Issues like Tissues - Why Voters Eschew

Sometimes you gotta go with your gut ...

Politics for Joe
Issues like Tissues - Why Voters Eschew
October 9, 2010

I have promised, and I mean to keep that promise, that this will not become a parochially interested, Thunder Bay municipality column. we will be switching into Federal election mode shortly, and whatever happens in the American mid-terms - as volatile a situation as I’ve ever seen, even more than the Newt Gingrich Revolution of 1998 - will impact the Canadian election. The reason for the latter of course is that every lazy pundit in Canada will spend column inches and televised minutes speculating on the impact of the American mid-terms on the Canadian election.

To expand on the latter, if say the Tea Party ... (having trouble finding non-derogatory noun) ... faction does extraordinarily well, the Serious Faces of the Ottawa Press Club will tell us that we’re all about to lurch to the right. And Lurch of course was the name of the butler on The Munsters.

Canadians being Canadians, we will do the opposite - should that scenario occur, which I rather doubt. If the safest bet in politics is that a split opposition favours the incumbent (see last week), the second safest is that Ontario at the very least will always attempt to impose a balance. I worked in David Peterson’s government for a brief time in the 1980s.  Peterson flat-out knew that the John Turner-led implosion of the Federal Liberals in the 1984 election would create a favourable wind for him to launch the ultimately successful 1985 provincial campaign.  I’ve always suspected that Peterson played nice-nice with Brian Mulroney in the Meech Lake Constitutional Talks - a decision that largely led to Peterson’s defeat - in order to keep Mulroney in power, to maintain the balance. In my wildest dreams I would never expect Peterson to affirm this speculation. But I maintain my suspicions.

So we’ll have all those things to talk about, but for now there is a municipal campaign going on and I do believe that my observations on Thunder Bay can well apply to your town. Just play the game of (Insert Name Here).

Today, The Chronicle-Journal printed its Election 2010 insert. While not an act of altruism on the part of the daily newspaper, candidates very much pay Market Rates for their inclusion, space in in would be a Must -Buy were I running a local campaign. If a Council or School Board candidate has been hitting their electorate with targeted pamphlets and a well-organized canvass, then not. But i haven’t heard of one of those yet.

By the way, i happily and openly encourage candidates to use the comments section to prove me wrong. I would be delighted to be wrong. But please supply evidence to sustain your argument.

In any event, I have never seen such a wheelbarrow-sized boring lump of cold tapioca as the majority of candidate messages. Here is Political Campaigning ABC:

A - Identify the critical issue (or issues, but no more than three)
B - Stimulate discussion of the issue
C- Make a clear statement as to why it is that your election will create a positive outcome for the issue

You need Me to do This so That will happen.

Everything else is just klieg lights and soundtracks. What I’m seeing in the ads and statements presented by the candidates are a bunch of people who are (or who know) absolute ninjas at the look of a desktop publishing presentation but write as though they’re running for captain of the cheerleading squad.

Want examples? Of course you want examples. That’s why you read political columns. Allow me to deal just with the three principal mayoralty candidates. I will be commenting on one Ward race in a few paragraphs, but by and large I don’t feel right hammering at neighbourhood guys and gals who are new to this Blood Sport and have no interest other than trying to fix stuff that’s been bugging them and their friends for years.

But you run for Mayor - to drill deeper into last week’s topic - you’re saying to the public, ‘I’m a Pro.’ You’re the coach that’s winning us the Stanley Cup. You’re what Toronto had with David Crombie, or Chicago had with the retiring Richard Daley, or heck what Duluth MN had with Gary Doty. You have swingers like wrecking balls and you’re going to yank this city into sanity.

In other words, you screw up, you should know better.

You have to meet the expectations of the office.

So let’s look at the Big Three of Hobbs, Peterson and Pullia. My apologies to the Little Three but ... why are you doing this? Never, ever enter a race you’re neither going to win or pull a decent second. Killing makes you effective and a shark. Being butchered means that your ideas are subservient to your ego, as otherwise you would have run at a level where you might actually succeed at implementing them.

