Sex! Did We Get Your Attention? Hot Sex!

Journalistically speaking there is no hot news about elections, there is nothing new about party leaders lining up and speaking up and pointing their fingers at each other, always with the promises, the promises! There is nothing especially great about how politicians look, in their absurdly baggy suits, and badly coiffed hair, their cliché spouting, bland performance underneath the banal glare of lights and cameras with a convenient backdrop, rural heartland, factory, school, whatever. More specifically, politics isn’t that interesting. Not in the way, say, a really beautifully half undressed person you love who is currently quietly reclining in bed on a mid-Saturday morning is interesting in the most vivid way imaginable. So interesting that rather than doing anything else at all, like, say, the laundry, jogging, calling back a friend you promised to have brunch with, drinking water, you know, anything at all pretty much takes a back seat. Politics is not as interesting as sex. Though, maybe, it should be, because we are definitely sitting around causally fucking ourselves.

Mostly we cast around looking for new hot topics in the news, did one leader make whatever a gaff is, was there a boondoggle? There was a boondoggle! What the fuck, does anyone but a political journalist use the word boondoggle? No! No one but a political journalist uses the word boondoggle. New mission: Use the word boondoggle in everyday conversation next week, see if that horrendous word slides under the radar. If it doesn’t you owe whoever called you on it a shot. Take one yourself, you look like you could use a stiff drink. You could use a stiff drink because of how much you’ve been fucking yourself.

Let’s get to the sexiness of politics already and all the positions that Canadians are willing to take on the matter. A good friend of mine (his name is Danny and apparently he makes his wife very happy) once told me that sex isn’t good unless you’ve assumed at least three positions and the foreplay should take at least a half hour. Well, we’ve been in about five years of foreplay with the party of the Big East (more on that in a later post, but shit, why isn’t anyone really making a big deal about how the Conservative Party is basically a bunch of Ontarians who took a dump on Ontario a couple years back and now want to have their way with the rest of the country? The West Wants In? Well, the west just got mostly shoved out of the top level of their own party) and we’re going to get nailed pretty hard real soon.

The thing is, all jokey metaphors aside, politics is important. Not to unduly use other unrelated geopolitical events callously to drive home a point, but there are people dying to have the right to cast a ballot in other countries just this minute. There has been a recent draft of political commercials, some really funny, some really quite earnest, all insisting that Canadians get out the vote. Simultaneously the Conservative Party has been systematically kicking out young voters as that party tries to prejudicially profile young voters. Let’s be honest, the Conservatives are prejudiced, we have definitive evidence. So sure, if you like your politics brushed with a tinge if the bigoted American flag wrapped debate crushing partisanship you’ll probably say a political party has every right to profile and vet the audience, you’ll agree that a political party has the duty to limit reporters ability to report and ask questions, and it is in a political party’s best interests to erode the popular interest by casting political debate as merely bickering. This is where we’re being fucked.

Of course you’ll rarely hear about politics as a form of sex. As already noted in our beloved blog, the Conservatives in particular, but political analysts generally, like to have it as if it were warfare. We are always talking about hierarchy, defeating opponents, rhetorical victories translating into poll standings, obsessive statistical analysis, banners, and the general chest thumping that passes for the democratic process in much of electioneering. We, here at barpolitics, are more sensitive. You can tell we are sensitive because we have well moisturized hands. Unlike the Conservative Party (their hands are calloused, their cuticles are uneven), we don’t want to make war, we want to make love. Alright, we’re probably losing some of the thread here. The whole point is that politics is much more than a fight, though good sex can feel that way at times, it is in the end about congress. We’re totally serious about that. As in sex, just as in politics, to make it good you really gotta feel it, you really gotta mean it. That’s why, like in both sex and politics, when we repeatedly come against lacklustre performance in our leader/lovers we become dull, uninterested, we’d rather watch porno and masturbate than waste another minute enduing the drawn out dry hump of an election. The thing is, we’re gonna get fucked one way or the other. And rather than shuffling off to the bedroom to give yourself a jobby and wake up in the morning with the dick that you don’t know remember having climbed into bed with at the very least we can make a choice and have a tussle with someone you’ve chosen.

