The Scene and Herd

Ha. Everyone’s angry at Miller today! Would you believe I saw him this evening? He was outside his house, talking on his cell phone and looking STRESSED out. Poor guy… 

I don’t know David Miller, but I seem to run into him a lot. One early morning last year I was out running by High Park. While going up a hill, I noticed a runner walking toward me, decked out in sweat pants and kind of in cool down mode. As I ran passed him I realized it was Mayor Miller. So I turned around to get a second look and I KID you NOT I saw him picking trash up off of the sidewalk and throwing it into the garbage can.

Best moment of my life! Haha! 

So there ya have it; proof Miller does not hate Toronto. 

Tell your friends.

Allow me, for a moment, to make a metaphor using my favourite TV show at the moment; The Wire. For those of you unawares, The Wire is a wicked awesome show about Baltimore, corruption, cops and drugs.

There is this scene that stays with me: Carver pulls a corner boy (For those of you that are not from Bramps, a “corner boy” is a kid that stands on a corner selling drugs) down to the precinct and is questioning him, playing “good cop.” Carver is trying to get Bodie to spill it. “You remind me of me,” he says.

“Oh yeah,” says Bodie, “you came up hard?”

This is a game you play with delinquents. To gain their trust, you make them believe that you braved the projects, “the low rises,” if you will. 

This is a game that (some of) the Canadian people are trying to play with Ignatieff.

A google news search of Ignatieff turns up a raging plethora of rants and raves (some of them completely embarrassing). Americans like him (ignore the weird graph). It’s patronizing, the way they express it, but they like the guy. 

And yet this persistent trend over here, this bizarre demand for someone “down to earth.”

Okay, can I blame Orillia for a little while?

All this news over the weekend that Orillia really likes Iggy, “standing room only” etc. But what does Orillia have to say?  They like him… because… brace yourselves,

“the former Harvard professor was more like a cross between a folksy preacher and sympathetic high-school guidance counsellor.”

This is what impressed The Orillia Packet.

Shouldn’t The Orillia Packet be saying, “What the hell? I thought you were a Harvard professor. You sound more like a high-school guidance councellor.”

Points to Igntieff for his apt performance, but Orillia (among others) needs to get a grip. Iggy did not come up hard. And he’s not like you, thankfully.

Now stop acting like a bunch of needy delinquents.

Is it just me, or does Bob Rae need to simmer down? It’s weird, like he’s been waiting all these years to prove something. But he’s elected, no?

Every time I’m on facebook these days (deficit days), my feed informs me that Bob Rae’s being self-deprecating again. Or sarcastic. But it’s never really funny, because it’s about job loss and… deficit. 

Bob, I think it’d look way better on you if you toned it down. Can’t you let someone else say “I told you so” on your behalf? Pay and employ someone to say it even? But do not say it yourself. Dude, totally not classy.

The first paragraph is exemplary of all this “weakness” nonsense. Note the phrase in which it’s pointed out that Ignatieff “allowed” a “rebellion.” Is that even possible? You want me to grab a dictionary?

He doesn’t like the budget but he can’t oppose the budget and now he gets to…. have his cake and eat it, so to speak. All this business just confirms that things just… work out for Iggy. That, and Newfoundland Liberals are all troublemakers. I mean, how much noise can you make before the rest of the country gets fed up? (A lot… I don’t think anyone’s really listening.) 

And I don’t think it’s helping anyone’s case, except  Ignatieff’s, to say “this never even happened with Dion and this would never happen with Harper.” Who likes/liked those guys anyways? Isn’t the whole point that Ignatieff is different? 

Furthermore, might we have more fluid parametres to what a “good leader” is than “hard ass who lays down the law?”

I guess it takes The New York Times to shamelessly profile the old money coursing through Iggy’s veins in a positive light. Ha. I know nobody over here is ever going to do it. We like to keep quiet about all that, unless we’re crafting an attack ad.

Seriously, what is the problem everybody in Canada seems to have with wealth and Harvard? These are good things, no?

The ensuing response (the comment section - don’t miss the comment section) is hilarious. 

I’m not all that sure that the article is condescending, but even if it is, um, so? It’s The New York Times. It’s a really condescending newspaper. And yeah, I am happy that they’re talking about my favourite politician. Does that make me needy and pathetic? Or just honest with myself!

It’s more fun to be me than to be you, I swear.

Wouldn’t anybody be pleased about a write-up in The New York Times? Um, a New Yorker even? (wink)

We need to get over ourselves. I like Canada’s little, weirdo insignificant role in the world. Just makes it easier to sneak up into world cultural domination. BAM! No one sees it coming.

My friend Sona says, “you have to be ready. You could change at any moment.”

I like this idea; change as a sudden assault. I like to think that change will just happen, just spring itself on me and all I have to do is be ready. Because I hate change. I will not encourage change and I will not seek it out.  I need change to… incite itself. And the quicker the better.

I like, as well, to think of this in the context of America at the moment. I like change personified as Barack Obama…right? It does make things simple. The lovers love change and the haters, like me, hate change (although I relish in political change n’ I like Obama). I feel good about this tidy idea. We all do.

Yeah, but in addition, I like to think of Obama as a sudden assault on the American people, a force you can’t stop.