So in  order of their appearance in the C-J supplement - and by the way, when did ‘advertorial’ first enter the Oxford English Dictionary? - let’s look first at Keith Hobbs. And do bear in mind that this is the message exactly the way the candidate’s team wanted it presented.

Hobbs’ slogan: ‘Thunder Bay can’t move forward by looking back.’
My Comment: Meaningless. Also calls to mind the phrase, ‘Those that do not know history are doomed to repeat it.’

Promise: ‘a new approach’ on a variety of issues.
My Comment:Consisting of what exactly? Random family kidnappings and hostage demands would be a new approach. I don’t mean to suggest this is what Hobbs proposes, but are we talking about conciliation, persuasion, I caught you with a dead sheep ... what exactly is this new approach?

Turning to the ‘advertorial’, the first bulleted point - where the eye travels to - is: ‘(We need to:) Have a taxation level that is affordable for homeowners and allows our business community to remain competitive

I can’t write the exact phrase I want to write for fear of making advertisers vanish like a May snow, so let me just comment:

Yeah well, I hope my Mom likes her new Easter bonnet.

What is the implication for that comment? Are we talking tax breaks for all? Or if it’s just “we’ll try and hold the line on mill rates”, that is not the sort of issue that is going to drive people into the street with pitchforks and torches.

Which is what a pure Outsider campaign has to have happen in order to win.

Keith Hobbs, if you happen to read this, I’m not loving you or hating you because I don’t know you. I don’t have a picture in my head of what your Administration will look like. You’re doing Nixon running from the Rose Garden when the only thing that will elect you is an insurgency. You need to go bold when the Transit strike hits. Check that. You need to go bold before the Transit strike hits. Playing it tight may seem the way to go, but I remind you that Doyle Brunson won the World Series of Poker Main Event twice on the same hand: 10-2.

Sometimes you have to play the 10-2.

Turning a page or two in the supplement, we come to Lynn Peterson. She is running the classic incumbent campaign. Every young actor wants to do ‘To Be or Not to Be’ as their audition piece. Every incumbent runs on the record. The first lines of text in her ad are: ‘Change doesn’t just happen - it comes from careful planning and sound decision making.’

Comment: So the subtext is, ‘Vote for me. I’m not crazy.’

Well now, there’s an inspiring message. I used to work for a multi-billion dollar company whose trainer said to use the sales pitch to prospective clients, ‘We’re Big, We’re Old, We’re  Boring.’ Same message, different product. Appeal to the risk-averse.

As a general principle, I can’t argue with the approach. Once you’ve been around for awhile  - and four years is way too long a term in my opinion - it is very hard to difficult to re-invent one’s self as someone new. Lady Gaga in a Lady Gaga costume is hot and intriguing. Cher in a Lady gaga costume is - um - wow - do you think you can still get away with that?

And now of course I have this really awkward and upsetting image of Lynn Peterson in snow white 10 inch flat heel boots with five snow white ostrich feathers sprouting over her head.

I suffer for my art.

The thing is, Peterson’s campaign is so based on her hole cards - what I have will defeat that which comes - that I still say she is wide open to what the Republicans in the U.S. refer to as the October Surprise. The aforementioned possible transit strike. A sudden mass layoff. What about one of the other candidates lobbing a grenade into the mix like:

Did you know? that Bird Construction, awarded the contract for building the new Provincial Courthouse, whose disruption to the Transit system has forced the City of Thunder Bay to turn its City Hall into a bus depot at considerable expense - did you know that they are planning on flying in workers and putting them up in hotgels rather than, you know, hiring locally?

If - if - I’m running a campaign against Lynn Peterson or any incumbent I’m going to say hot that kind of gut issue about 20 minutes into a 1 hour debate, just when everyone is getting a little satisfied and bored and light up the room. I’m going to play that you don’t have a ready answer for  that kind of attack, you’re going to try and bury it in bureaucratic jargon and I’m going to look like a hero.

The only counter is to have a clear understanding with the public that the process used in decision-making is completely on the side of the people’s raw needs - jobs, shelter, food, health. I am not feeling that narrative from the Peterson campaign. The split opposition vote will carry her through but ... if events and the other side get smart and ruthless ... I’d want to be prepared.

