Tonight! Oak Ridges and Markham and Newmarket! Come one, come all!
The Rob Ford crack video isn’t “gone”! (updated)
…here’s a video about Rob Ford – and, er, crack cocaine – right here!
We’re living in a “world-class city,”
but lately it seems kind of icky
Some days it’s downright silly
Being governed by hillbillies!
We’ve got a mayor on crack?
We wanna give him the sack
He makes us all wanna yak
We’ve got a mayor on crack?
This mayor steals taxpayer bucks
That mayor likes to throw muck
We’ve got the worst situation:
We’re governed by the Ford Nation!
Representatives of big record companies, take note: Canada’s best-loved geriatric punk trio, SFH, are giving the proceeds from their newest tune and video, ‘Mayor On Crack?’ to to a Canadian addiction-counselling facility. Download it now, download it often, right here! We’re on iTunes, even!
(Oh, and if you want to offer us a big contract so we can quit our day jobs, which we do, please contact our manager, David MacMillan, at Deadbolt Music.)
See? Crack video, not gone!
In Tuesday’s Sun: the end of scandal
“Mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe,” said a French cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard. “The marketing immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder.”
Baudrillard’s works influenced The Matrix movie series, of all things, but we shouldn’t hold that against him.
Surveying the Canadian political landscape this spring, we know he’s at least partly right. He’s insightful in the first part of his observation (that is, scandal is no longer fatal to one’s career), but arguably wide of the mark in the second (that is, that governments possess the means to whitewash the popular consciousness).
There are three main reasons for this: One, we have a national memory in this country of about seven minutes. Two, we in the media — and, therefore, the opposition parties — flit from controversy to boondoggle like houseflies, and we rarely linger on any one overmuch. Three, the public have seen allegations of scandal made too many times to get upset anymore. Until they see someone led away to prison in handcuffs, they shrug.
Scandals are survivable, and Rob Ford and Stephen Harper clearly know this. At the moment, both Conservatives should theoretically be fighting for their political lives: Ford, with a tale in which it is alleged he used crack cocaine sometime in the past, and which he has not denied, and Harper, with a Senate expense scandal that has claimed the Prime Micromanager’s chief of staff, but about which he insists with a straight face he knew nothing.
Nobody, not even sensible Conservatives, doesn’t doubt either politician’s claims. Meanwhile, the controversies haven’t abated — both are now entering week three of front-page media coverage, a rare event.
But the Senate and crack cocaine scandals haven’t really altered many popular opinions. Polls (such as they are these days) tell us that Ford’s personal popularity remains unchanged amongst Torontonians. And Harper will remain prime minister for two more years, and he does not seem to be losing any sleep worrying about l’affaire Duffy.
Another example, thrown out almost as an afterthought in the midst of the sordid, seamy Ford mess. In a huge Globe and Mail investigation into the Ford family’s alleged involvements with drugs — the story claimed that Ford’s councillor brother, Doug, was once a dealer, and Ford has not sued them for it — there was a new scandal: A member of the Ford family associated with the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi Heritage Front.
Said the Globe: “(Kathy Ford’s) friends included Gary MacFarlane, a founding member of the short-lived Canadian chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the late Wolfgang Droege, perhaps the most notorious white supremacist in Canadian history …”
The report went on to state that “Kathy Ford was close to the movement,” although she was “hardly a committed soldier in the race war,” and that racist leaders even hung out in the Ford family home, although the newspaper’s source, a former Klansman, couldn’t recall meeting the brothers.
Those are extraordinary allegations. The response? Nothing. That part of the Globe’s story passed with barely a mention.
It is all very peculiar, indeed. Unless you accept Jean Baudrillard’s point of view, that is, and agree that scandal — in and of itself — is no longer enough to end political careers anymore. And that, of course, says quite a bit more about we voters than it says about the politicians.
It isn’t complimentary.
Mayor On Crack? – SFH world video premiere!
The long wait is over, SFH Nation! Here it is, folks – Canada’s best-loved geriatric punk trio, SFH, offer up their newest tune and video: ‘Mayor On Crack?’
Proceeds from sale of this unstoppable chart-topper will go to a Canadian addiction-counselling facility. Download it now, download it often, right here! We’re on iTunes, even!
Oh, and for the hundreds of press inquiries that will doubtlessly result, please contact our manager, David MacMillan, at Deadbolt Music. He likes the Strolling Bones, but we still let him hang out with us.
Here it is! Suck this, RoFo!
We’re living in a “world-class city,”
but lately it seems kind of icky
Some days it’s downright silly
Being governed by hillbillies!
We’ve got a mayor on crack?
We wanna give him the sack
He makes us all wanna yak
We’ve got a mayor on crack?
This mayor steals taxpayer bucks
That mayor likes to throw muck
We’ve got the worst situation:
We’re governed by the Ford Nation!
In Sunday’s Sun: not the crime, always the cover-up
It’s not the crime; it’s the cover up.
As older generations may recall, that old political axiom can be traced to the Mother of All Scandals, Watergate. Back in June 1972, five Republican operatives — White House “plumbers,” they were called — were caught breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters at Washington’s Watergate complex. It was a third-rate burglary attempt, but by the time it had run its course, it had forced the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.
