Category: Social Media

This Blog is Not about John Edwards

It’s a foregone conclusion that John Edwards is kinda scuzzy.  His recent indictment is just icing on the scummy cupcake.  But he is a lawyer, so I will not write about him today.  Instead, I’m going to write about a person called Henry.  Henry is a purely fictional creation who bears no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead.  His story comes solely from my imagination and any similarity to real events or situations is utter coincidence and has no basis in fact.  If you want to read about John Edwards, you can do so here.  This blog is about something completely different: a fantasy fellow named Henry.

Henry is one of the 99% of all lawyers who give the other 1% a bad name.  He started out as a sleazy ambulance chaser who perverted the court system to translate pain and suffering into lottery-quality dollars for his clients.  He extracted huge percentages from these settlements for himself (tens of millions of dollars, actually) which propelled him to wealth first and fame after that.  From such a lowlife beginning, he went morally downhill from there.  Like most glib men, he believed in his own destiny, and so he entered politics.  It turned out he could be just as sincere on the campaign trail as he had been in the courtroom.  At the peak of his career, he came within a heartbeat of being within a heartbeat of being the President of the United States.  Henry sounded good to a lot of people; however, recent events have shown that he has no moral fibre to speak of and a soul that is weak and misshapen, if it exists at all.

What happened was, while running for office, Henry had an affair with one of his campaign workers.  I’m not going to talk about sexual harassment; for guys like Henry that’s way down the priority list.  Aside from that, this is nothing serious – tons of politicians commit adultery.  Way back in the day, John Kennedy made an absolute career out of it.  More recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger was caught with his metaphorical hand in the sexual cookie jar.  Power is a powerful aphrodisiac, and people traveling together in the endless cycle of photo ops, sound bytes and campaign promises tend to cling to each other.  Sometimes, this gets to be more than a spiritual thing.  In general, adultery for politicians is like jaywalking for the rest of us.  As long as you don’t get caught, nobody cares if you do it occasionally.

Fortunately, Henry got caught, and here’s where things get interesting.  Instead of admitting his mistake, apologizing to the tune of a couple of well placed press conference tears and skulking off into oblivion, Henry lied.  To be fair, Henry’s political career coincided with Bill Clinton’s, so it was only natural for him to think that lying about extramarital sex was standard operating procedure.  After all, Bill Clinton is still considered the wonder boy of the political left — even though he out-Nixoned Nixon when he lied to a Federal Grand Jury.  Henry probably thought, “I’m three times as charming as Clinton; if he can get away with it, why can’t I?”  And he was almost right.

You and I (and everybody else on the planet) know that lying is another well oiled perennial practice of politicians.  In general, most people don’t believe anything politicians say after “Good morning” – and, sometimes, not even that.  However, most politicians know when they’re trapped and it’s time to turn on the waterworks, cut and run.

Henry didn’t.  He has an ego the size of the Titanic, and it’s served him just about as well.  He decided to brass it out.  For the next three years, Henry embarked on a wild series of sincere denials.  Each one of these was blown out of the water as evidence piled up against him – including what somebody down at the National Enquirer might call a love child.  To date the count (depending on how you’re keeping score) is four or five heartfelt denials which have all proved to be nothing more than an ever-expanding bag of lies.

The moral of this fictional story is not that Henry is unfit to govern us because he had, what looks like, consensual sex with someone other than his wife, or that he lied about it.  The true moral is that the Henrys of this world are unfit to govern us because they fall apart in a crisis.  They do not have the intelligence and fortitude to analyse a situation, cut through the complexities, weigh the consequences, come up with an appropriate plan of action and implement it — all in the time it takes for allegation to become accusation.  Instead, they rely on spin doctors, media coverage, sound byte smiles and the mistaken belief that the public is stupid, with a short fickle memory.  A true leader would have fixed Henry’s problems long before they landed all over him.  Henry, however, isn’t fit to govern an ant farm and I hope he goes to jail.  He would — if this were real life and not just fiction.