Past love affairs have been on my mind. I’m revisiting for the sake of…a project, I guess. I’m consistently fascinated by how my feelings have changed for these lads that had me devastated once (the broken heart is almost pathetic for this fickleness). Towards most of them I feel a vague and pleasant well-wishing. But then, this is no rare thing. Many desperate loves morph into indifference.

There is an episode of 30 Rock where Lemon has to go to her high school reunion. She does NOT want to go for all the typical reasons. She was a nerd in high school, picked on for being smart and not pretty etc. But everyone, typically, urges her to go and flaunt her success. So she decides to go. But pretty soon after her arrival, one of the cool kids approaches. Lemon gears up to flaunt, but the cool kid immediately bursts into tears at the sight of her.

Okay, it turns out that Lemon was a bully in high school. She thought the cool kids were mean and hated her, so she made comments under her breath about their alcoholic parents and eating disorders to protect herself and all others like her. But her perception was all off. The cool kids were never out to get her, were humiliated by her comments and constantly trying to make peace with her so she would leave them alone. 

So suddenly, at the reunion, she has to deal with this new reality. She has done nothing different but now, suddenly, everything is different. She’s different.

You have to be ready.

I like to think of a passive America. I mean, I like to think that America did not change, but change arrived. All this time their perception was just…off. 

Like you when you thought you were in love. Like Liz Lemon in high school.

If he can sell a paper with his views on exercise and sandwiches, then maybe he can be our new Trudeau…or at least our Obama (you heard me right). Optimistic? Yes! A bit of a stretch? I’ll say yes, but only to calm you people down. You know I love the man, and it looks from the end like this is going to be a weekly foray. So Monday mornings just got better.

My question is, what happened to the two screenplays? Shouldn’t someone be on that?

I wish i had a subscription to The Hill Times. All I can get is this teaser and it’s making me CRAZY! (not enough to shell out, though) 
What was said?! What was done?! Was Ignatieff serious or was he trying to make Harper mad? Was he…teasing him? 

Can’t say I blame Harper for not acknowledging. If he moved into Ignatieff’s house he would have to change the way he ran the country. He would have to change himself, get vulnerable and indebted to the leader of the opposition. Damn, Ignatieff, way to take the high road and shake things up. I love you.

I also love the way this highlights how rich Ignatieff is inside his soul. This is the kind of thing people do when they are old money. “You’re the prime minister and you’re kind of down and out so…take one of my houses. I don’t need it right now.” 

MI knows how to be completely rich and completely generous at the same time. He’s so smart and sneaky. It’s kind of Christ-like.

I was reading some optimistic economic forecasts (off warren kinsella’s last post highlighting optimistic economic forecasts) and I swear, if the economy is in an upswing by mid-2009 my faith is shot. Or rather, my faith is unflinching.

What I mean is, I have seen some of the most terrifying newspaper, business section and magazine covers in the past few months. They’re all like, black with swear words (because now that the world is ending, do whatever you want kind of thing) and I kept on having these surreal moments, telling myself “when you’re destitute and everything sucks you’re going to remember this day and the newspaper cover you noted a little too casually when you went to buy milk in the morning from the corner store. You didn’t even buy a copy!” 

Does nobody understand that my generation is so pessimistic, that when we read gloomy economic forecasts we assume no one knows what they’re talking about so we end up, by comparison, really optimistic? But this time everyone was like, “no, seriously guys this time it’s real. We’re in the shit” and  everyone I know was like, “maybe this time everything really is going to hit the fan” and we let our guard down and got worried and went with the crowd, freaking at Harper and pretending to put money into an emergency savings account? (Of course, we need that money now! haha)

If the economy is in an upswing by mid-2009, no one of my generation will freak out about anything, ever. Because, 2009? What were we getting so upset about? 

Thank you (I’m talking to, I don’t know the media I guess. Or the official opposition) for making us into the apathetic mass you, evidently, are dying for us to be. Ah, it’s so nice to be us. Nothing bad ever happens. Things are looking up. 

I think I’m going to become a Conservative. Conservatives are nice and positive. And steady, like the economy.

I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. After a week without internet, I return online obsessed with my income. So I’m either checking charity village and craigslist  incessantly or I’m online-paralyzed, too cash guilty to indulge myself with poli-blogs…
The last thing I remember is leadership hysteria and a Toronto Star cover quoting Ignatieff threatening the PM to FIX IT!!! It was thrilling. But despite my disconnect, it feels like things are calming down and I’m so happy to have my cds and a kitchen again that all I want to do is hang around making soup and bread (with the bread maker I took from my parents’ house) and watching the whole last season of LOST (two and a half days…I had a cramp in my arm by the last episode. Thank you 2Q video for the great rates).

But I want to come back. The thing is, I’m different than I was two weeks ago. I look at politics differently. 
Now, the economic meltdown is affecting me! I seriously never imagined. I believed that I was immune because no global economic trend has ever had any bearing on my life. But my boss says to me “I don’t think you’ll get any work because of the economy…” and totally blew my mind. Tuition, minimum wage, health care…these things affected me but didn’t affect me because they didn’t interfere with my relationship with goat’s cheese and wine (for example). And now these are sort of the only things missing from my life. Because I can’t afford them. Because of the economy. 

So I’m going to be looking at politics and poli-blogs through a different lens. I’m sort of like, a citizen now or something. I’m a citizen who is worried about the economy. I’m a concerned citizen with an agenda and a few tangible yardsticks. Goat’s cheese and wine for example.