Openers

Election notebook

The federal election campaign yawns to a halt over Christmas, at least in the eyes of the blood-thirsty mainstream media who have bemoaned the parties' excessive dwelling on policy instead of mutual name-calling. “The absence of Yo-Momma jokes and mud-wrestling challenges has been most, well, boring,” must have been thinking the Globe and Mail's editorial board after a month of complex policy announcements and substantive debate. “Nobody's even farted on their hand and wiped it on the other guy's suit jacket yet – what kind of campaign is this?”

The most heated exchange happened this week when Stephen Harper refused to apologize to Paul Martin for saying Martin would prefer a separatist government in Quebec. That's catty. “I can take a punch,” Harper said. Woo, tough guy. He's Albertan, you know. They have shooting ranges in their malls, those rugged ruffians.

“Bring it, Frankenstein,” Martin retorted in my imaginary extrapolation. “It's been brought,” Harper shot back.

“Go back to Bermuda where your family fortune is sheltered from Canadian taxes,” Jack Layton entered this little skit in my head. “Why don't you go care about the environment or homeless people, shorty,” retorted the millionaire.

Harper: “Why don't YOU go to Quebec and funnel some more scandal money to your party? Boondoggle Gomery corrupta-scandal.”

Martin: “Hey, leave Quebec out of this.”

“C'est ça qu'on essaie de vous dire, maudits Canadiens, taberwethe!” popped in Gilles Duceppe.

Martin: “Yo, I'm real, bro. From the streets [of Westmount]. You don't wanna make this a street fight, dawg. You think you're platinum, D-Unit? You think you can run with me? I oughta buss a cap in yo butt, G.”

Duceppe: “Quelle langue parle-t-il, là?”

“Can I play with you guys?” Green Party Jim Harris snuck his head over the fence.

“The minor leagues are next door, scout,” mocked Layton. “Hey, Martin, you suck on health care.”

Martin: “I agree with the NDP on everything. Hey, Harper, think you're a cowboy, eh? One of those Brokeback Mountain* cowboys, I bet.”

“Hey, shut up!” Harper cried, his voice broken. And it was over.

Seriously, the mainstream media is doing us a tremendous disservice in this election campaign. Discussion about the leaders' debates was overwhelmingly more about how the leaders DID than what they SAID. Polls – those most flawed, manipulative, and meaningless tools of distraction – dominate election coverage, not the issues.

Allan Gregg, the king of TV pollster-pundits, is the most influential person in the country. He goes on TV every night and tells Canadians what they are thinking and how they will vote. He could easily just be making it all up: “Well this poll seems to show that Canadians think [insert personal political opinion here, whether it be Paul Martin is trustworthy, Stephen Harper is scary, or Jack Layton should shave his moustache].”

Christie Blatchford wrote a full-page article this week about how the media covering former Governor General Ed Schreyer's nomination meeting didn't want to hear what he had to say about Canadian politics. They wanted to ask him about a comment he made 20 years ago, hoping to stir up some controversy. When he declined to answer, they labeled the evening a colossal waste of time: “consigned to the dustbin of the campaign.”

Blatchford's headline called Schreyer the “exception” for being a candidate with content. She's right, and I don't know whether the vicious cycle is the fault of the media, the politicians and their inane “war rooms” or Canadian voters for being so easily distracted that we need to be entertained by controversy to pay attention to politics. In any event, it is a trend that begets the slimy, empty, irrelevant politics that play like a soap opera rather than a means to solve our common societal problems.

The media is eagerly anticipating a descent into negative, nasty politicking in January. Let's hope that the parties don't take the bait, and that Canadians can look past the polls and make an informed decision.

CBC's web site has a good tool to cut to the issues: a quiz that asks you to agree or disagree with given policy positions. At the end, it spits out the party with whom you most agree. You may be surprised.

* Brokeback Mountain is a Golden Globe-nominated Hollywood film about two male cowboys who fall in love in the 1960s. Watch trailers or see show times near you. [e]

-----------------------------------

Schmedicare?

The ever-objective CBC has waded into controversy by pulling a program celebrating health-care pioneer and NDP hero Tommy Douglas from its intended date of broadcast in mid-January, claiming it would unduly influential on a sensitive election issue. Meanwhile, CBC is airing an exposé called “Medicare Schmedicare” this week, whose by-line reads: “Is one tier Medicare a myth? Have we been saluting its founder, the 'Greatest Canadian' Tommy Douglas as an emperor who really has no clothes?” Other than being mean to Tommy, what kind of serious analysis includes the word “Schmedicare?”

This hypocritically, although not necessarily purposefully, slanted programming logic raises the issue of an ever-fine line between the news and partisanship. Conservative election ads portrayed a series of news interviews, with party supporters offering lob balls to the “interviewee” Stephen Harper, who hammers home the answer with the gusto of a sleeping calculus professor. Manipulative? Maybe. Cheesy, for sure.

The Liberals answered with ads starring Liberal staffers, riding association members and MPs' relatives posing as “ordinary Canadians.” Misleading? Maybe. Cheap, for sure.

The final straw came in last week's leaders' debates, in which “ordinary Canadians” asked the questions. Forget that the Green Party – who had more votes in 2004 than the population of Vancouver – were excluded by the democratic “Broadcasters Consortium.” Never mind that many of the questioners clearly favoured one party, most often not the NDP or the Bloc. No, friends, the real kicker (at least the way I swear I heard it) came when Stephen Harper began an answer by saying: “Thank you very much for that excellent question on gun control, Mom. By the way, Rachel really wants that Etch-a-Sketch for Christmas, if you're still having trouble with ideas. But back to handguns...” [e]

---------------------------

Another Sigh of Relief for Alaskan Caribou

For the fifth straight year, drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge was (sort of) rejected in the U.S. Senate. While a majority of Senators voted in favour of drilling (56-44), the petro-yahoos required 60 votes to break a filibuster led by Senate Democrats.

