It's not so long ago that left-leaning Americans thought of Canada as a paradise of pot-smoking, honeymooning gay people. I know that because I once read an article about it in The New York Times. Then, the Americans forgot all about our frozen tundra of progressiveness when their political Rapture arrived in the form of a new president (who's since managed to disappoint, but is still widely acknowledged to not suck nearly as much as the last one).Canadians seem to have succeeded in embracing the neo-Conservative movement of the '90s a little late. That is by no means an original observation (although if you have never heard it before, trust me: it is a totally original observation). We have a right-wing prime minister who will probably continue to be prime minister largely because his sweater vests are more appealing to voters than the entirety of his opponent, who in every photo strongly resembles Satan. Don't remember his name? Just read the most recent government news releases, which no longer refer to "the Government of Canada" and instead mention something called "the Harper Government."Stephen Harper is trying to campaign through every mention of Canada's national government; Rob Ford, the new right-wing mayor of Toronto, is branding himself by creating his own imaginary country inspired by the name given to fans of the city's perennially not-playoff-making hockey team. Leaf fans live in an imaginary place called "Leaf Nation." Recently, Ford referred to his supporters as "Ford Nation" and spoke of setting this nation loose on the provincial government if it didn't pony up some cash for Toronto. The name is unintentionally apt, as citizens of Leaf Nation are certainly defined by a constant and crushing sense of disappointment. As an inadvertent and bitter citizen of Ford Nation, I can relate.So I've gone from basking in the glow of American left-wing envy to living under "the Harper Government" in "Ford Nation". I'm so despondent, it's like I'm practicing to become a Leafs fan.Click here to sign a petition demanding that Stephen Harper stop naming the Government of Canada after himself.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
I am worse than Rush Limbaugh. I don't mock people with Parkinson's from some underground lair via ham radio, but I have managed to be worse than Rush Limbaugh nonetheless.Rush's most recent attack on the Obamas (that I'm aware of - a whole day has passed since I heard about this one) involves Michelle's weight and dining preferences. Michelle Obama has made reducing obesity in America her First Lady platform, and Rush finds her activities to that end meddlesome and hypocritical. He claims they are hypocritical because "...our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date ever six months or what have you." He's not alone. A conservative cartoonist has produced an uproariously funny and artistically distinguished depiction of Michelle Obama eating a giant plate of hamburgers. By all means look at it, but be warned: you'll have to read a hell of a lot of Doonesbury to feel clean again afterwards.So why am I worse than Rush Limbaugh? Rush is criticizing Michelle Obama not for being fat, but for being a hypocrite. He's wrong, and he's insulting, and he's paranoid, but he's not just making fun of someone's figure for the sake of it. I, however, have made fun of someone's figure just for the sake of it.When Rob Ford was elected mayor of Toronto, my post was graced by the following image:  Someone's Been Eating the Gravy Train Rob Ford is undeniably full-figured, and he does talk a lot about a sinister gravy train, but that doesn't mean I should have made a joke about how he's been eating said train. I knew it was cheap and unfair at the time, but I did it anyway.
So Rush Limbaugh unfairly makes fun of people for being fat hypocrites, while I apparently, make fun of people I don't like simply for being fat. I shouldn't have to resort to making cheap and unfair cracks about Rob Ford's appearance when there are so many substantive and justifiable cracks I could be making about his policies.
This week, Rush Limbaugh acted as my moral compass. Perhaps next week, Glenn Beck will teach me an important lesson about intellectual integrity.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Finally, some good news for Toronto, Ontario, Canada! For too long, Toronto has been putting all its energy into becoming Copenhagen. Or, at the very least, Helsinki. It's been prioritizing (or trying to prioritize) bicycle-riding hooliganism, green energy-related propaganda, and giving everyone welfare without any strings.
Now, thankfully, the times they have a-changed. Left-wing blood has been spilled on the tracks. And whatever else you think of that could be done to a Bob Dylan lyric/album title.