Sure it’s a risk, sex, and politics, always is, but it’s totally worth it if you know what you’re doing. So in this election, give ‘er, and give ‘er good. Do it with vigour, and do it like you care, because it’s only as good as you make it. And look, it doesn’t really matter if a lot of this didn’t make a whole lot of sense just as long as you basically understand what we’re saying. Right? Right? Whatever, I’m gonna go for round two.

SUCCC it part 2: you are not welcome here.

SUCCC it part 2: you are not welcome here.

The conservative campaign has unveiled its platform, much like the budget on which it expected to fall. Like that budget there are not many surprises. One surprise among them is a matter of strategy. Harpergov has announced that it will push its law and order platform in a single omnibus bill. [1]

Mixed among changes to mandatory minimum sentencing, elimination of home arrest and other techniques to castrate the process that has been the auspice of judges who actually understand the nature of crime is increased funding for prisons and police.

We should thank our lucky stars that we have a government brave enough to ignore the advice of criminologists both in Canada and across the world who have come to the conclusion that increased investment in prisons does little to reduce crime rates [2]. Thank the Christian god that the Harper government is aware of the real threat that justifies this seemingly irrational increase in spending on prisons.

That threat, my real Canadians, is "unreported crime".

In previous posts [3] we have exposed the source of this threat - so sneaky that it evades the gaze of even the most astute crime reporters. While my bar tab holds out and my eyes stay straight I feel that I have to inform you yet again of the organization that is responsible for this murky wave of criminality - SUCCC -or the Secret Underground Consortium of Canadian Criminals.

Oooooh. That's good whiskey. You ever been so drunk that you write all of your "n"s as "m"s? I guess being drunk would make "just do it"" make a lot less sense.

Right - the point, how elusive a maiden as you are. Tonight I want to talk to you about the next member of SUCCC that must be exposed to the public. Awish Aslam, or as she is known to the public - "The Threat".

Some of you who still aren't reading Sun Media [spitting gesture] will be familiar with the 19 year old University of Western Ontario student who was ejected from a Conservative Party event in London, because her Facebook account included a photo of herself and Michael "Iggy", The Ig", "The Iggster" Ignatieff.

First off, we at barpolitics really must tip our hats (our hat - for really one of us is gratuitously bald) to the conservative party staffer who had the foresight and initiative to investigate a potential troublemaker like Aslam - apparently for reasons completely unrelated to the fact that her last name is Aslam.

It truly must have took real testicular fortitude to escort this 19 year old University of Western Ontario student from the party event. Not knowing at which point she might make her move to be closer to Allah. We should really take this opportunity to congratulate the RCMP for their flexibility. Not only are they capable of protecting the Prime Minister but they have managed to freelance as the public relations wing of the Conservative Party. After all, protecting the Prime Minister can be a pretty boring job in Canada (not like in Sri Lanka). Luckily the RCMP has done honor and service to their history by acting as bouncers at Conservative Party Event.

Most bouncers that I know do it for the free blowjobs and bumps of cocaine, but thank Christian Jesus that our national police do it for the sake of a higher calling. I should encourage my children to seek out a career in law enforcement, if only for the oral sex.

So there you have it, Canada. I've lost my train of thought after two pints of organic and two shots of Irish whiskey (what kind of whiskey I will not tell at least until we get a sponsorship deal). We've already [4] talked about how New Canadians are welcomed in the little blue tent so long as they do not hold opposing views, or they have the audacity to pursue an education.

Now we know that brown and young people are being barred from the political process, I as a WASP alcoholic can sleep better (you never really sleep when you're drunk) knowing that The Conservative Party is doing its part to prevent young brown people from participating in the democratic process.

How's that working out for you, Mubarak?

We're Not Saying Tom Flanagan Sucks The Bag

Now, we don’t like to judge. We, at barpolitics, like to be even handed in our sobered thinking. We like to give a fair shake when a fair shake is due. For instance, that guy who jostled me in last evenings late night moderate drinking, jostled me in such a way as to cause the spilling of my precious beer, I shook him soundly, I shook him fairly, I shook him and shook him until his friends, and he had many, decided that the shaking was done, and that the time had come for some reciprocal shaking, which, if the truth be known, was unfairly administered, and that is just the point. A fair shake where a fair shake is due.