As for Frank Pullia, this seems bizarre to say, but the slogan ‘CHANGE you can TRUST’ is both as ham-handed as Arnold Ziffel and sooooo 2008. You’d think it would work - Pullia obviously does - because those are the elements you want the public to want. Change - throw the bums out. Trust - throw in non-bums. But this Obama-echo is so obvious and so photocopied that it becomes worse than meaningless; it is annoying in its meaninglessness.

I certainly don’t mean to rag on Pullia. I’ve met Pullia and he seems a decent and sincere man but a top Priority of, ‘Job Creation through economic development & growth’ is like saying ‘Let’s stop earthquakes!’ Yay! Stop earthquakes! Yay! How are we going to do this!?!? Tell me!

... why do I hear the sound of crickets chirping?

And it is no good to point to a fat binder on a shelf and say, “Oh? you want to see the plan? Well, here - THUD.” Nobody’s going to ask. You have to be able to tell people in 50 words or less who you are, what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. And yes it’s hard and yes that’s why political pros make lots and lots of money.

But always, with every decision in a campaign, the only thought process that counts is, ‘What decision can I make that will help me win? What decision can I make that might destroy me?’ And the lines can sometimes (usually) be hard to discern. But sometimes you gotta cross that line. What do you want to be? the runner who scores or is thrown out at home plate; or the runner stranded at third because he didn’t go first to home on a double?

All of which is why I’m only endorsing one candidate in this election (an endorsement which I am sure will result in a voter shift measuring in the ones): Jay Stapleton, running for City Council in Red River Ward. I refer you to his blog at http://jaystapleton.blogspot.com/ for informed, reasoned, firm yet equally understanding of the public’s desire for transparent processes. I hope he makes it. And if he pushes his message hard, he can.

Be seeing you.

Survival Tips for the Hotel Traveler

When your travel agent hates you ...

I am the Night Auditor at a medium-size hotel in a medium-size city. Naturally, on my annual tax return I list my occupation as Professional Writer. It’s somehow comforting to picture soulless bureaucrats in the Regional Tax Office reading that and then imagining poets with windswept hair swept by the wind into a Yorkshire pub, lit by the moon of a ghostly galleon a Bronte sister clinging to each arm. The soulless bureaucrats will then picture their own lives as devoid of romance for they themselves are timid as neurotic mice. They will then proceed to slam shut their tin desk drawers for the last time and hurl themselves out to the street - preferably via the sixth floor window. Well, preferable to me anyway.

The combination of Hotel Clerk and Professional Writer really is the best of both worlds. I know that the mortgage will be paid. I know that I will have a good two hours between 2-4AM where I can write without having to take the dog out for a widdle. I get to claim things like PPV movies and new games for the kids at Christmas as ‘work-related research expenses.’ Plus - bonus! - I get to strip mine the Hotel experience and turn it into wordsmithed gold. Please send your used jewellery and watches to ...

... but I digress

Truthfully, I feel sorry for travelers. I’ve been one and I serve many. I know what it’s like when the wireless internet boots you out; at places where you have to pay for it, that experience can take you straight from a tea-sipping Bill Bixby to a raging Lou Ferrigno in seconds. Seconds that you’re paying for.

Either the worst or best thing that ever happened to me as a hotel guest was a few years back in Hamilton, Ontario. I’d been in hospital for a quadruple bypass and my darling bride to be and me checked into a grand old downtown hotel the night before flying back home. The only reason I don’t mention the name of the hotel is that the following could happen to any of us.

We check into the room - all cornice and mouldings and we drew back the cover on the bed ... to find a saucy little pair of black lace panties curled across the blanket like a relaxed kitten. I’m not sure that much laughter is exactly recommended for recuperating patients, but I’m still here so the risk was evidently minimal. And it was nice to see that the housekeeping staff was offered recreational benefits by management.

In the morning, we returned the panties to the front desk clerk - of course it was a young woman - would you have expected anything else? The first thing I said, as the panties were laid (bad choice of words) across the plexiglass counter was, ‘These aren’t ours.’

People will tip the damnedest things you know.

