike could become such a distant memory so very quickly, but the
Ford Brothers and their Collapsing Circus of Casualties have done the
impossible.
It's the “circus” element that
surprises, delights, disgusts. The people in the spotlight are all
seasoned performers — once-proficient jugglers now baffled by the
directions the balls are bouncing. In the case of former Senators
Duffy and Wallin, we're talking about television journalists,
fer cryin' out loud: people who covered the beat.
Their Senate appointments relieved them of all professional expectations to be
The Measured Voice of Reason, and introduced them to the rowdy world
of partisan banquets and barbecues, where they guzzled Cutty Sark and
delivered Catty Snark. Heady drinks, indeed, to so besozzle these
former journos into forgetting precisely what morsels of indiscretion
inevitably bring the Fifth Estate sniffing into corners one typically
thinks of as “private.” No doubt the two of them are hard at work
on “It's somebody else's fault” memoirs. By the time they're
published, Harper won't have any teeth left to grind. And if he
appeared to be paranoid and overly-controlling before this broke,
wait'll you see what's next.
As for the Ford
Brothers, I'm forced to recall one of George Carlin's quieter footnotes: “Where do people think these politicians come from?”
We've
all been to High School. We all know swaggerers from privileged homes
who dealt a little (or a lot) of hash, and who gradually parlayed
that swagger into “respectability.” Now take a glance at the Ford
Brothers.
You
don't need a PhD in Psychology to read their body language — they
think they're still in
High School.
The front page news isn't news to anyone who's awake. C'mon: we know
the Ford Brothers. It's the
people who do the quiet work, the drudge work, the difficult
work, in the hallways and
offices and church basements and school gymnasiums we're not so
familiar with — because that's the sort of work and those are the
types of places we'd rather avoid.
Sound
like I'm pointing fingers? Fine: I'm even lazier than you are. So let
me advocate my standard of staying informed as the bare minimum for
responsible citizenry. And here's the good news: it's pathetically
easy!
Google
the councillors in your riding. Google the candidates from the last
election. They've all got Twitter-feeds (or Facebook pages). Now add them — all of them — to yours. The ones that are the most
boring, that are begging you to attend a re-zoning meeting while
you're watching the Monday night hockey game, are the ones to pay
attention to and the ones you probably ought to be promoting in your
own little way.
If we
all do that, maybe — just maybe — we can keep dealers and goons out of
City Hall.
yep
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