Happy anniversary, Raymi the Minx

Raymi the Minx is a friend of mine. I have known her to be a singer, a poet, a model, an artist and, most of all, a blogger.  I have seen her sing.  I have one of her paintings.

She uses the word blogger, I don’t.  I hate it.  I’ve been doing my web site thing since before “blog” was invented as a word, so I get to call this whatever I want to call it.  If I want to call it the fucking Starship Enterprise, I can.

Anyway.  My friend Raymi is cool with blogger, however.  And she, like me, has been doing it for 17 years:

I’m not exactly sure when I started, but she is.  She started 17 years ago today.  

If you can scan my earliest web site – which has the production values of a Fourteenth Century woodcut – and figure out when I started, be my guest.  I don’t have a clue, and I don’t give a shit.

Raymi and me don’t hang out all the time or have secret handshakes or anything.  We do totally different things, for totally different audiences.

But I admire her, and have long admired her, for her guts and her creativity and for her willingness to just put herself out there.  I like people who are characters, and she is a character.  No J. Alfred Prufrock is she.

Will she ever shut down her online self?  Maybe.  I might, too.  Who knows.

In the meantime, however, Raymi and me are both getting close to twenty years.  Unless Donald Trump and the North Koreans blow us all up, that is, in which case all bets are off.

Anyway. Happy anniversary, Raymi.  (And you should write that book.)


An open letter to the worst minister in Canada

Dear Minister Joly:

May I call you Melanie?

You’ve blocked my access to your ministerial Twitter account, so please forgive the formality of an open letter. I sense that I’ve upset you, which concerns me deeply.

Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the propriety of a public servant (that’s you) blocking the access of one of your employers (that’s me) to one of the official platforms you (a public servant) use to communicate with the likes of me (one of your employers). Let’s leave all that aside for a moment.

Let’s get to the pith and substance of the matter, shall we?

Have I been critical of your performance as a cabinet minister? Well, yes, you could say that. Among other things, I think you are possibly the worst cabinet minister in the history of Confederation. You make Bev Oda look like Margaret Thatcher. You make Stockwell Day seem positively Churchillian. You stink at this politics stuff, you know?

The evidence before the court of public opinion is myriad and multiple.  It is overwhelming.

Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations, for example.  In my experience, countries only get one opportunity to celebrate their 150th birthday.  Governments, meanwhile, get plenty of notice that a 150th birthday celebration is coming.

You rendered our 150th in Ottawa a fiasco, however.  And don’t just take my word for it.  Here’s just a sampling of the bon mots sent to you by other citizens (who, again, are your employers):

• “Shame on you Ottawa. Shame on you Heritage Canada and the organizers. You failed us!”

• “I have never seen such a poor, chaotic display. Shame on you Ottawa.”

• “The organizers of Canada Day 2017 should be ashamed of themselves for the shoddy work that went into this year’s event.”

• “Please, [Minister Joly], I beg you to step out of your protective shell and acknowledge what a mess Canada Day was and take some responsibility for it.”

• “Time for you to resign!”

But you weren’t done.  Nope.  The Netflix announcement – which essentially saw the streaming behemoth being granted tax-free status for a piddling amount of investment in Canada’s cultural sector, and most particularly in the province you profess to represent – was also a debacle.

A sampling of commentary about the Netflix mess:

• Globe: “[Joly’s] fall from grace in her home province has been swift and merciless, sped by her maladroit attempts to sell a deal with Netflix…”

• National Post: “[Joly] she has been savaged in Quebec media, artistic and political circles.”

• Journal de Montreal: “[Joly sounds] like a living answering machine having a nervous breakdown.”

But there’s more!

As you will recall, there was the matter of the plaque affixed to the new Holocaust Monument in Ottawa.  It didn’t mention the six million.  Or the word “Jews.” Or “anti-Semitism.”  You hurriedly ordered the plaque replaced, but not before just about every Jew in Canada noticed.

The resulting headline in the Washington Post, then, actually made me wince: “Canada forgot to mention Jews on new Holocaust monument dedication plaque.”

Ouch.

Anyway.  Let’s forget about the Holocaust Monument, and the Netflix thing, and Canada 150.  Let’s forget about all that.  Let’s turn the page. Let’s focus, instead, on your latest decision, which I will render all-caps, because I think it merits it:

MELANIE JOLY HAS SPENT $5 MILLION TO BUILD A HOCKEY RINK ON PARLIAMENT HILL.

