By G.D. Maxwell
How in the world can anybody not at least be interested in, if not absolutely fascinated by, politics?
I know Whistler is a shallow, hedonistic, self-indulgent town peopled mostly by folks in a state of suspended adolescence, people not unlike myself, but seriously, not interested in politics? This is the best reality television going. Average Joe, Bachelorette, Survivor? Get real. What bizarre, misplaced, voyeuristic porn-surfing glitch in someone’s DNA would lead them to prefer unreality and scripted schmaltz to the gritty passion play being presented every single night on the news?
We have the reality of Little Pauly Martin finally realizing his dream of at long last becoming his own, if not Canada’s, Idol. We watch him puff his chest with pride and anticipation as the GG, back from her five million dollar road trip, lipsyncs his Grand Vision for Canada: The Next Generation.
And then, like floodwaters bursting through a publicly-funded, shoddily-built dike, we watch breathlessly as scandal swamps the reconstituted Martin Parliament.
Love him or hate him – probably both – you know how Da Little Guy From Shawinigan would have handled this. He’d have shrugged his shoulders, appointed someone who he wished would commit political suicide to head up an investigation, played mute and dumb and stuck his nose back in the trough while his underlings took the heat. Hell, it worked for him since 1993; why not now?
What do we get instead? Sgt. Schultz. "I know nutting!" cries Little Pauly Schultz. "I know nutting; I see nutting."
Now if this were an episode of, say, Judge Judy, she’d roll her eyes, pound her gavel, point her bony finger at Little Pauly and proclaim in utter disbelief, "Hold on just a minute, Buster. You expect us to believe you, the Finance Minister, slept through Cabinet meetings all those years and didn’t even get a whiff of the putrid theft of public monies going on around you? Guilty!"
But hey, I can believe Little Pauly’s story. Let’s face it, Big Jean liked nothing better than holding a grudge and scrapping with anyone who challenged his leadership. I can believe he didn’t let Little Pauly join in any Cabinet Games with the other swine. I’m sure he treated Little Pauly like a lapdog who pukes all over your new $1,000 suit. Personally, I’m surprised he never had him put down.
Or maybe Little Pauly was too busy not running Canadian Steamship Lines to notice. Let’s see, divide by seven, multiply by 10 3 , carry the six, factor the square root of Pi… yup, I can see how you might think $161 million – $161,000,000 – was actually only $131 thousand, $131,000. It’s a rounding error. I make mistakes like that all the time balancing my chequebook. Thousands, millions… it’s all so confusing because, you know, Math Is Hard.
I think it’s usually the Chinese who are credited with having invented the phrase "Be careful what you ask for, you may get it." Or maybe that was British Columbians after saying, "Anyone but the NDP." Whatever.
Somewhere in what Little Pauly likes to think of as his "think-tank" – visualize a dozen desiccated goldfish at the bottom of an empty fishbowl – some bright whizkid is probably thinking to himself, "Gee, maybe we should have let Big Jean stick around until the end of February." But impatience knows no virtue, or something like that.
So now, Little Pauly is left holding the bag. The Lib’s popularity rating is down into the range of Slash Gordon’s blood-alcohol level, Anne McLellan is standing up in Parliament doing a Richard Nixon impersonation, and the – what is it the Progressive Reform Alliance Conservatives are calling themselves these days? – are licking their lips, rubbing their hands and itching for a fight.
But wait a minute. Have they forgotten they’re without a leader? I know it’s hard to be sure. They were pretty much without a leader when Stockboy Day, Stephen Hapless and Joe Who were reputed to be their leaders.
But there is hope on the horizon. The Good Ship Magna is steaming over the horizon with Belittle Stronach at the helm. Talk about The Apprentice. The Great White Hope of the beknighted right turns out to be Goldilocks! How can you not be interested in politics?
Here we have an applicant whose primary qualifications seem to consist of money, privilege, T&A, and, remarkably, Brian Muldoon puffing her up in the illiterate ridings of Habitant Quebec.
We are witnessing the Most Amazing Spectacle in Canadian History. A fluently unilingual woman who, while having rarely had more pressing matters to attend to than drying her nails, still couldn’t find the time to learn French, giving speeches in English in the backwoods of La Belle Province with the help of an interpreter, and winning over unilingual French Canadians who only recently longed for Sovereignty because they felt oppressed by a string of bilingual, Quebec-born Prime Ministers who threw patronage and money at their slackass province like there was no tomorrow! C’est miracle!
Even more impressive given the "substance" of Belittle’s speeches. "Hi, like my name’s Belittle Stronach and, like, I’d like to be the leader of the Conservative Party. I promise to learn French. My daddy’s rich. I don’t know anything about foreign policy. Vote for me."
In the meantime, Stephen Hapless and Tony Lament feel just like Michael Dukakis felt when he realized he was losing to Bush Senior’s Thousand Points of Light nonsense. Quick, somebody check to see if the laws of gravity have been suspended.
In what might prove to be the ultimate act of self-destruction, Little Pauly Martin is promising no turn will be left unstoned in his quest to prove he has nothing to hide. He’s promised the Commons committee who will be holding the inquiry into the federal sponsorship scandal – another sop to Quebec – they can pierce the veil of cabinet secrecy. Cabinet ministers, former cabinet ministers, even Big Jean and Pauly themselves will not be immune from testifying.
Let’s think about that for a minute.
Little Pauly’s defense is "Big Jean didn’t like me, kept me out of the loop, I know nutting." Little Pauly spent his first month as Prime Minister axing the former cabinet ministers who were loyal Cretinites. Now he’s going to get to the bottom of another Billion Dollar Scandal by forcing those former cabinet ministers and Big Jean to testify before a Commons committee.
Am I the only one who will be surprised when they all line up, one at a time, kinda like the CEOs of the Big Tobacco companies who testified before the US Congress that they didn’t know tobacco was addictive, am I the only one who will be surprised if they don’t all say, "HELL YES, LITTLE PAULY WAS IN ON THE WHOLE THING!"
What is this? Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, television’s first reality show?