And by the way, just after writing the above I took a walk around the hotel. One section smelt very much of Novice Hooker No. 5 cologne. I take that back. Definitely perfume and not cologne for the oil is still clinging like Glad Wrap to my nostrils. This is not a good thing.

As the point to this article is to advice, assist and coach the readers for whom ‘hotel travel’ is frequently misheard as ‘penitentiary time’ we might as lead with that.

Tip Number One: If you smell like a hooker, don’t blame us if we look at you like you’re a hooker.

I mean, it’s not like we desk clerks haven’t seen one or fifty in our time. And that was just Tuesday night in room 202. This in turn leads to a certain hotel truth:

We don’t care if you bring in a hooker. Honest. We’d rather have you sexed up and sighing than tanked up and screaming.

Seriously. I was a hearty drinker of laughing beverages until I had to start explaining to drunks just why it was that I was going to kick their sorry ass out into the street, you can deal with me or deal with the cops, it’s your choice sunshine. No fun there. Plus it interrupst my writing time.

So, I respectfully request your assistance in my writing career.

Tip Number Two: For God’s sake complain!

If you’re placed in a room next to Bubba, Dave and their good buddy Jack Daniels please let the desk know so we can get to them before Dave starts to demonstrate his old high school hurdling technique over the office chair (and into the flat screen). Actually, wait a moment. I need to add a sub-clause to this tip.

Tip Number Two A): Complain RIGHT AWAY!

There is nothing more frustrating than checking out a guest in the morning, asking ‘How was your stay?’ and the hearing a list of complaints that would do Martin Luther proud. This may come as a shock, but while I may moonlight (literally) at a hotel, The Amazing Kreskin does not. We can’t fix what we aren’t told.

Which is not to say that we can always fix what we are told. You would be amazed at the number of guests who will hand a desk clerk a brand new laptop right out of the wrapper and ask one us to configure it to the internet. Well, there goes the next hour of my life in futile pursuit of something which may bear no fruit for either of us. Which is another hotel truth:

The hotel desk clerk is neither your neighbourhood bartender, your free psychologist, nor your personal life coach.

Ask me for a tip on a restaurant, directions to the nearest Tim Horton’s Doughnut Shop, or what time the Wal-Mart opens and I’m there for you. Do not expect me to assist with the activities mentioned earlier, as two guests did a while ago.

Two brothers were staying at the hotel where I work. They were, shall we say, of a foreign extraction. You may now think of your favourite racial stereotype. Well, the boys come smartly up to the desk, shoulder to shoulder like Chang and Eng Bunker and ask me, in these words, ‘Please, can you assist us in finding your local prostitutes?’

good times.

I was never so thankful that the yellow page in the desk phone book that listed Escort Agencies had been torn out.

You know what they say, Here today, gone Gomorrah.

The last tip I have goes straight to your wallet, where the Good Things live.

Tip Number Three: Ask

Our hotel chain offers a 10% discount to Auto Club members - CAA, AAA and their off-shoots. There’s even a sign on the door advertising this. Yet I know that many a hotel guest has driven off after having paid Rack rate. It’s easy to tell. The AAA bumper sticker over the left taillight is a pretty good clue.

For years, I got anywhere from a 5% to 10% discount when checking in to hotels by just asking for the ‘Liberal Party of Canada discount.’ I was never turned down, ever, neither in Canada nor the United States. And it’s not like it was a lie. I did have a $10 membership card in my wallet as documentary back-up, which I was never asked to produce. That $10 probably saved me around $500 in a two year period.

I’ll post more of these as I think of them. In the meantime, feel free to post your own tips in the comments section below.

Be seeing you.

Politics for Joe: Municipal Election Notes

a disguised LBJ announces his candidacy for Mayor of Thunder Bay

In all likelihood, your home town is in the middle of a hot municipal election campaign. Lawn signs with bold phrases and eye-dazzling colours stand like proud, crisp soldiers lining the streets of your neighbourhoods. Of course, after the first good rain they turn into limp and ragged hobos, serving as markers for the dogs marking the streets of your neighbourhood.