And it’s not just any $5 million hockey rink.  No, not in Joly World.  It is a $5 million hockey rink that:

• Prohibits the playing of hockey.

• Will be in existence for less than a month.

• Is a block from the biggest skating rink in the world, the Rideau Canal.

Oh, and the Toronto Star reported this: “The rink, which will be available for free public skating from Dec. 7 to Jan. 1, is budgeted to cost about $215,385 per day that it’s open.”

One of my readers informed me that works out to about $300 per skater, per leisurely skate.  I’m not sure Wayne Gretzky made that much in his prime with the Oilers, Melanie.

And here’s what you had to say about Skate-gate: “We believe that it is really good news because this will be here for a month, and this will support, of course, important programming.”

“Really good news.”

It isn’t, Melanie.  It isn’t.  It is a disgrace.  It is disgusting.  It is an actual scandal. It is.

Melanie, it is also time for you to go.  You aren’t helping your reputation – and you are regularly hurting the reputation of this government, which is a not-bad government, as governments go.  Resign, for the love God, resign.

Oh, and I’d tell you that on Twitter, too.  If you weren’t, you know, blocking me.

Your friend,

Etc.


Melanie Joly is spending $5 million of our money on a hockey rink

…a hockey rink that does not permit the playing of hockey.

From next week’s column:

Anyway.  Let’s forget about the Holocaust Monument, and the Netflix thing, and Canada 150.  Let’s forget about all that.  Let’s turn the page. Let’s focus, instead, on your latest decision, which I will render all-caps, because I think it merits it:

MELANIE JOLY HAS SPENT $5 MILLION TO BUILD A HOCKEY RINK ON PARLIAMENT HILL.

And it’s not just any $5 million hockey rink.  No, not in Joly World.  It is a $5 million hockey rink that:

  • Prohibits the playing of hockey.
  • Will be in existence for less than a month.
  • Is a block from the biggest skating rink in the world, the Rideau Canal.

Oh, and the Toronto Star reported this: “The rink, which will be available for free public skating from Dec. 7 to Jan. 1, is budgeted to cost about $215,385 per day that it’s open.”

One of my readers informed me that works out to about $300 per skater, per leisurely skate.  I’m not sure Wayne Gretzky made that much in his prime with the Oilers, Melanie.

And here’s what you had to say about Skate-gate: “We believe that it is really good news because this will be here for a month, and this will support, of course, important programming.”

“Really good news.”

It isn’t, Melanie.  It isn’t.  It is a disgrace.  It is disgusting.  It is an actual scandal.

It is.


Blandy Scheer, true beleiver and champion of Dad jeans, etc.

So, the column I wrote about conservative and visuals got picked up over at HuffPo, and it irritated myriad Tories.  Which worries me a great deal, as you can well imagine.  It is here.  You have to read the comments.  They’re a scream.  This exchange is representative.

My suggestion that Scheer should keep away from Jordan “Some of my best friends are The Jews” Peterson, who should keep away from Gavin McInnes, is here.  It elicited a response from Scheer’s “Director of Media Relations,” here.  I felt compelled to respond, here.

Finally, no less than the Toronto Star has taken pity on Blandy, and his Lynchian new ad, as seen here:

This awkward, amateurish quality is why so many on the “cocktail circuit” (what I assume is Scheer’s term for elites in big cities whose pants aren’t so forgiving) have taken to mocking the leader and the ad endlessly online. Here’s Warren Kinsella on Twitter: “This ad is so bad, and so fundamentally weird, you half expect David Lynch to appear on one of the benches, holding an owl and a log.”

The commentator’s political expertise, in this regard?  “I may not be a political scientist but I did win three high school student council elections in a row.”

Gotcha.

Here’s my response to all of this:

  1. The best response to “you guys aren’t very good at visuals” isn’t to (a) call your critics libtards and lieberals and/or (b) to shrug.  It’s: start working on getting better visuals, “beleivers.”  They, you know, work.
  2. If you are the “director of media relations” for the guy who wants to be Prime Minister, don’t invite people online to further criticize your boss.  It’s kind of stupid.  Also, they might take you up on your invitation.
  3. We live in a dark time – Trump, Brexit, the Recipe For Hate, etc.  Conservatives should be like Jeff Flake, and be principled and inclusive.  They shouldn’t be like Rebel Media, and devolve into something that is bigoted and divisive, just because Trump cheated with Russia’s help and “won” the Electoral College with three million fewer votes.

