Now the President has invited the Professor and the Policeman to the White House for a beer.
Looks like their taking him up on it.
Meanwhile, back in Cambridge, Mass., every cop and his cousin is dismissing and dissing the Pres for his outrageous nerve at calling their fellow officer stupid.
No doubt the Republican and the Fox News screamers and radio talkers are having the best time they've ever had.
Look.
W can be sure that Dr. Gates was loud and noisy and arrogant and uncooperative when the police stopped him from breaking into his own house.
We can also be sure that the Sgt. Crowley took the usual cop stance - equally arrogant and righteous and demanding.
Neither man worked very hard at defusing a silly and ridiculous moment that could have easily ended differently.
"Please show me something that identifies you with this property, Sir."
And Obama didn't help by wandering into an already sensitive incident with the word "stupid" at the ready. Which he has admitted.
But you know what?
All of this, including Obama's off the cuff, not very wise, honesty has brought focus and attention to a central problem in American public life - racial profiling.
Both Obama and Henry Louis Gates have had the experience. As have millions of black Americans.
When I hear the police high on their righteous horses in this story, I can only feel, "Methinks the lady doth protest too much."
I was sitting at a sidewalk cafe. Imagine! A difficult job, yes...
A tent walked by.
A beige stiff and starched draped tent.
Only a slit for the eyes.
A woman's eyes, I had to guess.
I do have a brain. And that brain not only offers the power of reason, it is all the repository of much stored information.
So, later, after my initial shock and horror and disgust wore off, I was able to put my book down on the table and think about how people have a right to practice their religion, I guess...
But there is no question that my gut reaction was shock and horror and disgust and a deep anger about subjecting women to the roles and rituals that define them as chattels.
It is also the right and privilege and yes, even duty, of people who immigrate to Canada to maintain their homeland virtues while adopting to what likes to think of itself as a modern democracy.
My family did just that. Coming from Russia at the turn of the last Century, we spoke English on the street, mostly Yiddish in the house, went to both public schools and synagogue and somehow straddled the old and the new, making subtle shifts and compromises of one kind or another as we went along. Canadians, but Jews. Jews and Canadians. Nowhere did we identify ourselves as "Russian-Jewish Canadians." Who knew from hyphens?
All of this has come to mind now that the mother, father and brother of a family in Kingston have been charged with the murder of three of their daughters and their "auntie," who it turns out is actually the first barren wife of the accused father.
The more you read about this case - and it is in all your newspapers and websites - and the more you realize that there is a very strong chance that this is about ancient religious beliefs and practices, the more you ask yourself about our immigration processes.
Do we really ask anything of anyone? Do we point out that killing your daughter because she is dating some drip about whom you don't approve just isn't a "go" in this neck of the woods. That no young women would get past the age of 14 if we succumbed to these sentiments and rationalized dreadful behaviour with holy writ?
I suppose people have the right to sail down Broadway on a hot summer day disguised as a drifting tent or anything else they fancy.
He is also a renowned Harvard scholar whose writings are published in many popular and obscure journals and newspapers.
He was arrested and handcuffed last week as he tried to break into his own home in leafy old Cambridge, Mass.
President Obama said in plain English that he thought the Cambridge police "acted stupidly."
Now, this forthright declaration on prime-time TV may not have been the most judicious or clever thing a sitting President has ever done.
But it sure is one of the sweetest.
The cop couldn't have asked Professor Gates to please identify himself as the owner of the house?
Race continues to be the core paralyzing reality at the heart of the American "dream."
The President is valiantly trying to push health care reform through the reluctant, resistant, often wicked corridors of power in Washington, and this side-show will not be of any particular help.
But it is so refreshing and wonderful to hear a President say what must be said and what is on the lips of millions of black and white Americans.
The right to privacy is a concept that is central to and held dearly in most Western democracies, Canada included.
But as a ploy in a court case involving the questionable use of $1 Billion in public funds it is a cheesy cry of "Wolf!"
Such, in my opinion, is the case here in Vancouver in the Basi-Virk trial which held its last day of arguments yesterday before a recess until mid-August.
The lawyers for the defense want materials, including email exchanges, from the desk of Patrick Kinsella. Kinsella is both a central figure in this story and a phantom. He is a friend to the Premier and the head of CN Rail and he has so far managed to keep very much to himself.
The public - voters and taxpayers - have a right to know how BC Rail got sold to CN Rail and whether or not "the fix" was in.
