JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“Owning the podium” is a genuinely stupid expression, full of the kind of unthinking arrogance that is the precise opposite of the character-building qualities so often claimed for sports.

Of course, that phrase is the official Olympics jingle of the politician the Globe endorsed in the last election, so politics play a role in your repeating it.

And, please, sports, while they can entertain and sometimes thrill, cannot “inspire” anyone, unless the person being inspired happens to think in the tired clichés of this sad editorial writer.

Pathetic language, but definitely in keeping with the new low standards for Globe editorials.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

This is nothing less than misappropriation of public funds by John Baird.

And it would be so no matter which religious group asked this inappropriate favor.

But it is also unpleasant to see a photo of Baird playing the same smarmy game as Newt Gingrich and Company in the United States, going after campaign funds by wearing a yarmulke and carrying out other acts having nothing to do with government or proper politics or indeed his own faith.

I think it also proper to note that Hasidic Judaism, the association of the group to which he granted these funds, is in many respects as backward towards women as fundamentalist Islam.

Also, in view of the rather widely known fact that Baird is a closeted gay, does it not matter that Hasidic Judaism regards being gay as sin subject to some pretty unpleasant penalties?

Harper’s crowd in every respect follows the Republican Right Wing, many of whose political campaigns are paid for massively by special interests responding to this kind of grotesque fawning and favoritism.

An American casino billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, almost entirely financed Newt Gingrich’s recent primary campaign, having given him, at last count, 16.5 million dollars.

Adelson was quoted as saying he would give another comparable amount to the Republican campaign in the fall.

Just one of many groveling stunts Newt Gingrich did in return for such largess was to make public statements that there was no such thing as a Palestinian. It doesn’t get any more pathetic than that.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAILReading of Helena Guergis’s airport melt-down, I may have new sympathy for the unpleasant Rahim Jaffer, her husband.

Maybe there’s actually a good reason Rahim Jaffer (of drunk-driving, cocaine-possession, and getting-off-with-a-slap-on-the-wrist fame) does the desperate things he does?

He appears to be married to a lunatic.

And, yes, indeed, where were the RCMP tasers on this one, as someone above asked?

I guess they save that treatment for poor foreigners who can’t speak English and who are not junior cabinet ministers.

And even then, they need four officers against one person to “deploy” the taser.

The photo with the story only shows two RCMP officers with the ghastly Guergis.

God, the new Conservatives have pathetic ministerial material. Peter “we’ll fight for Israel” Kent, Helena “I’m God” Guergis, Peter “my ex is a dog” MacKay, Lisa “leave my documents behind” Raitt, Maxime “leave my secret papers at my biker gang girlfriend’s” Bernier, and so on.

Our election system is a terrible mess if its result is keeping a bunch of second- and third-raters like this running the country with about a third of the country’s support. We really do need serious election reform.

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY RICK SALUTIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

It is in such an ugly struggle that we often see the true characters of people who normally manage to keep a relatively benign face to the world.

Richard Colvin is calm, articulate, brave, and clearly someone who took his responsibilities towards others seriously.

Peter “my word ain’t worth spit” and “my Ex is a dog” Mackay once more displayed his deeply flawed character.

His sputtering, arm-waving attacks on an honest man truly had the tone of accusations from the prosecution at a witch trial.

But we already knew Peter lacked the ethical stuff we teach our children.

A new and unexpected actor in this orchestrated passion play of attack bowed in with an astonishingly nasty performance a couple of days ago.

The high-water mark in sewerage overflow was reached a couple of days ago, on CBC Radio’s show The Current, when Pamela Wallin gave an interview on the subject.

Her words simply dripped with the noxious stuff of obtuse dishonesty serving politics, truly enough to induce nausea, including her much-repeated claim she just simply could not fathom Mr. Colvin’s motives.

Ms Wallin apparently lacks the moral radar to perceive when other people act bravely out of decency, ethics, and humanitarianism. Either that or she was flat-out lying on national radio to attack a decent man whom she regards as a threat to her party.

Hers was another version of kicking someone who is down, ironically enough put to the service of a matter involving the torture of prisoners.

She convinced me only of one fact, one for which I needed no convincing, and that fact is the banality of evil.

And that phrase, “the banality of evil,” best characterizes the entire matter from the original acts in Afghanistan to the efforts to throw dirt at those revealing them.