As bogged down as what I
am these days in trifling, if not truly challenging, course work, I
cannot resist it any longer: I must make the time and punch out a few
words about some of the juicy silliness occurring around me in recent
weeks.
First of all, let me just
say that I was pleased to learn that Lisa Moore—arguably the
province’s worst state-endorsed writer—lost out to another
overrated say-nothing author at this year’s meaningless Giller
Prize award. But wait—things actually go from bad to worse to just
plain silly on the national literary front: it appears some young woman from New Zealand—complete with a heavy kiwi accent—has won the Governor General’s Award and the Man Booker Prize for her work
of fiction. Apparently, Eleanor Catton was born in Canada almost
thirty years ago and never set foot in this country again until it
came time to pick up the prize money for her novel... about New
Zealand. Priceless! I’m not sure if this is a case of Canadian
political correctness being taken to a whole new level or a wonderful
comment on home-reared talent! Either way, it’s unequivocally
yummy.
A few days ago, just as I
was about to submit an essay for a certain website, a news story
began breaking about “ten Quebec teens facing child porn charges”
after electronically sharing sleazy photos of their girlfriends. How
can this be, I thought?!! After all, according to those perverted
Harper Conservatives who relish prying into the private lives of us
youth, teenagers are still merely children—not old enough to vote,
drink beer or consent to sex. How can such ‘youngsters’ be
charged for breaking laws that are supposed to be there to protect
them in the first place? I mean, at 13 to 15 years of age, they’re
simply not old enough to even know what ‘dicks’ and ‘pussies’
are, are they? Myself, I didn’t menstruate or even sprout a pubic
hair until the exact date of my 18th birthday. Having recently turned
19, my mother is now teaching me how to spell ‘tampon’. In other
words, isn’t this just a teensy bit hypocritical?
It doesn’t matter to me
if you’re 13 or 31. Anyone foolish enough—or mature enough,
depending on how one looks at it—to transmit nude or sexually
explicit photos of one’s self is asking for trouble of some sort.
No sympathy from me. Furthermore, ten boys from Laval, Quebec alone
is quite a high percentage, relatively speaking. It’s safe to say
that underage porn is now as ubiquitous as marijuana usage—among so-called children themselves! Try closing those flood gates,
Stephen Harper.
Speaking of sex and youth, would someone mind telling me the real
reason why a report on the sexual exploitation of children (whatever
constitutes a child these days, I’m not sure) in the
province—complete with recommendations yet—has been officially kept from Terra Nova eyes for some two years? Is it because
the bureaucrats’ definition of ‘exploitation’ is so broad that
the government fears too large a segment of the population would feel
targeted, thus defeating the purpose by reinterpreting the study as
the work of elitists? It wouldn’t surprise me, given the
singularly dubious examples from the courts cited by the CBC in their
television coverage of this story. Is it because the government
fears that too many of its own—police officers, social workers, the
politicians themselves—might be fingered as sexual miscreants?
This wouldn’t surprise me either—especially considering some of
my father’s accounts of questionable activity among St John’s
cops and youth workers in the late 1980s.
During his first year or two of university, my father associated
fairly regularly with rock ’n’ rollers, burgeoning writers, truant teenaged vagrants
and other bohemian types in the downtown area (there were one or two
pubs in particular at the time which catered to such collective circles), and
according to him a particular RNC officer would pay unofficial visits
to 14-year-old hookers in the Pleasant St. area, and certain assigned
social workers were known to take the same girls out on pub crawls,
“looking for men”. One young girl was even known to call on the
said Constabulary cop at the station, complete with her trademark
black leather mini-skirt and red shoes on.
My father’s favourite
story of such government-employee uncouthness stems from one summer
night in 1989, when him and two friends were driving in the downtown
area. After pulling them over for running a red light (which they
hadn’t), an RNC officer detected the obvious reek of beer and
Scotch whiskey. Despite the driver being most likely impaired, the
officer sent them on their way with a laugh, on the grounds that they
were “just a couple of young fellers cruising about downtown,
lookin’ for a bit o’ pussy”. That anecdote set the tone for
the officers of the day.