Kinsella's lawyers may argue that the defense's request for their client's materials is some kind of "fishing expedition," but if it is, I'd like to don the pork pie hat, wading boots, safari vest with all the pockets and bring my new spinner along for the ride.
On Sunday, April 5, 2009, I posted an item in this space called, "TRIANGULATION."
It was about the frighteningly cosy relationship between Premier Gordon Campbell, Patrick Kinsella and one David McLean. McLean is the CN Chairman and major fundraiser for...you know...Gordon Campbell.
One of McLean's sons, whose greatest accomplishment is having a father named David, holds various important and well-paying jobs and is slated to be the next head of the Vancouver Board of Trade.
I encourage you to read my April musings and reflect on how inadequately Vancouver media is covering the most important political corruption story in this province in a very long time.
Except...except for our friend Bill Tieleman, who continues to blanket this hideous tale from stem to stern.
Tieleman has been sitting in on the Basi-Virk hearings and trial from the beginning.
You can also find the link to Bill's blog to the right of this posting under "Links."
Forget the fires in Kelowna and RV's parking at Jericho during That Sporting Event Next Year. Those are not the stories that should headline our dailies.
This is the one true story and if newspaper editors don't know that then their publishers should stop wondering about declining sales.
In case you missed it, here are the first few paragraphs from this m orning's Globe: "In a ruling that places limits on the principle of cabinet confidentiality and is expected to prove pivotal in a long-running political corruption trial, Premier Gordon Campbell and his top officials have been ordered to turn over their e-mail records to the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett said Monday she wants to review the e-mails of Mr. Campbell, his chief of staff, Martyn Brown, his executive assistant, Lara Dauphinee, his deputy minister, Brenda Eaton, his former chief adviser, Ken Dobell, and several other key elected and appointed officials.
The government is also required to produce the e-mails of former finance minister Gary Collins and former deputy premier Christy Clark, both of whom left politics in 2004."
We said here the other day that Monday would be the day the rubber hits the road.
Indeed.
In Gary Mason's front page column, he suggests this may be the beginning of an ignoble end for Premier Gordon Campbell:
"As court rulings go, this one may be without precedent in Canada: an order for a sitting Premier and select members of his staff and cabinet to turn their e-mails over to a court."
The unpsoken whote elephant in the middle of the office in this case is the distinct possibility that
"Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk leaked information to lobbyists representing one of the companies bidding for BC Rail, it was a deliberate strategy designed to drive up the price of the asset. Not only that, it was a plan approved by cabinet, including the Premier. Additionally, others were leaking information, too, including cabinet ministers."
What is most troubling is that if the emails in question can not be found or produced, the entire case, which has already cost you and me $20 Million, could be tossed out of court, in which case everyone will run away untouched and none of the truths will ever come to light.
Hold onto your horses.
This is the political story in this neck of the woods in ages and it stinks and it will get even smellier by the day.
President Obama is doing everything he can to bring medical insurance to the 45 million Americans who have been without for far too long.
The horror show of the Republican attempts to stop this necessary and essential service is disgusting.
Unable to find enough reasonable arguments to defeat this inevitability and bereft of good debating skills, the Republicans have resorted as usual to name calling.
Ah, the good old ad hominum argument. You Putz!
It was a pleasure to see Obama say clearly and with quiet confidence, "This is not about me. It is about health care for children and families who have none."
Kudos to 24 Hours Newspaper, who yesterday featured a cover story on The Last Door, which for over 25 years now has been taking in deeply disturbed people called drug addicts and turning out clean and sober citizens.
This was no small deal. The publishing of the story. Everyone else in the media has been consistently buying and selling the Harm Seduction evil fantasy.
So how refreshing it was to see this beacon of light on a front page.
That, of course, is small potatoes to the extraordinary good work that The Last Door does day in and day out.
When you run out of things for whuch to be grateful, add these folks to your list.
Record it on every device you own so that your day starts and ends with this directive.
Ask your priest or rabbi to give sermons on such.
Carve it into your skateboard, Skippy.
You are not allowed in modern urban life to walk into a cafe carrying the ubiquitous Starbucks or Blenz or Waves or anybody else's cardboard, taste-destroying cup.
First, the cardinal sin of the carry-out. Bad enough.
Don't you know that coffee, especially espresso and all its de-caf, skim-milk, caramel, choco-sprinkled variants, was meant by the gods of food and drink to be sipped slowly from a porcelain - NEVER GLASS! - cup while sitting at a table? Preferably and weather and city bylaws permitting, an outdoor table, so that, even if you are reading or engaged in actual face-to-face conversation - REMEMBER THAT? - you can observe the passing parade of humanity, or what is posing as humanity these days. (See, SOCIAL STUDIES, TWO - THEY ARE HERE AND THEY ARE AMONGST US.)
