Courtesy of Macleans.ca

Last week in the United States Congress, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky took a lot of guff for stalling the renewal of unemployment benefits for millions of out of work Americans. Bunning was the sole voice of objection to passing the proposal by unanimous consent, and after being asked again to drop his objection shortly before midnight by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, the besieged Bunning replied simply, “tough s**t.” After the close of the debate after 12am, Bunning said he was ambushed by Democrats and forced to miss the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game on account. To which a nation of people worried about putting food on the table this month replied, “Now we know who the real heroes are.”

Bunning made himself a pariah by the media, the picture of a politician out of touch with everyday, normal Americans, which furthered the narrative of a broken governmental system in Washington. If that weren’t bad enough, The Daily Show and others made him a farce, as his fanboy disappointment left many to ponder, “Has this guy never heard of Tivo?”

In reality, the Jim Bunnings of the world are factual and plentiful, and not just in American politics. The recent Speech from the Throne and the announcement that the government would be sending the national anthem to a Commons committee to consider amending it in a more gender neutral fashion is proof of that. Perhaps you may argue that the idea itself is not so crazy, but one might question the timing. One might question why, all of the sudden, it’s so important for the lyrics of “O Canada” to go back to the editor.
Then there’s the drama that is Jason Kenney, a man that’s gone to great lengths to prove to everyone that he’s not a bigoted homophobe only to constantly trip over his efforts and create doubt. The Calgary Southeast MP and Immigration Minister came under fire from gay rights groups for dropping information about the legality of gay marriage and  how it’s unlawful to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in Canada from a 60-page booklet for prospective immigrants. After first saying that a 60 page booklet can hardly be “encyclopaedic”, Kenney told Helen Kennedy of Egale Canada that the omission was an unintentional oversight that will be corrected in future prints.

Still, many doubt Kenney’s sincerity on this oversight since government papers found through Access to Information show he was aware all along of the edit, and further he has yet to apologize for the oversight and perceived slight to Canada’s gay community. Currently, he faces the wrath of Facebook where over 7,500 people are demanding his resignation. Of course, Kenney’s actions have led to perfectly reasonable questions being raised not just about this one Member’s recognition of the importance of equal rights to Canada’s LGBT community, but his party’s as well.

Sometimes Canadian politics are just, for lack of a better word, zany. Take this past January in the New Brunswick Legislature. Liberal MPP T.J. Burke, in responding to Conservative leader David Alward’s statements about the government’s plan to sell NB Power assets to Hydro Quebec on a Talk radio show, literally did a song and dance in the legislature. He sang “Pants on the Ground” while snapping and stamping his feet to the beat, and it was all over YouTube within minutes thanks to Rogers broadcast of that day’s Question Period. (This was following the song’s original performances by 63-year-old civil rights activist Larry Platt on American Idol.)

Of course, Burke isn’t the only Canadian politician to embarrass himself through song. Bob Rae once famously sang “We’re all in the same boat now.” Yes kids, as his NDP government in Ontario was drowning in debt and forcing public employees to take unpaid days off, Bob Rae wrote and recorded a song. People seemed to think this was more comical than helpful. Of course, musical performances need not necessarily turn out embarrassing. Prime Minister Stephen Harper came out all right after his rendition of The Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends” earlier this year.

But at least politicians usually save the song and dance for after hours endeavors and/or special occasions. However, odd things can be heard on the floor of any government house. In fact, Aaron Wherry wrote a whole column about it for Macleans a few years ago, which included many golden nuggets rhetorical umbrage. Let’s go to Question Period where Liberal John McCallum once asked the Finance Minister, “This minister is so out of his depth, does he know the difference between a tax double-dip and a double-dip ice cream cone you pick up at the Dairy Queen?” Jack Layton, not to be outdone, then asked in regards to interest in Canadian companies being sold to foreign interests, “The country’s going to hell in a handbasket! When is the Prime Minister going to do something to save Canada?”

Reading the above statements, one can almost picture the various faces Jon Stewart could make in reaction to statements like that. Of course, verbal boners need not be the prevue of politicians on the Federal level. Toronto city councilor Rob Ford once criticized spending money on AIDS prevention programs saying that “(AIDS) is very preventable,” and that “if you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you won’t get AIDS probably, that’s bottom line.” Further, he once asked of anti-poverty activists, “Do you have a job, sir?” and then said, “I’ll give you a newspaper to find a job, like everyone else has to do between 9 and 5.”

If Ford were a federal politician, he’d have been proverbially tarred and feathered in the media. I once interviewed filmmaker Min Sook Lee about her documentary Hogtown: The Politics of Policing and she said of municipal politics that, “Because they can operate under the radar, what happens is you have a fertile breeding ground for a-typical personality types, or behaviours, that can really flourish to almost an eccentric degree.” But in the digital age, everything gets recorded somewhere, even the stuff you want no one to hear.

We Canadians like to think ourselves better than our American brethren in terms of our political decorum, but are we not just as capable of easily descending into silliness and triviality, often with the unintentional blessing of the media? Or to put it another way: Pants on the ground. Pants on the ground. Lookin’ like a fool with your pants on the ground.

Related posts:

1. Canada’s Poor Literacy Rates – Reminding Politicians That Literacy Skills Matter to our Economic and Social Success Some people might wonder what an article about literacy is...
2. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney: No Apology for Abuse of Home Children Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has made a statement that...
3. There Are Great Life Lessons to be Gleaned by Watching Politicians and Reading Political History That’s Wilfrid Laurier from Quebec. He has no future. He...

This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Humorous, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.