Equal to that in likelihood is the probability that the hottest, headline-grabbing-est race is that for Mayor. As I write this in Thunder Bay, Ontario there’s an interesting enough race for the Big Gold Chain among incumbent Lynn Peterson, multiple times contender Councillor Frank Pullia and past President of the Thunder Bay Police Association Keith Hobbs, a political neophyte who seems to be carrying whatever momentum there is. (Thunder Bay wouldn’t know a properly run poll if it sat on one. I’m going by lawn signs and conversation.) That said, were I a betting man - and I am - I’d raise if I had Peterson as one of my hole cards. Pullia will run third, but he will draw enough votes to split the anti-incumbent chunk of the electorate.

That’s no brilliant piece of insight. Matter of fact, it may be the most basic rule of first past the post politics. It even works on higher levels than municipal politics. I remember that early Master, Bill davis the Tory Premier of Ontario would bat his eyes lovingly at the NDP’s Stephen Lewis in election run-ups to chop the knees off Bob Nixon or Stuart Smith’s Liberal Opposition.

Of course, the whole deal could still blow up in Peterson’s face. If there actually is a Transit strike that remains unsettled by the time the city goes to the polls on October 25, Thunder Bay is going to look for somebody to blame and like a scythe seeking the tallest wheat sheaf, it will take down the Mayor.

Politics truly is a narrative and a fairly simple one at that - it’s a story that seeks a happy ending and when it doesn’t find one it wants the villain destroyed. We look for Heroes. Sometimes we think we elect Heroes and when they or their times are unable to produce suitable heroic miracles they are re-cast as Villains. Obama is desperately fighting that role change leading in to the American mid-terms.

The irony is if there is a Transit strike or similar cataclysm that will shake public confidence past the tipping point, a majority of the returning 10 Councillors seeking re-election will in fact achieve that goal. Historically, the name recognition factor of incumbency trumps discontent.

Last note on Thunder Bay, as the reach of this column is greater than Thunder Bay. (That said, I’ve long held the theory that Thunder Bay is the absolute sweet spot microcosm of Canada. Yes we have two NDP MPs sitting against a pretty solid Tory minority; I’m talking mood.) This has been a terribly run campaign on the part of all contenders. It boggles my mind that here we are into October and there hasn’t been one householder pamphlet arrived in my mailbox. Lady and gentlemen, let me say this slowly to you - the internet ain’t the whole game. People have to seek you out on the internet. You have to seek them out. Plus, if you aren’t identifying your vote by a canvass, then I don’t know why you’re even running. The City is hoping - this is the optimistic number - for a 50% turnout. A candidate polling at 20%, who turns out that 20% to the polls on election day can turn that into a 40% plurality.

The question I really have is: why bother? Why bother running for Mayor? Allow me to quote from the Canadian Encyclopedia:

‘In contrast to the practice in some US cities in which duties such as budget formation and appointment of certain administration officers are the responsibility of the mayor, the significance of this office in Canada does not stem from the assignment of such powers but rather from its high profile, although a mayor with a forceful personality may also be a strong leader. Variously described as "the chief officer," "the chief executive officer" or "the head of council" in provincial statutes, the mayor has little power independent of the municipal council.’

So, to borrow Tom Wolfe’s wonderful phrase, in return for a potential MauMauing as a Flack Catcher by a vengeful public what does a Mayor really get? Bigger salary, travel, the Big Gold Chain and a supreme knowledge of the contents of every buffet table in the town. But as wonderful a thing as a ‘forceful personality’ may be that is not a particularly powerful weapon in this particular version of World of Warcraft. Essentially, that can only be effective if the Mayor is able to assemble and lead vote by vote coalitions, in the manner of a municipal Lyndon Johnson; and/or if the Mayor is able to convince reluctant Councillor that they will be turfed out on their ear if they don’t get onside ... in the manner of a municipal Lyndon Johnson.

But good for all of those who seek the office. Sincerely, 99.5% of the people who run for office sincerely do so in order to do Good. Their idea of Good may not be your idea of Good, but you know what? I am guilty as any other pundit of occasionally calling various elected representatives hyperactive power-grasping space iguanas waiting for the mother ship to arrive so they can finally shed their disguise of human skin. Hyperbole and mockery have been viable tools of political commentary since the Age of Pericles. Aristophanes was the Rick Mercer of the day. But none of the politicians, anyone short of Hitler, deserve hatred. They’re just doing what they do. It’s up to us to bring order to the herd. Be seeing you.

