Alex Tsakumis on Sam in Today's 24 Hours

SULLIVAN’S TOMATO CAN CAMPAIGN

By Alex G. Tsakumis ‘Rebel With A Clause’

The year continues to promise more of the re-telling of Mayor Sam Sullivan’s wretched tenure as Mayor. Revisionist history will be about the only path for his return and nonsense will abound as it did with last week’s State of the City fiction. So, step right up, the Sullivan re-election caravan, resplendent with crates of maximum strength snake oil, rolls through the City, in the brazen hope that you will be drawn into the mystic for a bottle, or thirty. After His Worship’s gypsy-warriors dispatched venomous story tellers to the shadows, maligning a Carole Taylor run that ended her great think, they are now driving said caravan at a fevered gallop, screaming limitless purpose in a city that has been marred by his non-existent leadership. All’s well, they’ll claim, in the remaking of the now long evaporated Slammin’ Sammy. Of course, you might believe them, too, were it not for the shamelessly transparent makeover plan oozing out from under their very own door. Out of this January’s media chute, we were met with the item that His Worship does, apparently, have a heart and is now engaged to his long-time sweetie, florist Lynn Zanatta. It raised the interest of the local chattering classes, considering it being an election year, and, most remarkably, that it was prominently plastered across the front page of the once venerable Vancouver Sun. Sir Spam’s betrothment was trumpeted before all local scribes, expertly, by the Mayor’s press secretary ‘Super Dave’ Hurlforth, whose typically exhausted, but perpetually rancorous PR machine was, as per usual, blowing, er, I meant, billowing smoke. Funny that, not a sniff about any new policies yet, the previous set, of course, sitting firmly in the dust-bin, having miserably failed. If His Worship’s poll numbers continue to circumnavigate the nearest toilet rim, look for a wedding by Election Day—with all the privacy of a Pamela Anderson swimsuit. Thus, it will be, until this fall’s municipal election, one grand silly season, on extended play, where Sam Sullivan will seek to have the grime scrubbed off his self-soiled soapbox, thereby providing his handlers one last attempt to coax you away from your disgust at the nothingness the Mayor and his tutors have delivered. The neuron flagellation, I’m told, will reach new heights with a “movie”, that will extol the “greatness” of His Touchiness since becoming Chief Operating Jester just over two years ago. Presumably, this will be the longest political commercial known to man, where we will have re-explained: secret, unaccountable campaign funds; personal copyrights of “city” initiatives, fringe drug treatment fantasies; and, densification carousels. There too, the paradoxical PR hammer of a kinder, gentler Sam will emerge, courtesy of his endless minions, whose incompetence has all but guaranteed, at least, a majority council for Vision Vancouver (without the mindlessly garrulous COPE obliviots). Among the leading choices for a movie title, you ask? “Hero”. And, no, I kid you not. One former Sullivan insider, since banished for the crime of level-headedness, begged me to stop repeating the possible title for fear of a coronary spurred on by riotous, eventually breathless, laughter. Never to be forgotten, Mr. Sullivan’s local Conservative cabal, having manipulated the NPA Board, and the mostly fools there seated, into an embarrassing hybrid of incumbency protection that will ensure the return of stellar talents like Clrs. Kimbo Capripants and Elizabethan Ball, is hard at work, also. The tainted Tory troop is in the midst of, please remain seated, pressuring the powers that be in Ottawa, to have a Sullivan postage stamp issued—just in time for the election. Would you lick that? Didn’t think so. A. G. Tsakumis is our bi-monthly editorial writer.