Second, and this is the point, isn't it, cafes oddly enough serve...wait for it...coffee.
Do you frequent The Keg? Ever walk into the Keg with your own steak? Or McDonald's with your own patty and frozen potato slices?
Then why would you walk into a shop that depends on its livelihood for selling cups of coffee with someone else's coffee in your hand? Why would you think that's perfectly O.K?
On Saturday morning, I was enjoying a late breakfast al fresco at one of my favorite neighbourhood places (The "David" crepe: bananas and walnuts.), when two otherwise reasonable looking fools - a young man and a young woman - strolled in with their Timmy's take out java in hand.
At least they sat down and ordered something to eat.
Heather, the gracious and always welcoming host, owner and chef, tells the tale of the couple who came in sat down, ordered some lunch and then had the girl leave to walk down the street to get some Starbuck's coffee to bring back. When Heather pointed out that she sold coffee (They were sitting about four feet from the large and unavoidable espresso machine.), the couple got all huffy about their rights and left.
Last week, I became speechless and apoplectic with rage watching three lovely young people come into a cafe where my son and I were having a brunch. They were bright and smart and lovely people. Except that they marched past that espresso machine with their Starbucks paper cups in hand.
There is one first-rate Italian cafe here in town where the owner - from Rome , and successful and old enough to not give a shit about political correctness - will throw out such mindless, selfish trash. I love him for this.
So.
Let's review today's lesson, kids.
When you walk into a cafe, bring your brain and your wallet and your good graces and remember that this is a person running a small local business and he or she serves coffee. That's why it's called a coffee shop.
But, of course, I forgot.
You're the guy who brings your own sliced beef and chopped red peppers, Spanish onion and zucchini into The Mongolian Grill.
SOCIAL STUDIES, TWO - THEY ARE HERE AND THEY ARE AMONGST US.
There is a new creature afoot.
He is sleek.
She is smooth.
They are magazine, air-brushed perfect.
I see them all the time. Is it just me?
They wear tight, unattractive-by-design clothes. Garish prints and checks, browns and oranges, flared collars and cuffs. That fucking rimless toque in the heat of summer.
One great movie critic said of Matt Damon in the Bourne series of movies that Damon had become "a bullet," all polished and rounded head, a body imitating materiel.
This is what these new creatures bring to mind.
By the way, they live (so far, but I am sure they are spreading ... and fast) in 600 square foot condos near the waters. Their shoes are square-toed, their tote bags and notebook cases are polished leathers and they are always, I mean always, on their cells.
They work in law, advertising, the media (whatever that is..?), government and city planning.
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was twice made into an excellent movie. In 1956 and 1978. Humans are being replaced by not-quite-humans who are being substituted while they sleep from giant pea pods grown from spores that have drifted into the atmosphere from some galaxy far, far away. "Invaders from Mars," 1953, had a similar plot line, in this case, taken from the viewpoint of a young boy.
The "new" people look like their previous selves, but they seem strangely muted and devoid of emotion or sentiment or "humanness."
In a marvelous, ethnic stereotyping moment in the second version of "Body Snatchers," a Chinese man in a Chinese laundry in Chinatown in San Fransisco, complains hysterically to a puzzled Donald Sutherland, "That not my wife! That not my wife!"
Don't we all know that feeling?
Anyhoo...
I believe these Hollywood scare stories are now visiting us in the flesh.
Watch for these modern, soul-less, perfect people. They are busy and fast and they run things or strive to run things and they work out and stay perfect or strive to stay perfect.
And they are humorless, except for the Big Laugh that comes with defeating The Other Guy.
And, oh yes...
They bring Starbucks coffee into other people's cafes.
The Criminal Justice Branch of the BC Attorney-General's office has officially asked the RCMP to consider the possibility of an investigation into the famous missing e-mails.
Nice beginning for Kash Heed.
The Premier pursuades the West Vancouver Police Chief to step down from his recent appointment early so that he can run for office and be handed on a plate the AG job.
First file - check out your boss and his attachment to truth and justice! Hahaha...
On Monday, the rubber will hit the road.
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett will rule whether the e-mails in question are relevant to the defense in the Basi-Virk trial.
Fraud, money-laundering and breach of trust are only a few of the issues before us in this case related to the $1 Billion sale of BC Rail in 2003.
