Dear Ah-nold,

After reading of the indiscretion with your housekeeper, and the love child that came from it, I could only think of one thing…well, okay, two things: 1) next to fucking the nanny, fucking the housekeeper is the BIGGEST cliché ever, and 2) you are a medical miracle.

You’re a miracle because it’s apparent that steroid use has not shriveled your testes in any way.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  People all over the world are talking on cell phones and wondering why their calls keep getting dropped. Now we know – it’s because your balls were blocking their signal.  Thanks to the revelation of your bastard lovechild, cell providers can put communications satellites in orbit around your nuts to correct the problem.

Let’s review the bidding – not only did you lie by omission about an affair and a child, you did it sucessfully for FOURTEEN YEARS!!  That’s like, a millennium in TMZ time (NOTE: TMZ time is measured by taking a calendar year, multiplying it by TMZ’s unrelenting search for smut, then dividing that by an average TMZ reader’s attention span).   As if that wasn’t enough…you let baby mama continue to work for you almost a decade after you knocked her up! She was even pregnant AND working at your house the same time Maria was pregnant with your youngest child!  To be this brazen requires testicles so huge they reside in two different time zones!

So fuck Larry Craig and his wide stance, or Chris Lee and his shirtless pics – that’s petty Beltway bullshit.  You’re the Terminator, man – NOTHING about you is small.

Naturally, people everywhere are feigning righteous indignation as they suck up every detail, but I assure you, I’m not one of them.  I’ve stepped out on enough girlfriends to know I have no business acting as your moral compass.   If I’m no longer a douchebag, it’s partly because I realize the devastation that comes from betraying a loved one’s trust, but mostly because it’s just easier to remember the truth.  I’m getting both lazy and forgetful in old age.

That’s what makes the fact you carried this lie for so long so amazing to me  - to paraphrase Ron Burgundy, I’m not mad,  I’m just impressed. This could be the publicity equivalent of Ebola virus, yet you kept a lid on this tighter than those shorts you wore in Pumping Iron. It probably helps that the circle of trust on this one was pretty small – just you and the maid.   Still, lies are a huge burden (even for a guy like yourself, who benches…what? 300 now?), and most times you can only carry them for so long.  So I suppose you had to lay down your burden eventually, but I can’t help but think you could’ve kept this a secret indefinitely if you’d just expanded your circle to include one more person – your wife.

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The week before last, you would not be out of line for thinking Obama was just another US leader whose actions would never expand to fit the dimensions of his rhetoric.  Maybe you thought he was a paper president who couldn’t figure out how to get out of the partisan headlock those pesky Republicans had put him in.  Or maybe you thought he was a document-forging Kenyan – which would, of course, make you Donald Trump.

So watching the President being presidential this week was probably a head-swiveling spectacle, way better than the press conference Michael Douglas gives near the end of The American President.  All it required was for Obama do the one thing Americans love to see their presidents do…kill.

First, he kills at the White Press Correspondents’ Dinner, mostly by slaying The Donald’s presidential aspirations.  Was there anything more satisfying than watching Trump sitting there, not so much as cracking a smile as the most Powerful Man on Earth mocks his hubris?  It was like watching a bully getting tuned on by your cool older brother (assuming you have one).

Of course, that was quickly overshadowed by a killing of much greater significance than Trump’s ego.   I know it didn’t happen this way, but I like to imagine Obama as though he’s in a Hollywood movie based on a Tom Clancy novel:  Obama returns from the dinner, heads straight the Situation Room in his tux to get briefed by old burly men in uniforms on a top secret operation.  After exchanging a few Sorkin-esque quips about what a featherweight Trump is, they start speaking in vaguely suggestive military sentences like “Team will be inserted into the AO in 30 mikes”.   Then he orders the best-trained commandos on earth to bump off the single biggest symbol of America’s impotence in the War on Terror.

There was also the dignified, understated announcement of bin Laden’s death (it had to be satisfying to insult Trump on Saturday then cut into The Celebrity Apprentice on Sunday); the entirely justified righteous indignation with the Pakistani government upon revealing that Osama was probably a well-treated guest in their country (with the US picking up the tab); and the rather classy visit to Ground Zero while Bush pouted in Texas, having declined the opportunity to draft off the killing and maybe improve his rep in the blue states.

I’ll leave it to pundits to debate the legality of double-tapping an unarmed man in the head.  Others can parse the impact of Osama’s death, especially following the Arab Spring, when thousands of citizens in the Middle East did with protests what al Qaeda couldn’t do with bombs.  Fox News can speculate all it wants as to how much credit the Bush administration deserves for the success of the operation.  Let the jokers at CNN wring their hands over whether or not Obama can sustain his approval ratings through to the next election.

It could be that changes in health care will be ineffective, that the recession has a tail that may yet sting Americans one more time, or Obama may’ve extended tax cuts for the wealthy that will further cripple the US economy in years to come.   It could be that he hasn’t really closed Gitmo, or that he’s off the chain in Libya, and efforts in Afghanistan could prove futile.

At the moment, none of that matters.  People can snipe all they want, but love or hate him, everybody has to agree that this past week Obama walked taller and prouder than any man on earth.  He was THE Better Man.  Every guy would give his left nut to have the kind of week Obama had, including and especially the Combover That Walks Like A Human.

The same night Obama was stomping Trump at the dinner, I got word that a co-worker was in hospital after surviving a helicopter crash.   I sent him a note wishing him well and saying he had to get better – because the only thing more likely to get him laid than telling ladies he survived a chopper crash was telling them he killed Osama bin Laden.   If the President didn’t score with the First Lady at least once this week, he doesn’t deserve a second term.