Torontonians have spoken and they have spoken loudly and with glorious senselessness. They have elected a man named Rob Ford. Allow Rob Ford to speak for himself, as he regularly and recklessly insists on doing:
If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn’t get AIDS probably, that’s bottom line. These are the facts. – June 29, 2006
Every year we have dozens of people who get hit by cars or trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day. – March 7, 2007
And my personal favourite, because of its modern sensibility:
Those Oriental people work like dogs. I’m telling you, the Oriental people, they’re slowly taking over. – March 5, 2008
He's fearless and shameless. And by all rights, he should feel a great deal of both fear and shame, which just shows how fearless and shameless he really is.
The liberal elites are weeping and creating grant-funded performance art pieces; the right-wing Average Joes are driving their ATVs through protected wetlands in celebration.
I am personally excited and encouraged by Ford's win for two reasons.
1) Toronto is finally proving to the U.S. that it can play in the big leagues. Sure, we once had a discount furniture store owner for mayor, and he said the following: "What the hell do I want to go to a place like Mombasa?... I'm sort of scared about going out there, but the wife is really nervous. I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me." But Rob Ford improves upon Mel Lastman because he manages to be equally offensive, but more of a bully. He may not have been a high-school warlock or hired a male escort to carry his baggage through Europe, but he did once drunkenly harass tourists at a hockey game (while a city councillor). Here's hoping he'll up the ante while in power.
2) 380,201 people voted for Rob Ford, which means there are still 380,201 people I haven't met in the City of Toronto!
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, whom many up to this point thought of as a reasonably reasonable individual, has declared that the Black Bloc hooligans who broke windows at the recent G20 Summit in Toronto were "terrorists."This thrills me. Not because I welcome the threat to my imaginary storefront, but because this may be a sign that Toronto, previously a modest and restrained metropolis, should be awarded the highest civic honour with which I am familiar: a sister city in Northern New York. Unfortunately (for me, and, I'm sure, for two or three other people) newscasts produced by local Northern New York television stations are not readily available on the internet. If they were, I would be able to introduce you in a far more dramatic and credible fashion to...the Rock Sniper.Over the course of three weeks in 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, better known as the "Beltway Snipers", shot and killed ten people. When, soon after this occurred, windows in Watertown (I'm pretty sure it was Watertown - as I said, the case has, inexcusably, not been well documented on the internet) were targeted and broken by rocks, the rhetorical temptation was unavoidable. They were dealing with the "Rock Sniper". They interviewed residents who'd borne (or rather whose windows had borne) the brunt of the Rock Sniper's rage. They solemnly intoned the phrase: "The Rock Sniper has struck again." They provided anxious viewers with Rock Sniper updates. Just as people on the east coast of the U.S. were gripped by the fear that they would randomly be shot, so too were the people of Watertown gripped by the fear that their windows would randomly be broken. Which of the two groups suffered more grievously from fear? Who can tell? The word "sniper" has the remarkable ability to reveal the essential resemblance between situations which, to the untutored eye, might seem a tad different.And now Chief Blair has revealed the same remarkable ability in the word "terrorist." Denizens of Toronto should immediately proceed to sympathize volubly with New Yorkers, Israelis, Palestinians..etc...etc... we can now shake our heads slowly and sadly and reflect on the terrible toll that terrorism takes on civil society. When someone speaks to a Torontonian of a "death toll", he or she can respond with harrowing tales of the "window toll." A final note: it wasn't just Chief Blair who used inspired and entirely defensible rhetorical flourishes in discussing the G20. Judy Rebick, a well-known local hippie ne-er-do-well, also insistently drew an ingenious and tenable parallel between totally comparable things when she referred to just about everything as being "like a concentration camp." Bravo to everyone involved! I was quite depressed when the journalist and television host Steve Paikin avoided any such illuminating phrases while describing his experience of seeing a journalist roughed-up by police. THEN, thankfully, he began his defense of the reasonableness and docility of a crowd of protestors by describing it as "middle-class" and I could rejoice once more.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
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