Showbiz and politics

OLD-TIMERS may recall those fond yesteryears when Canadian politics were dull, and not just dull but blank. As empty as a modern white-on-white canvas depicting some vast snow belt in the featureless depths of Arctic winter.

But that was before Toronto’s mayor and buffoon-in-chief changed Canada’s image all by his outrageous self. He seems a politician made for the times and tabloids-like Anthony Weiner or Eliot Spitzer, a couple of New Yorkers who might be a better fit for New Orleans, or at least some of its seamier wards. (Would those characters even be allowed to approach the Garden District before they were stopped and sent back to the French Quarter?)

Who knew the day would come when such types could be confused with, of all species, Canadians. The late Mackenzie King, PC, OM, CMG and nigh-eternal stuffed shirt of a prime minister, is definitely dead. And so is his once standard Canadian respectability.

It used to be said in the long ago that Canada had some of the most beautiful scenery and dullest people in the world. To anybody reared on politics in these more colorful climes, where characters like Louisiana’s Edwin Edwards and Earl K. Long ran around loose, not to mention Arkansas’ own Uncle Mac MacKrell of KLRA and occasional gubernatorial campaigns, the very notion of a colorful politician north of the 49th Parallel was once a joke itself.

Once upon a time trying to imagine an oafish, loudmouthed Canadian was like trying to picture Warren Christopher or Allen Dulles doing stand-up comedy. Just to dredge up their names is to forget them. And that’s when they were still being dutifully mentioned in the morning papers, which must have been starved for copy.

These days just about the only remnant of the farcical tradition that used to infuse the politics of this (all too) Natural State is one Dennis Milligan, a former circuit court clerk and Republican Party state chairman who doesn’t seem to realize how funny/sad he is. He brings to mind Stan Laurel when Oliver Hardy is picking on him, or maybe Emmett Kelly as the saddest clown in the world. Except that the Emmett Kellys of the world know all too well how funny, sad, very human and a little frightening they are, at least to small children. And to all too adult grown-ups who look at them and can see themselves.

AS FOR The Hon. and Humorless Dennis Milligan, he takes himself so seriously he seems to have no idea what a comic relief he is from the serious candidates running for state office in Arkansas these more sober days. Naturally he’s running for state treasurer, the constitutional office just vacated by Martha Shoffner, former high-ranking state official and current defendant in federal court.

Who would have thought that someday-like now-Canada would be where the hilarious/sordid action is. It seems Toronto’s half-disgraceful, half-comic, all-bizarre all-the-time mayor was caught on tape smoking crack cocaine, threatening to kill somebody, and generally making an appalling ass of himself. Now he can’t seem to stop embarrassing himself and what used to be his thoroughly respectable metropolis.

In the latest episode of the Rob Ford Show, staged as Toronto’s city council was reducing him to mayor in disgraced name only, the big lug charged right through a petite, 60-year-old councilor, knocking the poor little lady to the floor.

The visibly shaken Pam McConnell (“I just need to sit down,” she said after being helped to her feet) sounded aghast. “This is the seat of democracy,” she protested, “not a football field.” Though after Rob Ford came rumbling through, it wasn’t easy to tell the difference.

Maybe one of those fabled Canadian hockey teams could lend Toronto’s city council some of its crash helmets, huge gloves and a bunch of padded paraphernalia in general. Plus a hockey stick with a sharp, painful angle. Like the one in that infamous phony Climate Change chart. Just for purposes of self-defense. At least when Rob Ford is around.

Gentleman that he is, Mayor Ford was quick to pick the lady up off the floor after he’d so unceremoniously deposited her there. The way a bad bowler might right one of the smaller bowling pins after a bad carom shot. “I picked her up,” the mayor said in his supposed defense. Now we know what passes for chivalry in those frozen climes.

Naturally the mayor had an alibi (don’t they always?) and it was delivered in proper police-report English. He was just rushing to the defense of his brother in the back of the room, he explained, and couldn’t be stopped by a minor speed bump like poor Ms. Mc-Connell. “I ran around (and ran the lady into the ground) because I thought my brother was getting into an alteration.” Ah, yes, an altercation-the current latinate euphemism for an old-fashioned, honest, straightforward fist fight.

These days a plague of euphemisms seems to have overwhelmed the whole country. The lowest, most unacceptable and generally disgraceful conduct on the part of an elected official may now by described as “inappropriate,” an adjective that seems to cover an ever wider and lower multitude of sins in our oh-so-liberated society.

Not since our own former big lug of a president offered his unforgettable apologia-and-alibi (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman . . . .”) has a story like Rob Ford’s been so unconvincing. Not to mention unchivalrous.

IT WILL not surprise contemporary readers to learn that Toronto’s mayor and his brother are planning to start their own television show. At least they were before they found themselves at the center of this Mack Sennett & Fatty Arbuckle burlesque. The Ford Show (tentatively titled Ford Nation) would have fit right in with the current rage for Reality TV Shows, which aren’t always easy to distinguish from so-called reality itself.

It’s hard to think of anything appropriate to say about this mayor’s latest escapade, to use a polite word for the mess in Toronto, but when words fail, there’s always a good photographer for a daily newspaper to rely on. The AP’s Chris Young pretty much caught the whole sad spirit of The Hon. Rob Ford in a candid shot that made Page 2 of Tuesday’s paper. There he was, resting his ample frame and mopping his brow like a fake wrestler while conferring with counsel, who turns out to have the perfect name for a lawyer: George Rust-D’Eye, Attorney at Law.

You can’t make these things up. Unless you’re Finley Peter Dunne at the turn of another century or covering the lesser political races in deepest darkest Arkansas today. Who would have thought that this state’s politics would look almost serious compared to those in Toronto, Canada? The world’s turned upside down, we tell you.