The loss was the latest for Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens, who at 82 has been trying for 25 years to destroy his home state's environment. He thought he had won – in a brilliant tactical move, he attached the drilling provision to a defence spending bill that included billions of dollars for the War in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina relief. Thinking no one could say “No” to America's brave soldiers or disaster victims, he was baffled when Democrats refused to be blackmailed, and they forced the Senate to pass the military spending without the Arctic drilling.

Undaunted, Senator Stevens may secretly have vowed to return in the New Year and attach Arctic oil drilling to the “Crippled Orphans Fund Bill,” the “We Love and Appreciate Our Moms Bill,” and the “Anybody Who Votes Against This Bill is Gay Bill.” [e]

-----------------------------------

Paul Martin is a wuss compared to these Caballeros

Bolivia became the latest burr in George Bush's saddle this week, electing a socialist President who has declared himself America's “worst nightmare.” Indeed, Evo Morales – Bolivia's first indigenous President – has pledged to re-nationalize Bolivia's oil, gas and other natural resources, and to take 50% of resource profits for the state to help the 65% of the population stuck under the poverty line. He was elected by and speaks for the poor and downtrodden victimized by U.S.-imposed neo-liberal economics and privatization; the majority indigenous population, still struggling to realize equal rights; and his fellow coca farmers, devastated by the U.S War on Drugs.

And with a solid democratic mandate – 54% of the vote with an incredible voter turnout of 85% – Morales adds to the growing number of progressive, anti-neoliberal governments in South America. Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay recently united to oppose the U.S.-driven Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Perhaps best known for the historic victory against water privatization by a popular uprising in Cochabamba in 2000, Bolivia was a prime testing ground for now-discredited “Washington Consensus” economics in the 1980s and 90s, through imposed privatization of its oil, gas, electric and other industries. Far from bringing prosperity, U.S.-style capitalism has made the average Bolivian poorer than his grandparents were fifty years ago.

Evo Morales plans to reverse that trend – no easy feat considering trade agreements signed by past governments protect the private profits of multinationals, and could leave him vulnerable to lawsuits if he so much as farts upwind from a foreign investor. Still, Morales will build on the recent write-off of Bolivia's IMF debt to push for further forgiveness of his country's foreign debt, racked up by corrupt regimes long ago and repaid many times over via sky-high interest rates.

Most annoying to the White House, however, is that Morales has pledged to respect and protect the cultural rights of indigenous farmers for whom coca – the crop used to produce cocaine – is a spiritual tradition. As we all know, the United States in engaged in a sham “War on Drugs” that kills poor Latin Americans more than it actually prevents drugs from getting to American cities and rich white suburbs.

“And to think I used to buy my coke from that jackass,” decried Bush in a thought bubble in my head. “First bin-Laden, then Saddam, now Evo. A guy just doesn't know who to pay to be his friends any more.” [e]

---------------------------

Not just the prices are low

WalMart's rough year in public relations wrapped up with a $172 million kick in the pants. A jury judged that the global super-villain denied half-hour unpaid lunch breaks on shifts over six hours to 116,000 former and current workers in California.

The verdict follows a series of bad publicity this year including but not limited to: the largest class-action lawsuit in history, against WalMart by 1.6 million female workers alleging gender discrimination in pay rates and promotions (women represent 92% of cashiers and 14% of store managers); an internal memo finding that 46% of WalMart workers' children were on Medicaid or uninsured that forced the introduction of low-cost, very basic health insurance in 2005; countless campaigns against the parasitic takeover of local economies by juggernaut superstores; and some universal tsk-tsk's at the leaked corporate policy permitting its famed “Welcome Associates” to punch really hard in the kidneys those shoppers who leave the store without purchasing anything.*

When asked how a company that earns $10 billion a year could skimp on unpaid lunch breaks for already low-paid workers, a make-believe WalMart executive bemoaned, “We just don't understand what people want us to do. They gripe about the grossly unequal treatment of our workers in sweatshops overseas versus in retail stores in North America. Now, when we treat all our workers with the same level of respect, they complain again.

“Next you'll be asking us to provide staff restrooms in Chicago and stop mandatory pregnancy tests in San Francisco.”

The California case is the first of 40 labour-related lawsuits against WalMart to go to trial. Happy 2006, WalMart!

* I made that last one up, of course, but is it unthinkable from the same company whose CEO made $1,997.72 an hour in 2004, 24 hours a day (even while asleep), over 200 times more than the average WalMart retail store worker ($9.68) and approximately 4,000 times more than the average WalMart worker overseas? I mean, in 1995, Associated Press reported that WalMart removed a t-shirt saying “Someday a Woman Will Be President” from the racks because it was “offensive” and against WalMart's “family values.” [e]

---------------------------------

Action Items:

1. Relax

2. Get outside and frolic in winter

3. Enjoy family and friends

4. Ignore politics entirely for the week (now that you've finished reading edSpective)

5. Don't worry about what you eat this week

6. Go see Brokeback Mountain

7. Have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hannukah, a Kwazy Kwaanza, and a Happy Gregorian New Year!

Good News:

(1) While Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty muses sinking billions into expensive and dangerous nuclear power to fill the province's obscene electricity needs, a Thorold, Ontario-based company has developed a wind turbine that mounts onto your roof and can generate enough electricity to make your home independent. And it's affordable: 3-4 years and it pays itself off, with free electricity thereafter! More in the New Year!

(2) edSpective returns January 7, 2006!