As for the question I
rhetorically pondered in an earlier blog post, as to whether or not
the three disgraced senators will be spending eternity in Hell (at
least on a theoretical level), it appears that the prime minister and his
whipped and bullied senate have foregone the usual process employing
St Peter and company, and decided their eternal fate for them. Yes,
Victoria, there is a God and his name is Stephen Harper. So it
appears Senators Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau have all been sentenced to
eternal damnation—without senatorial pay for the remainder of the
current parliamentary session to boot. Of the three banished
senators, Pamela Wallin has been the most outspoken for some reason.
Maybe she feels she has the most to lose. Whatever the case, it is
needless to say that she is not a happy camper.
Their journalistic
careers and legacies completely in tatters, Duffy and Wallin in
particular have been forced to fall hard in hopes of appeasing the
Canadian public and taking the heat off Stephen Harper. One can only
hope that the dismissed Nigel Wright will finally open his gob and
implicate the prime minister like he deserves. I mean, no one in his
or her right mind actually believes that Harper wasn’t aware of
such underhanded maneuvers—if not actually orchestrating them, do
they? [Intriguingly, the CBC has been reporting these past few hours that the RCMP’s investigations indicate that Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy are seemingly guilty of criminal wrongdoing. At the time of my writing, however, Dear Nigel still hasn’t pointed a finger at Harper.]
Speaking of underhanded
maneuvers, you know, I can’t help but wonder if there weren’t
some dark machinations at work in this whole senate scandal from the
get-go. Not just in regards to the senators’ ill-gotten gains and
fudging of the travel fund facts, but going right back to the
appointments of media celebrities like Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin
in the first place. I’m sure the most paranoid of conspiracy
theorists have thought so from day one—there have been distant
rumblings; but undoubtedly some of the more levelheaded people out
there have been thinking the same thoughts, if not choosing to voice
them. Might Prime Minister Harper have been looking for a couple of celebrity dupes to bring attention to the Senate and its questionable continued existence when he appointed the likes of Duffy and Wallin? Could they have been picked to use as pawns in an intentionally induced scandal which would provide an excuse to open public debate on the Senate and ultimately lead to its abolition? I can’t help but consider the possibility sometimes late at night when I’m sipping tea and digesting the TV news coverage.
Thanks in no small part
to Toronto mayor Rob Ford and the media sensationalism of his
shenanigans, the heat appears to be suddenly off the prime minister
and his exploits, however.
Ah, Rob Ford. Mayor
Rob Ford. Yes, he’s something of a sexist slob and a bit of a
prurient homophobe, but there’s still something I admire about the
jolly drunken fat-man in question. I think it’s his 1970s style,
and his unwillingness to acquiesce to the ridiculous dogmas at either
end of the political spectrum, Left or Right. Mayor Ford is an
old-fashioned, no-nonsense, centre-focussed populist politician.
This is unusual in the eyes of us so-called millennials and even
Generation Xers, but it was actually the standard for western
politicians only a half-century ago. Such a middle-ground stance is
popular with neither of the two types who dominate all three levels
of North American politics today. In other words, the usual
far-right bunch despise him because he drinks and swears too much,
doesn’t pray in public, and refrains from prying ambivalently into
the romantic lives of gays and adolescents. Simultaneously, the
usual far-left bunch despise him because he swills fast food as he
pleases, doesn’t resort to silly euphemisms for fear of offending
virgin ears, and refrains from paying symbolic lip service to the
city’s gay community.
So exactly why do I
increasingly like this (seemingly) outrageous man, you might ask?
Well, in all honesty, I think it has far more to do with the asinine
hypocrites who are unfairly dragging him over the coals than his
asinine self.
Who the hell do these
self-righteous Toronto city councillors and assholes in the media
think they’re fooling, pretending to be offended—“Oh my God!
the humanity!”—by his blunt and unaffected language?! (Read about it here.) Would they
have us believe that they’ve never used such expressions as “eating
pussy” before? Would they have us believe that their children have
not yet encountered such slang? (If they’re aged ten or older and
unfamiliar with expressions like “eating pussy”, I’d be a
little concerned!) If they’re so morally incensed by such street
talk, then why are they also so quick to celebrate the sexist, racist
rantings of contemporary hip-hop acts and purchase such albums for
their precious children? Mayor Ford can’t quote what some nosey
nincompoop alleges he has said without being attacked by his
faux-indignant fellow councillors, yet apparently it’s okay
for his critics’ children to absorb lyrics like, “Yo, nigger
bitch / Suck my cock”. Now, that’s unsettling.