The five were connected to the aptly named CREEP — Committee to Re-elect the President — and, a few days later, Nixon discussed the break-in with his senior staff. The discussions were tape recorded, and they later made clear that Nixon wanted his loyalists to intervene in the police investigations into the burglary and cover up the plumbers’ links to the White House.
Nixon was undone by the break-in and his insistence on surreptitiously taping discussions in the Oval Office, of course. The efforts of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward at the Washington Post didn’t help, either. But what ultimately led to his August 1974 resignation was the evidence found on the tapes, which clearly showed that Nixon wanted the CIA to obstruct the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Watergate. The cover -up, not the burglary.
The “cancer on the presidency” can now be seen, in a different context, in both Ottawa and Toronto. The two Conservatives who preside over the largest fiefdoms — Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mayor Rob Ford — are struggling to contain growing scandals that contain odd parallels to Watergate.
Like Nixon, Harper and Ford have been obliged to end their relationships with their most trusted aides, their chiefs of staff. Like Nixon, the two Conservative icons have adopted a self-defeating communications strategy that has pinballed between sullen silence, angry denials, and pathetically transparent attempts to change the channel. Like Nixon, Harper and Ford have shaken the confidence of their conservative core. And, as in Watergate, the media are savaging Harper and Ford in a way they have never done before — as one beast, and without fear or favour. Their adversaries are now poring through statutes, looking for laws to bring down men who once seemed invincible.
In Harper’s case, it was what he knew, and when, about his former chief of staff’s decision to slip $90,000 into the bank account of disgraced Conservative Sen. Mike Duffy. The rules do not permit gifts over $500 to senators, unless they are registered with the ethics officer — something Duffy did not do. If it was a gift, then it was against the Senate’s own conflict of interest code, since giving “a gift or other benefit” was also strictly prohibited. Given his reputation for micro-management, it’s hard to believe Harper’s claims he was unaware of the rule-breaking.
In Ford’s case, the facts are seamier. Reporters insist they have seen a tape of the mayor of North America’s fourth-largest city seemingly smoking crack cocaine. In the wake of that, there have been allegations about drug-peddling by Ford’s circle, and even his brother; dark mutterings about a murder of a young man who was connected to the alleged video; resignations and/or firings of his most senior aides; and — most ominously — reports late in the week raising concerns that records of former Ford staffers had been ordered destroyed, ostensibly to hide the truth. The city denied any records were ordered destroyed.
It isn’t the alleged crack-smoking or the gift-giving, ironically, that have the potential to derail Harper’s and Ford’s respective reigns. All that the pair needed to do was admit to mistakes earlier on, seek public forgiveness and describe steps to prevent reoccurrence. Instead, the two Conservative fishing buddies have been in weeks-long downward spirals of denial and, now, seeming cover-up. If the reports are true, Ford is at risk of being accused of obstruction of justice, as Nixon was, and Harper, apparent abuse of power and contempt of Parliament. Like Nixon.
To partisan Conservatives, the similarities to Watergate may seem a stretch.
But, at the start, Nixon probably thought he was untouchable, too.
Abused institutional survivors to Kathleen Wynne: a year later, nothing
Full disclosure: I work with the abused survivors of a number of Ontario institutions. A year ago this week, they met with Kathleen Wynne, who promised to help them. A few months later, they followed up with a letter – and got nothing back.
This isn’t just another case of government being insensitive – it’s in fact outrageous. And these people – who were herded into these province-run institutions when they were children, and routinely beaten and sexually abused – deserve far better from a government that, even now, still refuses to acknowledge it owed them a duty of care.
More to come on this. For now, their presss release, just out:
Did Premier Kathleen Wynne Break Her Promise to Abused Institutional Survivors?
Before she was Premier, Wynne said she would help but now that she is Premier, the victims are ignored
TORONTO, May 31, 2013 /CNW/ – Survivors of the Huronia Regional Centre (HRC) have followed up on yesterday’s dramatic Queen’s Park press conference, demanding to know why – after a full year – Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has yet to make good on a personal promise she made to address the horrific abuse they suffered.
Patricia Seth and Marie Slark, plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against HRC and the province of Ontario, met with Wynne at a Truth and Reconciliation gathering in Toronto – exactly a year ago this week – and told her about the abuse they endured by those entrusted to care for and protect them. Patricia and Marie were impressed with the attention the Premier paid to their plight. “She really seemed to care about us,” recalls Marie of the meeting. Patricia added, “Kathleen looked us right in the eye and said she would help us. But she hasn’t. Nothing has happened and we never heard from her again. Justice seems so far away.”
The institutional survivors followed up on their meeting with Wynne. In January 2013, Patricia and Marie wrote to the then-Minister during the Ontario Liberal leadership race, imploring Wynne to help them and all the other victims receive justice in a fair and timely manner. “She never really responded to that,” said Patricia.
Rob Ford blank verse
Blackberry sucks: an update
Downloaded that Blackberrry 10 update yesterday, before leaving for Ottawa. Device has not worked since. Dead as a doornail.
In case you’re wondering, did this wee post on my iPhone. There’s a moral, there.
Ottawa tonight: me and my brother Bernie, for Israel
Over 300 tickets have been sold, I’m told. See you tonight!