Will anyone listen to me?  Of course not.  No one listens to me, etc.

 


Politics is pictures

Conservatives don’t like Justin Trudeau.  They really, really don’t like him.

This writer is a regular on Evan Solomon’s CFRA radio show with Alise Mills and Karl Belanger.  My friends Alise and Karl are articulate and thoughtful advocates (unlike me), and they are prepared to criticize their own political party when it is warranted (like me).

Evan invites us onto his much-listened-to show, we are told, because we don’t just parrot partisan talking points.  There’s too much of that on the airwaves – particularly over at CBC – and Solomon prefers panellists who are prepared to offer the occasional mea culpa.

Alise is (notionally) the Conservative strategist, Karl is (usually) the New Democrat strategist, and I am cast in the role of Liberal strategist (mostly).  One topic, last week: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit with the Philippines’ madman,  Rodrigo Duterte, and whether Trudeau would raise Duterte’s human rights violations.

I vigorously defended Trudeau, and insisted that he would do so (and he did).  On every international excursion, I said, Trudeau has never hesitated to press human rights issues.

Alise, however, was having none of it.  And she was intently focussed on one part of Trudeau’s Philippines visit in particular: the part where Trudeau popped by a fried chicken place in Manila to get something to eat.  He had a lot of cameras in tow, as Prime Ministers usually do.

Trudeau charmed the locals, ordered the chicken, and left.

Alise, however, was mightily unimpressed.  And, if you were to eyeball the offerings of the conservative commentariat – and, inter alia, conservative commenters online – you’ll see she is not alone.  They went bananas about something that seemed quite innocent.

I have pondered all this, and come up with a theory.  Here it is: conservatives know that Justin Trudeau is arguably the best retail politician Canada has had since my former boss, Jean Chretien.  When it comes to glad-handing and baby-balancing, Trudeau is without equal.  When you think about it, you might agree that there isn’t an elected politician alive who is as good at this mano-a-mano stuff as Justin Trudeau.

Now, of course, he overdoes it sometimes.  His Superman stunt on Halloween was, as Mashable noted, “a little bit too self-aware.”  Sniffed Mashable’s guy: “Trudeau is clearly fishing for more media attention, a tactic his administration has used for some time now. While Trudeau may be the darling politician to some, his obvious PR moves are getting old real quick.”

Maybe.  Perhaps.

But if we’re being fair, we have to acknowledge that every politician, everywhere, fishes for media attention.  They all do stunts.  The aforementioned Chretien, for  instance, rode on scooters and water skis.  Trudeau’s Dad did pirouettes.  Bill Clinton donned sunglasses and played the saxophone.  Barack Obama went kitesurfing, mugged with countless kids, and openly loved his wife.

Wait: that’s not “every politician.”  That’s just progressive politicians.

And therein lies the best explanation for Alise’s pique: conservative partisans detest Justin Trudeau because he (like Messrs. Chretien, Clinton, Obama, et al.) is really good at visuals.  And conservative politicians generally aren’t.

Stephen Harper at the Calgary Stampede, dressed up like a wretched Woody in Toy Story.  Robert Stanfield famously fumbling a football.  Joe Clark losing his luggage and walking into a soldier’s bayonet.  And Blandy Scheer, who just last week released a commercial – innovatively titled “I’m Andrew Scheer” – that was so bad, and so fundamentally weird, you half expect David Lynch to appear in it, too, holding an owl and a log and talking backwards.

Conservatives aren’t very good at photo ops.  They just aren’t.  Watch Donald Trump, the Mango Mussolini, the next time he is compelled to shake someone’s extended hand in the Rose Garden.  He usually looks at it like it is a wet dog turd – or, conversely, he latches onto it like a barnacle on the underside of a barge.  It makes for fun television.

Conservatives, in their tiny black hearts, know this about themselves. Distilled down to its base elements, their ideology is misanthropy.  So, they avoid interactions with other humans wherever and whenever possible.

Trudeau, meanwhile, doesn’t.  It’s the one thing he’s really good at.

And that’s why conservatives hate him when he does selfies and baby-balancing and cheery photo ops.

They wish they could do that stuff, too, and they’re jealous.