How We Lost the War on Drugs

According to the Global Commission on Drug Policy, after fighting for nearly fifty years, we’ve lost the war on drugs.  I don’t know what the terms of surrender are, but I imagine they’re going to be written on some really cool paper with unicorns and rainbows in the margins.  Actually, I didn’t realize the war was still going on.  I thought we’d won when Bill Clinton refused to inhale.  Goes to show ya, I’m old enough to be out of the loop when it comes to the recreational use of anything.

The major question is how did we lose?  After all, serious substance abuse isn’t all that pretty to watch.  I had a friend who literally turned green after six months on a steady diet of coke, diet coke and not much else.  What started out as a weekend binge ended up as a determined lifestyle.  My buddy went from a grade A student nerd, interested in the new world of binary mathematics, to an after midnight zombie, feeding on late night infomercials and horror movies.  I don’t know what finally happened to him, but the last time I saw him, he did that weird, slow fade thing with his head when he looked at me and asked if I could give him some money.  I did, and I’ve felt guilty about it ever since.

There’s no upside to drug abuse, so how did the dealers win and the losers use – oops — the users lose.  The answer is easy.  We did a few things wrong.

First of all, like idiots, we lumped marijuana in with all the nasty bastard stuff.  That made the whole war on drugs just a joke.  Anybody who’s ever had even a casual acquaintance with the grey smoke knows that it’s the most benign of the illegals.  It’s hard to get behind a battle, body and soul, when the enemy was a pretty good friend back in high school and university and still comes around sometimes on the weekend to watch a movie or play some music and chill.  The general public has never been committed to eradicating marijuana use.  Obviously, they don’t want some stoner running the nuclear power plant, but they don’t really care if Tony and Cherie have a toke on Friday night and go dancing — or sit around in the privacy of their own living room and watch Thelma and Louise.  By throwing everything in the same illegal basket we wasted billions of dollars and expended huge resources chasing the wrong criminals.  While guys like Pablo Escobar and Amado Fuentes were running around, playing Robin Hood and soaking North America in cocaine, law enforcement agents were burning grow-ops and busting teenagers.  Ass-backwards, I’ll grant you, but what can you do?

Secondly, mainly because of the idiocy of marijuana prohibition and the powerful lobby that came out of that, we decided, for the most part, drug use was a victimless crime.  In fact, the prevailing wisdom was that it wasn’t actually a crime at all; it was a social problem caused by the usual suspects: poverty and ignorance.  We then recruited an army of social workers and threw the whole mess in their laps.  It wasn’t until much later that we realized the error of our ways.  By that time, it was far too late to restructure the system to deal with the ever-increasing list of victims (who weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.)  And now the myriad of social services we created have a vested interest in maintaining the victimless status quo.  Nobody seems willing to connect the dots between meth, crack and heroin and theft, robbery and prostitution – except, perhaps, law enforcement.  Unfortunately, we forgot to tell those folks what we were up to with the victimless crime thing.  They were under the impression that illegal drug use was a regular crime like all the other ones.  They acted accordingly — complete with those archaic 19th century penalties nobody bothered to update.  In a nutshell, the cops were doing their job without any support from the rest of the social structure.  And as with Prohibition, ninety years ago, they lost public support.

Finally, the biggest reason we lost the war on drugs is we screwed up and made recreational drug use socially acceptable.  Right from the time of Easy Rider and Cheech and Chong, up to and including Harold and Kumar, drug use has been a nudge-nudge, wink-wink activity.  Like the amiable drunk from the 50s (Otis from Andy of Mayberry comes to mind) drug use is considered comic, even funny.   It still carries a whiff of rebellion, but it’s considered relatively harmless.  Even the hardcore drugs carry little or no social stigma.  Should they?  I’m not sure, but the reason we’re winning the war against tobacco is because smoking is no longer socially acceptable.  We don’t arrest people for smoking.  We don’t fine them, jail them or treat them like criminals.  All we do is go “Ewww!” and wave our hands frantically in the air.  The use of tobacco (one of the most addictive and dangerous drugs on the planet) is steadily declining in North America.