Don't even ask about the new owners, CN Rail, threatening last week to close down dozens of local stops along the way.
Community? Whazzat?
Service? Whoyakiddin'?
I didn't realize until after I had sent out yesterday's post on this little story ("OFF THE RAILS"), that my old editor at the Province newspaper, Jon Ferry had used the exact same word in his column to describe this affair: "stench." Clearly great complainers think alike.
Make no mistake about it.
This scandal has been stalled, bush-whacked, iced, red-tagged and avoided at all costs by a corrupt administration.
Let us see some real light shed on this tale. Let us hear some of the ugly truths.
The NDP opposition wasn't much of a second choice in the recent election and the Liberals did win their third kick at the cat by just barely enough votes to settle a pizza take-out dispute...BUT...
Herein, my usual collection of disconnected dust bunny newsbits.
SPORTS
What's with Tiger? I thought the knee thing was behind him but there's something else very wrong in my uninformed view. He's 31. It can't be age. Can you say "Tom Watson"?
Federer, on the other hand, or either hand for that matter, proves that body and soul can be as one in special people. I am not a tennis fan. I was mesmerized. Gobsmacked.
JUSTICE
Some drunk cops beat the supreme piss out of an East Indian newspaper dealer, who was trying to help them, at 4 a.m. They plead to a lower charge on the grounds that the lead cop had consumed 20 drinks (yes 20) and therefore could not form intent.
Word up. Any Canadian going to Warsaw or Bangalore would be well advised not to get pissed in a bar and start wanking about how Canada is the cradle of tolerance. Canadians tend to do that. I have cringed in bars all over the world when the bombastic Canadian enters, braying " I am not American, I am Canadian, the beautiful people. And by the way, where are the hookers'? We are a silly fucking people, boasting about what we aren't, afraid to define what we are
INTEGRITY
Nixon was fried for 18 minutes of erased tapes, which his secretary, Rosemary Woods, said she had accidently erased. Nixon was the most powerful man on earth, but lost his job nonetheless.
In BC, we erase two years of Cabinet emails, not 18 minutes, and the acceptable political response is " No comment, it is before the courts".
Could Nixon have said that? No, because the Exited States of America, as you call them, with typical Canadian hubris, are more vigilant on prompt due process than the DumbDumb (Dominion?) of Canada , standing for dumb media, dumb judiciary.
Last point.
Why doesn't anybody track the number of new journalist hires against the number of journalism degrees? I have a young niece who has been seduced into taking journalism by smarmy ad campaigns and I keep telling her, " Go the CKNWank or the Vancouver Stunned and ask them how many journalists they have hired for the last 5 years. She will face the suet faces of Bill Goo or Daffyduck Braham. ( Braham, That's a cow, right'?)
And Suetface and Cowbunga ain't moving anytime soon.
See DumbDumb above.
DROOPING WEENIE MEDIA
I really miss your media voice. There is no edge in media in this town. There was a vid about Jim Morrison of the Doors entitled, " Nobody gets out of her alive"
No BC journalist ever makes the Big Show. It amuses me to no end that the ultimate recognition for BC journalists is a " Webster Award".
Jack Webster ended his career as the token crustacean on a CBC show called Front Page Challenge. I remember watching TV in Ontario in the 70's and wondering, " Who is this fool with a Scot accent who clearly isn't following the ball. Is this a BC intellectual?.
The Globe & Mail has already forgiven and pardoned the Premier.
In an editorial this morning, they sidestep the thorny issue of culpability, perhaps criminality, certainly obstruction of justice, by calling the wilful destruction of emails "ineptitude."
Cute.
For the rest of us, let us remind ourselves what this is all about.
This government sold BC Rail to CN for $1 Billion in 2003.
In the Basi-Virk trial, which has been going on ever since, questions are being raised about corruption, privileged information, payoffs and the like.
First we learned that hosts of emails from the office of the Premier and cabinet members had been "lost" or deleted.
Now, we are told that these missing pieces of evidence in a criminal trial may have been deleted as recently as this May.
The Premier remains closed-mouthed about the entire affair. Quoting the departed Opaque One, he tells us that this all before the courts.
Right.
The stench is unbearable.
Defence lawyers are quite right to ask the BC Supreme Court to demand that the government produce these email records.
And the opposition NDP are quite right to call for a special investigation.
The stench is unbearable.
Doesn't anybody in this province care about democracy and the law?
The New Age Mayor, who has dedicated himself to eradicating homelessness in our lifetime, has a problem.