This is, however, no time for sober thinking. We are, after all, in an electoral political system, and why ruin it with clear thought unobstructed with needlessly sentimental calls to ideas that feel true?

The jaundiced blear eyed squint of the late morning lean to our collective hangover that we like to call political commentary in this well governed land needs to be commented on. It is true, there is something particularly odd about a commentary on the commentary, it’s like buttering both sides of the bread, it’s like wearing underwear under a trench coat, it simply isn’t done. However, I do a lot of things that I shouldn’t do. For instance, I was wearing only an extremely tight pair of underwear under my trench coat at the bars I frequented last evening which led to a man dumping my beer on me which led to me threatening to shake him which led to him actually shaking me because whereas I am weak and think it’s a good time to nap often he clearly thinks it is a good time to weight lift often. As well, a decade of napping and playing Dungeons & Dragons has left me with but a single equally weak friend, while a decade of lifting weights had left my opponent with many surprisingly strong friends. Bastards.

But I digress.

On Monday Tom Flanagan wrote an op-ed for the Globe & Mail. It amounts to a marvellous substitute for the horrors of genuinely interesting and useful thinking. Flanagan is right to say that during an election it is the right thing to do to reflect about the nature of our politics. It is also a good time to reflect on the nature of our political writing. Flanagan exemplifies the inability of our right wing to understand what a metaphor is.

Allow me to explain.

Flanagan lists a variety of words and concepts that describe the system by which we elect our government. Among these words are ‘campaign‘, ‘taking the field‘, the ‘war room‘, ‘the ground war‘, ’message discipline’ as rigid as that of military discipline. He further explains that there are but three systems for choosing our government, heredity, bloody civil war, or smooth persuasion, and persuasion, electoral politics, are the alternative to bloody civil war. Which serves to explain the language used to describe the process of garnering voter support during an election.

While the Clausewitz aphorism, pithy as it is, is considered accurate, reducing an election to actual warfare is disingenuous. Rather, the whole purpose of contriving to make the electoral cycle equal to warfare is to defend the Conservative Party strategy. Flanagan even goes so far as to explain how, in the sense that this is war, it is fair to impugn Ignatieff’s motives for coming back to his homeland to compete as a Liberal, and even argues that this negative characterisation is of a higher intellectual plateau than any kind of positive ad that the Conservative Party may have put out. It would take a Conservative to think that a character attack is of greater intellectual worth than a positive program for change.

The thing is, if politics is in fact war, and war isn’t simply a metaphor for the political landscape, then it might be just to use any sneaky-deaky tactic to find victory. Amongst our more cynical citizens, this is the case. I must question whether or not ideas do in fact matter, and that positive messages of hope may be less sexy, and less damaging to political opponents, the climate of warfare that characterises our southern neighbour has only served to erode genuine political discourse. I would say what we don’t want is anyone throwing around the slur of being un-Canadian except it is too late.

If we take Tom Flanagan at his word though then the misinformation and attack ads amount to a Psychological Operation, and the muscling out of moderate citizens looking to be politically informed is an attack on the liberties to congregate. Tom Flanagan wants Canadians to accept his sterile view that the truth can not be known, that we must judge on plausibility, that we must come to terms with a political dialogue that is at open war, and because of this warfare, anything is allowed. Oddly, he also places Kim Campbell and Ralph Klein on the same level as Aristotle and Cicero, all great political philosophers. Campbell helpfully explains that the worst time to talk about social programs is on campaign. Of course that might have been because of what her party wanted to do to Canadian social programs. Ralph Klein is quoted as saying that his health care reform is far too complicated to explain on campaign.

Either Kim and Ralph lack the requisite imagination and vocabulary to explain their positions, or they were strategically arguing against that kind of explanation in order to confuse the enemy. It’s difficult to say, the fog of war, you see.

Let me put it this way: It’s not fair to say that in order to sway you, the heroic reader of our beloved blog, against Tom Flanagan that he is a flatulent egg head university tight ass that probably wears incredibly tight shoes. Furthermore, it would be entirely out of order to say that Flanagan is the kind of man that wears suspenders and a belt, he can’t trust his pants you see, and it would be absolutely ridiculous to insist that he is the small man of Confederation, or that he should be hustled out of political gatherings because his face book friends are from the wrong side of the prairies. Which is why I won’t say that. That kind of writing and thinking has no place in an election, where ideas do matter, Kim Campbell is not a brilliant political philosopher, where elections are a rather excellent time to talk about the agenda of future government, and where the distinction between the nobler elements of our political discourse are given precedence over a blind emotional call to arms.