Personally, I hope the war on drugs isn’t over.  Perhaps we can’t win, but with a little ingenuity, we can at least battle some of these heavy duty blood suckers to a standstill.  I’d like to see some of the misery they’ve caused ended, some of the neighbourhoods they’ve destroyed restored, and some of the lives they’ve ruined, reclaimed.  Like most people in this country, I don’t care if Tony and Cherie roll a bomber (or whatever they call it these days) now and then — legally or not.  But I would like to see some sanity in our drug laws, some stiff penalties for the dealers we’ve grown fat on addiction and some resolute assistance for those among us who are trapped by it.

The Stanley Cup Finals: A True Fairy Tale

Once upon a time in a great northern kingdom, there was a magical city called Vangroovy.  The people there were totally cool because they lived in the most wonderful city in the whole mystical world.  They had mountains to climb and oceans to sail; tall trees they loved to hug and beautiful weather all year round.  They lived on raw fish and fresh fruit and vegetables.  They drank delicious local wine and spent their weekends smoking medicinal herbs and watching David Suzuki on TV.  Vangroovy would have been paradise, indeed, except for one thing – all the people in the great northern kingdom suffered from a terrible sadness.  Their holiest relic, an ancient Cup given to them by a wise statesman named Stanley, had been stolen.  Years before, a wicked troll named Gary had borrowed the Cup to share with his southern friends, and now he wouldn’t give it back.  Each year, the cities of the great northern kingdom sent their best knights to make war on the armies of the evil troll and retrieve the holy relic, but each year he’d find a way to defeat them.  Many great knights fought in these Winter Wars – Sir Alfredsson, Sir Iginla, Sir Roloson (to name just a few) but all to no avail.  Twice the Knights of Vangroovy had come close to beating the armies of the wicked troll and seizing the holy Cup.  But in the end, the great Roger of Neilson was forced to surrender, and even the mighty Quinn was defeated.  A dark cloud hung heavy over the land.

One day, two young magicians from a faraway place called Ikea, came to Vangroovy.  They were named Hank and Dank.  They said, “We are young now, but as our powers grow, we will use our magic to fight the evil troll.  Who will fight with us?”  Many young knights stepped forward — Sir Salo, from the timeless land of Selanne, Sir Jannik the Dane and Sir Raymond the Swift.  More knights joined them: Sir Lou from the Holy city of Montreal, and three friends from the land of the Moose — Sir Kevin, Sir Alex and Sir Kesler the Grim.

“We are ready to fight,” they said, “but who will lead us?”

One man spoke, “I, Coach V, Alain de Vigneault will lead you.  Follow me!”

For four long years, the war raged.  Each year, the Knights of Vangroovy won many victories, only to be thwarted — again and again — by the wicked troll and his minions, the Red Wings, the Ducks, and the evil Chicago Blackhawks.  But the power of the Knights of Vangroovy was growing and the wicked troll sensed his time had come.  He called on his Centaurs to help him.  Half man, half zebra, these beasts used their awesome power to punish the Knights of Vangroovy and turn the tide of battle against them.  Many brave knights fell in those years: Sir Markus of Naslund, Sir Willie, Mattias of Ohlund and the greatest of them all — Sir Trevor of Linden, who had fought side by side with the Mighty Quinn in the Battle of MSG, in ’94.  But always there were other courageous warriors to take their place: Sir Edler, Sir Ehrhoff, Raffi the Relentless, Hamhuis the Soft Spoken and the valiant Malholtra.  The war continued.

Now the Knights of Vangroovy are within sight of the Cup, once again.  There have been many casualties; the knights are battered and bruised, but they have defeated the evil Blackhawks, the Predators and the Sharks.  With the help of Gillis the Magnificent, they have silenced the Centaurs and hold them at bay.  Now they face their greatest enemy.  The Cup is guarded by the ferocious bear cavalry of Boston, led by a giant and by Timothy of Thomas — a wizard with no bones.  This is the final battle.  There will be no prisoners, no quarter sought or given.  The wounded will remain and fight — or die — where they stand.

“Troll! Hear us!  The Cup is ours, and we’re coming to get it.  Stand and fight.  We will not be denied.  So cry ‘Louuuuu,’ and loose the dogs of war.”