On the Rob Ford and Senate 'Scandals'

It has been nearly a year since my last blog post.  I am attempting to get back into it and there is certainly a lot to talk about. 

Since my last post the love-in with Trudeau seems to have waned; although you would be hard-pressed to tell with some of the fan-girls in the national media. Trudeau II continues to make blunder after blunder and thanks to the work of bloggers and Sun News, followed by the acquiescence of the mainstream national media, these gaffes are actually getting out there.  Based on this and the fact that Liberal support started to decline and Tory support began recovering until the senate scandal re-reared its head, I would question if most of the increased ‘support’ for Liberals is a temporary phenomenon.  As horrible as the whole Rob Ford ordeal is it may have been a PR blessing for the Conservatives; now the media party has another dead horse to flog.

It sort of saddens me to have my first post back be about things I do not think deserve the attention that they have been getting.  Focusing an entire blog post on a money-scandal or the personal misfortunes of a mayor whose policies I respect seems distasteful, but the urge to write is back and so I digress.

I will say a few words on the senate scandal.  Spending scandals have always and will always occur in democratic nations.  The people doing the misdeed should face justice and, if possible, reforms should be put in place to ensure similar misdeeds do not occur.  Canada, despite what I fear is being portrayed in the coverage of this scandal, holds its elected officials to a high account.  While more could be done, reforms have been instituted by this and previous governments.  I rest assured that we, as a nation, will continue to perfect our system and create ways to hold our politicians to ever-higher account.  That being said, Senators are not elected. They are appointed. The Senate is not transparent; it is shrouded in secrecy.  They are not held to account by the people because they are not of the people; they are apparently for the people, although forgive me missing how exactly.  Perhaps this scandal has woken up more Canadians to the absurdity of how the Senate operates and has created, in earnest, a demand for more accountability of Senators.  As far as the $90,000 cheque, I really could not care less.  A Senator got caught doing what, on some level, I am sure most of them do.  The media party wanted their story and the PMO, or some operatives within it, misguidedly offered Duffy a cheque to make it all go away.  The rest is the stuff of tabloids.  I hope that the RCMP does its job and that whoever needs to be held to account, is.  I had hoped that the reputations of seemingly good people like Duffy, Wallin, and Wright were not to be tarnished.  I hope that those in the PMO responsible for the mucking up of all this learned lessons.  Perhaps, that throwing a friend and ally under the bus is never a decent thing to do.

I feel that ‘scandals’ such as this one and the Rob Ford one say more about the media and the people consuming the news than the people involved.  What it does say, in many ways, is not nice.  Much of the coverage is distasteful, it wreaks of spite, and is completely vacuous.  “Look: It’s a fat mayor smoking crack! Hehehe! Look: He admitted it now. Asshole!”, is the best I can gather from most of the headlines.  That is not to say I haven’t read some thoughtful articles about both.  Indeed, those close to mayor Ford have gone too far with their enabling.  If he had of exited early and sought help he could have come back and been more successful than ever.  His policies are good.  People like him.  He was, in many ways, one of those larger-than-life conservative characters that appears every so often and galvanizes support.  He feeds off the antagonism of his enemies, and since they seem to number so many now, Ford may be around longer than we expect.

It may be safe to assume that the bad taste in my mouth regarding these scandals is largely because they involve ‘my guys’.  But there is more to it.  I do not delight in watching others’ misfortunes played out in the national media.  I think back to the sponsorship scandal (the parallel has been drawn before and I will reiterate here: $90,000 vs. Millions) and while I was happy it was causing more people to look seriously at the alternative, I was not happy to see Paul Martin's reputation destroyed by a mess that, largely, was not his. Thankfully time, I think, has been more generous to him. I also did not care to see it all play out.  I do not appreciate the gotcha-ism of it all and the way that the media does not provide more context, or perhaps that people do not seek out more context, to the stories. These ‘scandals’ are just too scandalous; while a part of me is drawn in, another part of me feels I am above it all. Here is to hoping that once the dust settles and the media circus is over we can reflect and make sound judgements about the people involved, without all the sanctimony, based on all they did, not just one overblown scandal.