Rich Coleman, the Provincial Housing Minister, has called Hizzoner "a rank amateur."
How it pains me to credit a BC Government Minister with anything, but in this case...
The Mayor opens two shelters "under the Granville Bridge."
Get serious. For 30 years now, "under the Granville Bridge" has meant multi-million dollar view condos, Beach walks and a short boat trip to Granville Island.
There's a coffee shop I favor in that neighbourhood. The owners and the regulars will rant and rave about the drug addicts and needles and pee and poo at the drop of a cappuccino spoon.
As they should. Who asked for this?
Of course, like the Burrard Bridge idiocy, this council doesn't even have the courage of its own wonky convictions. The Bicycle lane musical comedy is a 3 month trial. At one point something million. Nice trail.
The shelters are trials.
Surveys are being taken as we speak.
It's not bad enough that they don't know what they're doing and that they are doing the wrong things in the wrong places.
Destruction of e-mail records puts heat on B.C. Premier
British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell.
Court filing says employee was ordered to delete records that lawyers in a government corruption trial have insisted are critical to the defence of their clients.
When Kevin Falcon was appointed BC Health Minister recently, I predicted trouble with a capital "T."
Falcon is now saying that he will impose financial penalties on executives in the pubic health care system who fail to meet their financial and performance targets.
Listen to his philospohy in his own pea-brained words:
"That's how most people in the real world operate and it should be no different here."
Really, Kev?
First, this statement shows that Falcon doesn;t understand for a split second the role of government in a modern Western democracy. He also doesn't understand that governments, especially in their management of social programs, are exactly NOT like the private sector. The public governance of health care is a universe unto itself with different rules, targets and agendas.
That does not mean for a second that anything goes or that sloppiness with public funds is to be tolerated or excused.
It does mean that the model is significantly different and that outcomes and expenses need be measured in slightly different ways from say...General Motors! Hahahaha.
Which leads us to Falcon's second problem. Or better, our second problem with the Good Minister.
His role model is "the real world."
He means, we can only surmise, the real world of GM and Enron, Goldman Sachs and Bernie Madoff.
Lovely.
Those are the role models we want to be emulating when it comes to our care of the elderly and cancer and diabetes.
For the past several months, I have been "clocking" bicycle traffic on the Burrard Bridge.
The largest number of bikes I have ever counted, including at rush hour, is eleven. Yes, 11.
The average is six.
Now, for this, we the taxpayers have spent $1.3 Million to create the famous bike lane madness.
Yesterday, I avoided the Burrard Bridge going downtown.
Coming back several hours later, I witnessed and experienced first hand tempers boiling over at Thurlow and Pacific and at the entrance to the Bridge.
The time was 4:40 pm.
There were seven bicycles. Coubnt 'em. Seven.
Now, this action by this dedicated council may or may not be a good thing for them politically, but that is hardly the point, is it?
The point is expensive tinkering using the public purse to further partisan and ideological aims that border on fantasies.
The Mayor and his Hollyhock Happy Planet dwellers can get all their bicycle friends out in full force for the Big Foto Op, but it won't change the reality.
There is not and never has been a bicycle problem on the Burrard Bridge.
Let Gordon Campbell, the thrice-elected Premier of the Province of British Columbia, stand up in public and say in some recognizable language, "I have nothing to hide."
Let him borrow for the moment the immortal words of Richard Milhouse Nixon and tell us in an open field, "I am not a crook."
The revelation this morning that Mr. Campbell's cabinet has erased 4 years of e-mails will make both of these declarations hard to swallow.
The news is part of the on-going melodrama known as the Basi-Virk Trial. It all has something mysterious to do with selling a publicly-owned railway.
Turns out the law says that electronic files must be kept for seven years.
Will Campbell and his friends and colleagues be charged with a criminal offense?
Or does this just fall into the "business as usual" barrel?
Why would these honorable ladies and gentlemen risk breaking the law by erasing history?
Hm...
Why was the real state of the provincial budget kept from the voters before the last election? Turns out there were more unfortunates on welfare than we had been led to believe. Turns out the actual numbers were suppressed by well-meaning bureaucrats, bless their hearts.
s if all of this isn't frightening enough, we now have to contend with Kevin Falcon being the new Minister of Health.
No man on earth is as beloved of Campbell's obsession with private-public partnerships than Mr. Falcon, who can now be predicted to do everything in his considerable power to fashion utter havoc with the health care system.
You are the folks who elected this government - just barely.