Mickie James

Inside Television 521

Publication date: 10-01-10

By: Hubert O’Hearn

This is a story that I hope turns into a continuing story for two reasons. The first reason - selfishly - is that it will fill many a column inch tracking a television show right from its absolute genesis as an idea. The second reason - unselfishly - is that I think the prospective star is someone that I think has earned her shot at possibly become a very big, very wealthy, star. Allow me to introduce you to Mickie James. And this is much more than a wrestling story.

Mickie James is a young woman who first came into televised view as a WWE Diva wrestler from 2005 until her release from that company earlier this year. I well remember her debut. Mickie played an unbelievably perky obsessed fan of Toronto’s own Trish Stratus. Mickie would run out to happy happy joy joy music, waving pompoms and cheering for Trish. She liked Trish. She liked Trish a whole lot. She liked Trish more than the increasingly-nervous Trish liked her. Complications arose. And for once a women’s wrestling angle was allowed to play out for more than, oh, about three weeks of Raw and three minutes of wrestling. We’ll get back to that.

It helped that among the WWE Divas, Mickie and Trish could actually wrestle. You might think that would be a prerequisite before being signed to Vince McMahon's gigantic promotion, but you’d be wrong. Very wrong. Vince casts his Divas for their swimsuit appeal, not for their ability to recreate the best moves of Lou Thesz.

But for five years, Mickie was the best of both worlds - cute as a button with a  massive army of loyal fans, good matches with any other Diva who could tell an armbar from a crowbar, and was rewarded as a five-time Champion. Being anointed as a  Champion by WWE (or any other company) really does mean something - it means Vince thinks you’re a star and can earn Vince money. Simple as that. And great as long as Vince likes you.

As sports commentator Jim Rome once said, ‘There’s no doubt about it. Vince McMahon is the bad seed.’ When Vince dislikes or grows bored with a wrestler, before the release inevitably containing the words ‘We wish (insert name) all the best in (his/her) future endeavors’, he attempts to destroy the wrestler’s appeal. What if they started earning money for TNA, or WCW back in the day? Can’t be having that! Vince would then appear to be - egad! - wrong. Vince doesn’t do wrong well.

So, the wrestler might be turned heel, so he or she won’t be welcomed by another promotion’s fans as a conquering hero. Or, they might be jobbed out - put on a long losing string so they lose their athletic appeal. Or Vince might just make fun of you in as demeaning a fashion as possible. That’s what he did to Mickie James. He had other Divas on Smackdown repeatedly say that Mickie was -

Fat.


Piggy James. Fat fat ickity ick. Now, I do invite the reader to look at the young woman in the accompanying picture. If that is fat, then I’m the Mighty Mouse balloon in the Macy’s Parade. So what Vince was doing made no sense, but in his mind the absolute cruelest thing he could happen to a woman was to be accused of losing her sex appeal. Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Queen Elizabeth the First might beg to differ, but none of them were wrestlers. Margaret Thatcher would have made one heck of a manager of a heel faction however. Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo might have saved WCW if they’d put Thatcher in the N.W.O. My apologies if this is getting too inside. We’re done with the wrestling part mostly.

Mickie had and has a second talent. She is a country singer and songwriter, mostly of the hard-playin’ James Gang style. Just after her release from WWE she released an album called Strangers & Angels, available on iTunes. So, as the late Stan Rogers used to say, it was time ‘to hit the highways and the byways, singing the songs of our land.’

As any musician will tell you (and tell you and tell you) life on the road is not easy - bars, fairs and shopping mall openings. Mickie being a known quantity with a fan base has an edge, but it’s an edge that is only as good as a letter of introduction. After that, it’s up to the singer and the songs to sell themselves.

Sounds like a reality series to me, as it does to Mickie and her manager. She still takes the occasional independent wrestling gig, has name recognition, a traveling story, and most importantly she has the character to draw a smile. People like to smile.

The idea is going to be pitched to various networks and I’m going to track it for you. Until then - Be seeing you.

