I've been writing a weekly television column for over eight years now. It was the successor to the golf column I took over in the summer of 2001. Once the snows of November 2001 arrived there was no longer a need for a golf column in Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada. The paper offered me a skiing column but that would just been a sad joke on the universe. My personal view of skiing is the same as my view of sharks: both are best viewed through window glass in comfortable, warm surroundings.
But the paper wanted me to keep writing so they asked me for a suggested topic. I thought about it for a day and replied: "Television." Why? As everything imaginable is presented on television, therefore by extension I could write about everything imaginable. I didn't mention that part at the time. A good subversive never flips his hole cards until all the money's on the table.
But I had a capable and generous editor named Ian Pattison for the first six years of the column. He saw what I was up to and he liked it. And the combination of editorial freedom, regular space and a paycheck is literally food and drink to a writer.
My favourite running topic over the years of Inside Television ( a Greatest Hits blog is coming soon) has been politics. I've always lived by Winston Churchill's advisement that politics is the only game worthwhile for adults to play. Plus there is no greater reality series than the packaging and promotion of political figures and occasionally political ideas.
But while it is justifiable to burn columns during a Presidential Election in the U.S. or a Federal Election in Canada, I have to be mindful that every now and then I actually should review a conventional television show. But the political thoughts keep flowing, so therefore the existence of this on-line column. Sic transit gloria bunker.
And it is a curious political time in Canada, the U.S. and Britain. You could throw in France, Russia, Iran and a lot of other nations but this is a column, not a damn textbook. So we'll confine our comments to the English speaking peoples of the Northern Hemisphere.
Nobody seems very happy, now do they? The Americans finally get a semblance of Health Care, which was a clear plank of Barack Obama's campaign, which won him a landslide and ecstatic love from the people, and now his approval rating plops along at an indecisive and shoulder-shrugging level of 50%. Gordon Brown may be prickly and evidently not qualified for nomination as Employer of the Year, yet internationally there seems to be fair consensus that if any political leader deserves some individual credit for saving the world from complete economic collapse in the fall of 2008, it would be Brown. And yet Brown is floundering like a man tangled in bedsheets trying to get to the bathroom to pee. Brown and Labour are in bad shape leading to the General Election against the Conservatives and David Cameron. Cameron's only strength appears to be that compared to Margaret Thatcher, Cameron is much more gentle and motherly.
But Canada is the strangest case of all. Were there bad times from the world economic migraine of 2008? Well yes, of course there were. There were job losses, the price of oil tanked and the darn environmentalists started to notice that Alberta's Oil Sands are dirtier than the last pair of underwear you put on before laundry day.
But things could be worse. Because we are a huge and boring country ruled by a civil service which loves to re-invent and expand itself, Canada has huge and boring banking and financial regulations. Yay for us! Yay we're boring! Yay - three of our chartered banks are now in the top 20 banks in the world because our Federal Government told them to never mind what those kids down the street get to do, you're my son and I say it's bedtime at 9 mister! And now Britain and the U.S. look at our banking system and coo all over it - not that either country has the cojones (or should it be coin-jones?) to actually so anything about it. Instead, onwards march the eight figure bonus checks and the discretionary trading, among other things.
So you would think that as Canadians are a reasonably bright people and know that we only took flesh wounds in a fire fight that still might take out Greece and the Republic of Ireland. Even though the history of financial regulation in Canada goes back much further than the government of Stephen Harper's Conservatives, you would nonetheless think that a grateful nation would instinctively send its thanks with high polling numbers.
But no! Harper remains in a virtual tie with Michael Ignatieff's Liberal Party which has less of a platform than that imaginary front deck your Uncle Harry keeps talking about building one of these years. Why? Why is my country being like this?
Because my Prime Minister is an Idiot. Harper is not a man to suffer fools lightly. That in itself is not a bad thing. Pierre Trudeau was much the same way. The difference is that Harper casts anyone and everyone who criticizes or even questions him as a fool. That doesn't play well in the long run.
For instance, there is pretty strong evidence that the Canadian military with at least the benign acceptance of the related bureaucracies regularly turned over Afghan prisoners to Afghan government authorities. Besides being one more boot print on the now heavily trodden Geneva Convention, such a policy breaks a stack of Canadian laws on treatment of prisoners as well as cruel and unusual punishment. Besides which, the practice loses against a reasonable man test, defined here as a test question:
Your Uncle Harry is pulled over by the police for running a red light. The police are Afghans and Uncle Harry is in Kandahar. Do you ever see Uncle Harry again? Discuss.
Do I think that the Oppositions' statements are true? That the military did turn over prisoners and that Ottawa was complicit? Yes I do. Most people with a pulse think that is true. The government could and should admit that, "Ehhhhh...it's a war zone. Some of these guys, maybe all these guys are legitimate bad asses. You want us to train the Afghans in how to be a grown up legal country? We give 'em something to practice on." Now obviously you phrase it better than that, but that is the gist of the defence. The country goes, "oh" the NDP still hates you, but everybody moves on. Simple stuff. Admit you're wrong. Stop doing what you were doing. Turn over the evidence. Move on.
Instead, the Prime Minister goes into full raving bat freak mode, refuses to turn over the evidence to Parliament and shuts down the House of Commons saying that everybody wanted to watch the Olympics. Spectacularly lame yet simultaneously arrogant, the stunt has cost by my gut feeling about 10% in the polls. The difference, in other words, between a majority government and possibly even losing the whole election.
Petulance is not pretty.
So my Prime Minister is an Idiot. How's your guy doing?
Be seeing you.
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