...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

Cold comfort: A NOW  Magazine scribe is mega-bummed out that the ee-vil Tories managed to pull out a victory again. (For those who don’t live  in these environs, NOW is a self-important freebie rag that helps defray the cost of restaurant reviews and  anti-U.S., anti-Israel screeds by running tons of raunchy sex adverts in the back of book—so if you’re ever in town and itching for a little jiggery-pokery, or whatever yanks your chain, you’ll know where to look.) The scribe draws comfort, however, from the fact that Gilles Duceppe (the political leader whose raison d’etre, as they say in la belle province, is engineering the demise of Confederation via Quebec independence) and urban sophisticates  (like herself) united to “save our Canada” (i.e. deprive the Harper Conservatives of a majority):

It’s hard to be upbeat right now since the overwhelming first-past-the-post message of the election is a strengthened Harper minority. But given the array of forces aligned on his side, the Conservatives actually did relatively poorly. Harper had all the ingredients for a perfect Tory storm.

We had the lowest voter turnout in history (which always favours the incumbents), an unprecedented destabilizing economic crisis (which favours the safe haven of the known), no real opponents in the race (Jack Layton’s spin notwithstanding) and a giant corporate media conglomerate onside (CTVglobemedia) that showed its hand publicly when it actually went so far as to intervene in the election on Harper’s behalf (the outrageously unethical tape release). 

But Canadians have failed to stand up and deliver. 

My Canada includes Quebec – something for which I am thankful every day, but at no time more than today, when Quebeckers have literally saved the country as a whole. While the hype played on about the Bloc being a party that has lost its raison d’être with the demise of a separatist agenda, Gilles  Duceppe has shown that the Bloc holds a new place that defends the cultural identity and best interests of this beloved province at the same time that it resonates with those who are like-minded in the rest of Canada.

This idea of a new connection between the Bloc and other progressive parties in the rest of Canada is one of the most hopeful possibilities to emerge out of this election.

Quebeckers and urbanites unite. Cities from St. John’s to Victoria also tended to stand up to the Tory tide, most notably in our own fair province, with Hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener, Windsor, London, Ottawa, Kingston, Sudbury, Sault St. Marie, Timmins and Thunder Bay all resisting the blue tide to some degree. Of course, our Toronto deserves a special nod for really holding back the blue line. Yay us!

On the subject of cities, my Canada does not include Alberta or Saskatchewan. (Just kidding.)…

No she isn’t.

Echoing these sentiments, another sage, albeit crushed, NOW pundit explains that “Harper appeals to our baser instincts.”

Oh, you mean like the “instincts” that can be assuaged—for a price—by all the hard working guys and gals who advertise in the back of your rag? Funny, but not once during the campaign did I see Harper or Stockwell Day or Jason Kenney show up in bondage gear (and let's all give a little prayer of thanks, shall we?, for that. Mind you, now that green goddess Lizzie May has been soundly rejected, she might want to consider a career as a dominatrix. She'd look rather fetching, I think, done up in rubber, which, as we know, is a natural and biodegradable material).

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:52 | link | comments

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