(Mickie James' own website can be found here)

Politics for Joe: Sympathy for the Devil

Stephen Harper addresses the UN
 ... oh sorry, John C. Reilly singing Mr. Cellophane

You might think that a deliberative body comprised of the supposed crème de la crème of the world’s diplomatic corps would know better. On Thursday of this past week, Harper addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations regarding the failure to reach the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. The problem, was, not much of the Assembly chose to assemble. The last of thirteen leaders to speak on that day - Obama batted lead-off - the video evidence shows an audience of a dozen or two at best at the celebrated and massive hall. Unpopular people have better attended funerals. (Then again, as Red Skelton famously said upon the occasion of Columbia Pictures’ dictatorial Harry Cohn having a jam-packed funeral, ‘You give people what they want to see, they’ll show up.’)

It takes a lot for me to raise much sympathy for Harper. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had an easier time of it with the Devil. In this case though, my knee has jerked at the rubber hammer landing a blow to national pride. I’m sorry, but we deserve a little more than Rodney Dangerfield respect.

The undoubtedly hastily conceived cover line is that several of the earlier speeches had gone long. There were meetings to be held, negotiations to be negotiated, hearty cocktails to be mixed. All true. But surely diplomatic missions to the UN contain enough secretaries, assistants, stenographers, press officers and interpreters to fill seats while the Big Guy is toasting Cardinal Puff.

In case nobody is feeling either guilty or bothered about this, I quote from Harper’s apeech:

As a founding member of the UN, and the seventh-largest contributor to its finances, Canada has been a consistently reliable and responsible participant in UN initiatives around the world

This was so in the earliest days of the UN.

It was so during the difficult days of the Cold War, of de-colonization and of the struggle against apartheid. It is so today.

Canada continues to pay, for instance, a heavy price to fulfill our UN obligation to support the lawful government of Afghanistan.

We pay it in both the resources of Canadian taxpayers, but also with profound sorrow, in the priceless lives of our young men and women who serve there in the Canadian Armed Forces, as well as, sadly, civilians who have also given their sweat and their lives in the service of both our country, and of the people of Afghanistan.

Granted, Harper is unlikely to be mentioned in the same breath as Lester Pearson when it comes to a diplomatic legacy. It verges on the ironic that the Prime Minister had the chutzpah to speak on the Millennium Development Goals in the first place. Those goals were targeted at the Third World, aiming to eradicate hunger, poverty and gender equality. Well, the present Conservative government cut off aid to eight African nations, frozen aid to the continent as a whole, and the former president of the International AIDS Society Dr. Julian Montaner felt compelled to remark in July of this year, “I am ashamed to say that the government of Canada has punched well below its weight in funding universal access and supporting those affected by HIV and AIDS around the world.” Well, attaway to take an international goal and make it your own.

So, our hands and souls are not perfectly clean. Our support for Israel would warm the hearts of Arthur Balfour, if not T.E. Lawrence. For some reason we seem to be in the midst of a military build-up when the war we are fighting is unwinnable on the battlefield.

Nonetheless, we are fighting that war and for the reasons of loyalty to an idea that it is right and just to sacrifice in order to advance the march of justice and anti-terrorism into the very Heart of Darkness. No matter how one feels about that war, or any of the other policy decisions by Harper’s government, Canada has more to it as a nation than whomever the idiot living in subsidized housing on Sussex Drive is on a given day; just as the United States is more than Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush or Obama.

Yes, it is ironic that a nation small in population yet great in wealth such as Canada manages currently to expend more of the former than of the latter. But our history and much of our present is filled with honour. For that alone, the empty hall was an insult we did not deserve.

Be seeing you.

Hubert O’Hearn
for Lake Superior News
September 27 2010

A Mix of Sports and Strange Metaphors

Violence in footie? Whatever do you mean? Please ignore the cannon.

Inside Television 520
Publication date: 9-24-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn


After a series of fairly heavy columns over the past few weeks, I thought we’d relax a bit on the couch and join the potatoes. I honestly can’t remember who said this - if I was playing Final Jeopardy and had to guess I’d say Tom Wolfe, but I would not feel confident in the wager - but someone or other once said that the one thing every man in America bears in common is that they all used to ‘play a little ball.’ Granted this is Canada, but same difference. the ball can be dimpled, fuzzy yellow, seamed, oblong, palmable, bendable, or chopped melted frozen and renamed puck, but it has been played with. There - there is my ethical justification for doing a sports column this week.

