Andy Nichols
Thought Ralph Klein Rob Anders and Stampede sucked? Stephen Harper has them beat by a country mile.
Don’t just dis him; vote against him next election
The surprise is not that Fast Forward Weekly readers chose Prime Minister Stephen Harper as their favourite Calgary villain but that he beat out Rob Anders (hissing encouraged here) and Ralph Klein.
If that wasn’t surprising enough in the Best of Calgary’s category of Calgary’s claim to shame Harper outdid both the Stampede (second place) and urban sprawl (third).
Managing to piss off young urban environmentally active and socially conscious readers in two categories is quite a feat. Take a bow Harper.
Not that the prime minister the much-loathed but amazingly always re-elected MP Anders and former Alberta premier Klein give a rat’s ass what the readers of Fast Forward Weekly think. (If they did it stands to reason they wouldn’t be leading the list of embarrassing Calgarians.)
But for Harper in particular should he want to keep his much-valued majority beyond the October 2015 election (and what pol doesn’t believe maintaining power is his or her prime goal) it would behoove him to ask why. Why would readers of a weekly newspaper devoted to urban life in Harper’s own city scorn him so much? Is there a deeper meaning than just a chance to dis the prime minister of Canada?
I’ve been around and voting since long before former prime minister Pierre Trudeau came on the scene. I can safely say that if you want changes to the style of government if you want politicians of which you can be proud then griping whining and abstaining from voting is the worst way to encourage change.
The sad fact is that every politician knows this. They know they can ignore young people and their particular interest because the 18-to-24 age group doesn’t vote in numbers large enough to make a difference. In the 2008 election barely 37.4 per cent of eligible youth voted and while there was a slight uptick this past May 2 it wasn’t much of a change. (Consider that in Sweden 79 per cent of voters under age 24 cast a ballot.)
Why this makes a difference is seen in the statistic that the youth rarely vote a conservative platform. One only has to look at U.S. President Barack Obama to understand that tradition doesn’t matter much among the young. Now give Canada an Obama-like figure match the youth excitement generated by Trudeau’s 1968 election and the voting patterns may turn on a dime.
But all that conjecture is the future. Why pick on Stephen Harper now? Probably because he represents everything about Calgary that urban Canadians dislike — he comes across as smug condescending cold and calculating — need I say more? He is humanized by his wife and family but their softening effect on the prime minister’s stiff-necked control-freak demeanour is rarely seen.
Those who voted Harper first in the dubious categories of “most embarrassing Calgarian” and “Calgary’s claim to shame” are reinforcing what Marshall McLuhan believed that “hot” people are inappropriate for a “cool” medium such as television the lens through which most Calgarians meet Harper. A cool medium requires audience participation requires those watching to consider themselves part of the action. And because television is the grand interloper into people’s homes it makes those who appear on TV part of one’s family sitting there at the end of the family room — the invited guest so to speak.
McLuhan who coined the phrase “the global village” in 1962 believed that electronic interdependence changes the world into a global village. In a real village people know each other well enough to be at ease with them. In an imaginary village the one that television creates people look for the same feeling.
As Robert Fulford wrote in The National Post : “Hot personalities are single-minded obsessive devoted to their policies. They have hard-edged sharply defined public styles. Those characteristics McLuhan argues make them wrong for television which favours the cool.”
“Television” adds Fulford “makes people want to participate so the wise politician avoids excessive detail and leaves blank spaces for viewers to fill in.”
Just about the last thing Harper wants is spaces in the way he practises politics. It doesn’t take a social scientist to figure out that he’s all about control.
Naming and shaming Harper could be seen as a fine bit of fun. But let’s get serious: We get the government we choose through the exercise of our franchise.
Wouldn’t it make more sense for those who don’t want Harper in office to vote in a real election and make a difference rather than just thumbing their noses at the prime minister?