Maybe it’s not as sentimental as warfare, but a political campaign is not a war of words. It is, hopefully, a meaningful dialogue between constituents, a negotiation between ridings, a deal made between regions, and not the cruel conquering by the blessed few over the defeated and lamenting many. That is, it shouldn’t be.

And it’s true, Tommy F-dogg did use the word marvellous. The only thing that is truly marvellous is to wear sheer silk underpants underneath an excellent trench coat while writing a political blog in a café.

Jason Kenney: Just Visiting

Commercial Spot. Queue ominous music:

“Why is Jason Kenney in Canada after being away for three days? Does he have a plan to integrate new Canadians into our culture? No. Instead his party is running attack ads to hide the fact that they are cutting investment in language training for new arrivals to Canada. With no long term vision for Canada, he’s not in it for the New Canadians, he’s just in it for his Canadians. [Run shot of Kenney going down escalator]. It’s the only reason he’s back.”
 
In his time as Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Kenney has been sent abroad as the face of the Canadian government for functions such as funerals and conferences that are of importance to new Canadian voters. But the question remains: why did he come back?
 
Educated in San Francisco (seriously), Kenney couldn’t possibly be in touch with the interests of Canadians. In his work inside Canada as Minister of Multiculturalism, he has been exposed to all sorts of ideas, languages and foods that are foreign to “good” Canadians like you and me. Sure the new Canadians provide a vital shot in the arm to our economy and define us as the most inclusive, multicultural nation on our green earth, but we all know from the Conservative Party that anyone who has spent any considerable amount of time outside of Canada cannot be trusted.
 
Well, that’s not exactly correct. They can be trusted to vote for the Conservative Party, but they can’t be trusted to be Prime Minister of the Country.
 
And don’t think we here at Barpolitics have forgot about San Francisco - oh no, we never forget San Francisco. It is clear that anyone who has more than one degree from one university is tainted by the bias resulting from an inherent link between education and Liberal values.
 
Part and parcel of the Canadian dream that drives the new Canadians is the hope that their children will go to University - perhaps to be a doctor, perhaps to be a lawyer, or perhaps to be both happy and successful. But luckily the Conservative party knows that when you spend too much time in university, you become suspect.
 
Oh wait, what’s that phrase? Not suspect... “out of touch” - that’s the one. Again, the conservative party wants new Canadians to follow their dreams - just so long as their children don’t try to run for Prime Minister.
 
It is clear that the Conservative Party has a plan for new Canadians - one of Jason Kenney’s staffers was kind enough to deliver it to the opposition in a Conservative election fund raising request written out on House of Commons stationary.

 
This was spun off by Kenney as a mistake by an overenthusiastic, inexperienced staffer. The staffer, Kasra Nejatian, was dismissed, but it is worth looking at why such a gaffe was possible in the first place. A lot of it has to do with the Conservative Party’s aversion to academia.
 
Although he has a law degree, Nejatian has little experience in politics, and there is a reason for that. Other than the Conservative Party’s hostility towards the academic community, there are laws that exist that bar public servants from operating as registered lobbyists for five years after they leave their posts. [1]
 
Few who have both the experience required for effective public service and an inclination towards Conservative politics would give up the lucrative opportunities available to an Ottawa lobbyist. There are no Turner/ Pelletier/ Marchand powerhouses in the Conservative Party. They are lucky to attract half a Stanfield and a Clarke.
 
It is because of their shallow depth that the Conservative Party, and the Prime Minister’s Office specifically, must exert its iron fisted control over every aspect of the government’s operations. If they don’t, they know that some green staffer will sell the farm for a bag of beans, as happened in the case of Kasra Nejatian.
 
So the message to new Canadians is clear: You can be successful enough to vote Conservative, but not too successful. Your children can be educated, but not so educated that they begin to question Harpergov’s machine. Your experience outside of Canada is valued, but not if that experience makes you question the Conservative party. Otherwise, to Stephen Harper, you are Just Visiting.