Not that there isn’t industry justification to go with it. I looked up the latest Nielsen Ratings in the US for the week of Sept. 13-19 and there on top was Sunday Night Football with 23.1 million viewers. To find a non-sports, non-news (60 Minutes still running strong) or non-reality show you have to drop down to Number 8 fore NBC’s new courtroom drama Outlaw with 10.68 million viewers. So the hottest thing with actors and writers and things came in with less than half the interest than the Indianapolis Colts doing unspeakable acts of violence upon men who for some reason were wearing undoubtedly stolen New York Giants uniforms.

Then again, unspeakable acts of violence certainly are an entertainment draw. Ask any very old lion you happen to run across, he’ll tell you. ‘Rome. Rome was the days my friend. I was a draw. Emperors, generals, they all caught my act baby. You think that kid Bieber’s hot? I invented hot. Back then, The Mane was The Game...So you want fries with that?’

Granted, it is concerning about a trend I’m detecting towards what Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange called The Ultra-Violence. I’m already on the record opposing the licensing of MMA in Ontario. People will die or be turned into shambling wrecks. Don’t talk to me about ‘safety standards.’ Boxing commissions have ‘safety standards.’ Watch the ESPN 30 for 30 on YouTube about Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes. Now tell me how great MMA is, with less hand padding than boxing and wrestling hooks that even WWE won’t use.

Ah, but how can one be a football fan then? How can one endorse a wide receiver being turned into a spinning broken bird by a strong safety aiming low? And you’re right. It is absolutely hypocritical. But I’m curious to see what the effect of the expansion of the NFL schedule to 18 games will be.

Bill James, who virtually invented baseball saber-metrics (all those strange little statistics running across the bottom of the screen), is also a very good, very funny writer. He once wrote a short essay about violence in baseball - Pete Rose mashing up catcher Ray Fosse in a home plate collision in an all-star game - and wondered how baseball would be played if it had football’s 16 game schedule and football played baseball’s 162.

James felt that the violence levels would flip-flop. The shorter the schedule, the more important each individual game and each individual moment of the game becomes. Theoretically, in baseball you might have some scrub with a fastball come in to pitch to A-Rod with the exact purpose of burying a baseball in the Yankee star’s earhole.

On the other hand, the longer the schedule the more important wear and tear on the stars becomes. If all of a sudden the Packers are drafting in burly bartenders from Fox River taverns because they’ve run out of linemen in Week 17, then it’s time to maybe ease back on the throttle.

The speculation, particularly Tony Kornheiser on Pardon the Interruption, is that injuries will mount when the schedule increases by two games, or 12.5%. I think that’s undoubtedly true for the first year or two, but either roster sizes will expand (again passim Kornheiser) or the players might get a little smaller with increased cardio fitness. In other words, everybody turns into the Denver Broncos, traditionally the smallest team in the league because of playing at altitude.

Anyway, there’s always footie to follow. It’s even easier to find than ever, with TSN, Sportsnet, Setanta, The Score, CBC, OLN and Fox Sports Canada all offering various professional leagues and competitions. If you’re new to it and want to get involved, please don’t start with the Champions League in Europe until the knockout stage begins after the Christmas break. Until then, it’ sharks eating minnows, lesser teams parking the team bus in front of the net (in Jose Mourinho’s classic phrase) or the giants sniffing at each other like a couple of prideful mountain goats.

I would have said start with Barcelona in Spain’s La Liga, but the best player in the world Leo Messi was carted off the pitch on the weekend, so maybe hold off on that one for awhile. Go with Arsenal in the Premier League. They make more passes than a Roman rogue, and have an almost snobbish disdain for taking a shot from a range greater than three yards. As such, they are a pleasure to watch, except when playing the Boltons Blackburns and Sunderlands who snap at Gunners’ ankles and Gunners’ knees like so ten hungry corgis.

Thanks for reading. I had fun. Be seeing you.