 

Dear Stephen,

 

Let me just say congratulations – you did it! Thanks to the twin miracles of parliamentary democracy and the first-past-the-post electoral system, you have done an amazing thing – get Canadians to elect a Harper majority despite the fact that you lead it. Everyone says America is where anything is possible, but that’s not true.  In America, to be elected leader you have to at least be likable. I doubt that even the people who voted for you would say that about you, and therein lies the genius of your victory.

Up until now all those pesky, insolent opposition MPs had the audacity to question your judgment. Well, no more – now, you are free to do whatever the fuck you want, and if Parliament doesn’t like it, it can suck it. Don’t like how you’ve decorated the government lobby in the House of Commons, replacing portraits of former PMs with pictures of yourself? Suck it. Don’t like that you’ve instructed bureaucrats to change all references to “The Government of Canada” in official correspondence to “The Harper Government”? Suck it.  Don’t like that you tried to cut opposition parties off at the knees by eliminating their public campaign financing (which is what actually forced you to prorogue Parliament the first time)? Suck it. Don’t like that you’ve introduced cybercrime legislation that allows for more government authority to invade personal privacy than the problem requires, and could be open to abuse by politicians who are controlling and mildly paranoid? Suck it.  Don’t like your supplicants impugning the character of whistleblowers on the Afghan detainee scandal? Suck it.  Don’t like that you may’ve bent campaign financing rules to free up more money for attack ads?  Suck it. Don’t like that you regularly punish civil servants and people in your own party for disagreeing with you? Su…well, you get the picture.

I will say it again, Steve – you have succeeded where I have failed, in that you have made being an asshole work for you.  Before, the ‘blessings’ of your autocratic nature were limited to people unfortunate enough to work for you. Then, the excesses of your deeply flawed personality found their way into the operation of government.  Now, everyone in Canada gets to experience your…uh…Harperness.

Of course, at least 60% of Canadians may not find it as charming as you do, and in that regard I can’t help but wonder if you’re going to miss all those pesky, insolent MPs who kept calling you on your bullshit.   Sure, they may’ve kept you from doing everything you wanted, but here’s the thing – were you to do everything you wanted, I believe you’d piss a lot of people off and end up getting voted out of office next time around.   The blind spot in a controlling nature is that you often lack the self-awareness to realize when you’ve gone too far, and by severely punishing even the mildest of dissent there’s no one working for you with the nerve to say when you’re not wearing any clothes.

By keeping you in check, those opposition MPs managed to successfully bring out your better leadership qualities while curbing your much uglier ones.  Maybe you hated those guys (and a few of them were worth hating), but in a funny way they were saving you from yourself.   I suggested in my previous post that if you won a majority, we were much pretty much fucked.  You may not realize this, but by “we” I meant you as well.

Of course, who am I to say? I’ve been wrong before – just ask your Heritage Minister, James Moore.  I once told him (on national TV, no less) that he was high for thinking Gladiator would win the Oscar for Best Picture. Look how that turned out.    It could be you’ll become a Better Man and develop the circumspection to govern a country where the majority of folks don’t agree with you, but will keep you in office if you don’t indulge your Nixon-esque side.  Or maybe people will learn to enjoy being led by a twerp.  This is Canada, where anything is really possible.

In the meantime I will show you the respect you’ve undoubtedly earned.  I will no longer refer to you as a regular old asshole.  From now, I will call you Mr. Asshole.

Good luck!

 

Chris

 

A friend of mine was complaining the other day about how ambivalent he felt concerning Monday’s Canadian federal election.  When I asked why,  he said it’s because the leaders in Canadian politics are so sad and uninspiring.  Now, in the past, I may’ve agreed with him – I like a charismatic leader who makes me feel good about voting for him as much as anyone.

It’s only recently, however, that I’ve realized how wrong I was – not about about our leaders being sad and uninspiring, mind you.  I was wrong in thinking their lack of any kind of charm or charisma was somehow bad.  Now, I’m almost convinced that Canada is prosperous today precisely because we don’t have a single captivating leader to choose from, and will continue to be so long as our current choices NEVER try to be Better Men.

Consider Stephen Harper for a moment.  Now, in previous posts I may have implied that Stephen Harper is an asshole, but that’s only partly true.   I will admit Mr. Harper is smart, and has what the Globe and Mail calls “managerial competence” (the political equivalent of describing a date as having a “nice personality”).    Maybe the blow of the recession was softened thanks to policies implemented by Liberal governments prior to Harper taking office – at least he hasn’t fucked things up since.  That’s managerial competence.

The fact is Harper is not so much an asshole as he is a typical geek – he has a feel for systems, but not for people.  That’s why he runs the government like an autocrat, with an open contempt for Parliament, regular voters, and even most of the MPs in his own party. He reminds me of that hall monitor/Dungeons n’ Dragons club president in school, ratting on the cool kids for cutting class and smoking in the parking lot – or maybe the head of an IT department who got promoted because he knew which managers were watching porn on their work computers.  Harper is a  a less-cool Mark Zuckerberg who knows he’s smarter than everyone else, even if everyone else doesn’t realize it.  His efforts to be just a regular guy by untucking his shirt and playing AC/DC covers on the organ only serves to reinforce his geekiness.

That such a charmless man should lead a developed, democratic nation would be virtually impossible if we didn’t live in a parliamentary democracy, and therein lies the best/worst part of voting in Canada.   In a republic like America, everybody votes for president, making it essentially a nationwide popularity contest. Sure, lots of people vote for ideological reasons, but ultimately it’s the cool kid who gets elected. Most voters figure he’ll hire the former Dungeon n’ Dragons president anyway (Bush and Karl Rove, anyone?).

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