May we all survive the next four years of mangled truths and strangled services relatively unscarred.
Dear David, This was a great day. The Cambie merchant won and Stonewally was beaten. A great Day for sure. Regards, Bill.
SHE WON!!!
Susan Heyes, owner of Hazel and Company, that small maternity shop once located on Cambie and 16th and now on Main Street, has won her court case against the City of Vancouver, Canada, the Attorney-General, South Coast BC Transit Authority, Canada Line Rapid Transit Inc. and Intransit BC Partnership.
She had one lawyer, Cameron Ward, and they had four.
Donna and Goliath.
Mr. Justice Ian Pitfield has awarded Susan $600,000 for loss of business during the deceitful and underhanded cut-and-cover debacle of the past two years and ordered all of the defendants to pay all of the court costs.
Our confidence and faith in the courts has been sorely tested over and over again in recent years. This decision does not entirely restore that faith and confidence, but it sure don't hurt.
Susan is our Local Hero.
Give her all awards and citations available for sheer determination and grit. For saying loudly and clearly and publicly, "FUCK YOU!" to the arrogant, thoughtless powers that be.
This is a clear piss in the face of Gordon Campbell, whose ears remained conveniently and consistently shut to cries of compensation from the many mom-and-pop shops he destroyed with indifference.
* * *
And The Opaque One is gone. We will have a new Attorney-General.
Of course, the fix was in way back when.
Kash Heed was offered the position months ago. Run for us. You'll win. Wally will run somewhere else, and win or lose, we'll give you the office.
Nothing illegal or sinister about that. It's called politics.
And Kash Heed will no doubt make a much better AG than His Opaqueness. My Aunt Tillie would make a better AG than...
Somewhere in those mysterious actuarial gardens where numbers grow unbidden like kale come post election polls.
Last week, we were first meant to believe that the voter turnout in the BC provincial election was a mythical 52%. Most of us knew, and it was later confirmed, that 48% was the much more accurate and darker truth.
Less than half the eligible population of this barely civilized outpost left their important rounds long enough to appear at their local elementary school gym to exercise their franchise.
How many millions took up arms and died merely 60 years ago for such privilege? How do we honor and remember them?
The explanation for this shame is twofold.
New Canadians
We have all done a woefully inadequate job of integrating immigrants into the real fabric of our mythically diverse society.
So many recent immigrants from many countries, especially Asian countries, have no knowledge of and no interest in local affairs. What Val Someladyorother or Wally Whatsis has to say about salad or sambas or bicycle paths on throughways carries no weight for these folks. In fact, they don’t even hear the messages.
Whose fault is this?
Yours, theirs and mine. That’s whose fault it is.
Immigration Canada demands not enough. The settlement societies are too defensive and negative, looking more for Canada to accommodate the new than for the new to develop an awareness of Canada. And the so-called ethnic communities are largely focused on creature comforts. The same obsessions that I will discuss in a moment with reference to Old Canadians – consumerism and marketing. New Canadians want an SUV or two, 4,000 square feet in the burbs, hockey equipment. That’s the Canada they have bought into. What’s voting got to do with all this?
Old Canadians
The other group that couldn’t be bothered to turn out at the voting booth last Tuesday was the thirty-somethings who are second and third and fifth generation Caucasian Canadians. Old fogies like me showed up, and thankfully some young voters appeared, but the backbone of the community was busy with their cell phones, blackberries, SUV’s, hockey leagues, bar dates, plasma TVs and all the other myriad forms of mindless amusement that passes in this neck of the woods for culture. What is, in fact, a society of brain-dead shoppers, ennobled by being made a part of the Consumer Index.
American public schools cannot hold a candle to ours, but they do have one glaring advantage. They maniacally, often jingoistically, but with good reason and result, teach something called “Civics” throughout the school years.
This is your government. These are the documents and struggles that brought it to birth and to date. This is how it is supposed to work.
Not that it is the “truth,” or even something approximating reality. But it is something.
It forces on young minds a burgeoning awareness that the democratic process and dream have a history and a prize.
***
It doesn’t really matter that much in the long run which of the scallywags won office last week.
What is more important – and disheartening – is that so few people found import in this moment.
The politicians are not to be blamed – except, of course, for their own low quality of character and offerings.
We are to blame for not finding enough excitement or vision in our own holy enterprise.
When we care little enough to send the very worst, this is what we get.
When we care little enough to remind ourselves and our neighbours about the rewards and demands and responsibilities of citizenship, this is what we get.
Citizenship is being lost. May it soon again be found.