And did anyone out there
see that idiot from the CBC questioning the children and teens in
Toronto, asking their opinions on the “bad influence” of Mayor
Ford? I’m only 19 myself, so it was particularly disheartening and
insulting to see this prig addressing young men and women in their
teens as if they were toddlers, constantly referring to them as
“kids”.
And with the exception of
finance minister Jim Flaherty, his ‘friends’ in the federal
Harper government have done a really good job of ignoring him,
haven’t they! Now why doesn’t this surprise me! Stephen Harper
is such a prick, in fact, that he’s managed to twist his response
to the uproar into an attack on Justin Trudeau’s grass smoking!
Speaking of Justin
Trudeau, isn’t it just a tad bit hypocritical, the way in which his
supporters tend to play down his admitted marijuana use while
condemning Mayor Ford for his crack-pipe puffing? I’m betting that
if Fat Robbie knocked off substantial poundage and got himself a hair
transplant and dye job, it would result in a considerably better
showing in the polls. It’s all about image and phoney mystique,
people. The shallow among us love their star quarterbacks from the
college football team—even when they hire ringers for exams and
participate in drunken belching contests. In other words, Mayor Ford
needs to get back to his roots and stop being an adult.
I think what I like most
about Rob Ford is his ability to upset the elitist status quo of
precious latte-slurping Toronto. I’ve never lived in Toronto, but
I’ve touched down there briefly on my journeys abroad. From my
perspective, contemporary Toronto is all visage: a politically
correct paradise as envisioned and devised by a minority of far-left
lobbyists and their asinine operatives on city council. These ‘movers
and shakers’ (Ha!), it seems, represent the beliefs and ideals of
only fifteen to twenty percent of the city’s population at most.
Over time, the alienated majority have become increasingly silent and
apathetic. (My mother insists that it’s been this way for the past
two decades or so. An older Torontonian cousin of mine assures me
that today’s Toronto has very little in common with the Toronto of
the 1960s, ’70s and much of the ’80s.) As the mayor has pointed
out, the majority of Toronto’s population—including many of his
fellow councillors—have at some time or another partaken of illicit
drugs, committed adultery, driven drunk, etc. This is something his
opposing councillors and other critics would deny until they’re
blue in the face. Rob Ford provides an excellent opportunity for such
phoney critics to condemn the sins they’ve secretly loved to act.
And like the stake-burnings and lynchings of old, attacks on him draw
attention away from the attackers and their own ‘transgressions’.
So if his questionable behaviour tarnishes or completely obliterates
Toronto’s false image, then I hope Mayor Ford stays put until the
entire world sees plastic Toronto as the silliest place on the
planet.
Of course, a non-seceding
Mayor Ford will also mean a politically castrated Mayor Ford now that
much of his power has been dubiously appropriated. In fact, as I
write this, Toronto Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly is talking with CTV
reporters on television, showing off his newly stolen administrative
powers. The usurping imposter looks like a smug son of a bitch—and
no doubt a typically inefficient do-nothing schmuck. I hope the
Fords are already digging for dirt on him. If you’ve seen him
buying illicit drugs, driving drunk or nailing hookers, please get in
touch with the elected mayor’s office.
As for those councillors
who turn their backs to the mayor, well, I guess they simply want to
get fucked in the ass or something.
Lately I’ve been
thinking: you know, it was this Mohamed Farah character—whose
motives, judging from his comments to the CBC, are vague at best—who
started this whole media feeding frenzy, when he showed an iphone
video of the mayor smoking crack to the sniffer-dawgs from Gawker,
who in turn futilely raised money online to buy said video. This
gives me radical ideas....
Why don’t we attempt to
set up a fund—through Gawker, Kickstarter or some other site—to
raise money to offer as rewards to those people out there who can
provide us damning information on the dubious behaviour, past and
present, of our ‘favourite’ self-righteous Conservative
politicians who interfere legislatively with our private lives? The
financially fraudulent Mike Duffys and the cocaine- and
alcohol-impaired Rahim Jaffers are just the tip of the Tory iceberg, I
suspect. Think about it: photos of the prime minister smoking grass
thirty years ago... wife-beating back-benchers who are “hands-on”
in teaching their daughters the facts of life... a former minister of
justice up to his nuts in some heroin-addled underaged hooker named
Baby Lips....
Hmmmm... Yummy!
I think I’m going to
mosey on over to Gawker and maybe have a little chat. Let’s get
this show on the road, people!
