Politics vs. Hockey

Politics can be boring. Even to politicians. Despite his rumoured grudge against Paul Martin, or possibly his rumoured grudge against John Manley (no-one's quite sure), Prime Minister Jean Chretien preferred to watch an NHL hockey game to the first Liberal debate.

Chretien jokingly weighed in on a controversy around the Saturday debate between Paul Martin, Finance Minister John Manley and Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, saying he frequently switched to an NHL playoff game between the Ottawa Senators and the Philadelphia Flyers. "I watched TV, sometimes I switched to hockey, I came back, I'm like any other citizen," Chretien said following his weekly cabinet meeting.

When asked whether he found the viewing boring, Chretien responded, "the hockey, no."

Which is entirely reasonable. And displays exactly what I like about Canadian politics right now. It's safe. Even if Paul Martin has himself crowned Emperor of all the Canadas, the absolute worst-case scenario is still, well, not bad. Whoever becomes the next Prime Minister, they won't try to block gay marriage, or crack down on recreational drug use--which, in Thomas Pynchon's Mason&Dixon, is endorsed by no less a personage than George Washington himself--or privatise everything, or introduce a Total Information Awareness programme headed by a convicted Iran-Contra conspirator, or fight a series of unjust and cynical wars for political gain, or prostitute the nation to mega-corporations...

In short, Canadians have nothing to be afraid of. While, down south, George Bush is one of the worst things ever to happen to America, and there's unfortunately a very real chance we'll have four more years of him. And then quite possibly four years of his chosen successor, Jeb. And then plagues of locusts, and waters turning to blood, and the star Wormwood plunging from the heavens, and dead Reagan-era conservatives rising from the grave to take up important Cabinet posts...Living under the Bush regime is somewhat worse than having a cactus forcibly inserted up one's rectum. A cactus covered in poison. One is just waiting to see which of one's moral and intellectual orifices they'll violate next. It is very much like Kafka, I think. In Kafka--one sees it even in the comparatively lighthearted Amerika, which I've been reading--authority figures are all arbitrary, cruel, vengeful, petty, and out to get you. You. Especially you. Even if you're just the tiniest cog in their vast bureaucratic machine--it's hilarious what a baroque Hapsburg monstrosity Kafka conjures up for a simple hotel--and you're hardly worth the notice of your superiors, they will still take time out of their busy schedules to crush you personally and absolutely. Kafka populates Amerika with capricious wrestling rich girls, grotesquely fat businessmen, Head Porters with imagined grievances, policemen who ask for papers like something from the Soviet Union, manipulative Frenchmen forcing one into servitude...All sorts of authority figures for his poor hero Karl to run up against and be tormented by. He is at the mercy of anyone with money, or power, or strength. Even his uncle, Senator Jacob, is cold and distant and controlling, and casts him out in the end.

Kafka would've found the Bush regime very familiar, I think.

Politics ought to be boring. Politics ought not to inspire massive protests, or fear. Politics is not supposed to be about passions. It's supposed to be about muddling through and keeping people more or less not entirely displeased. Quietly and efficiently. Without interfering overmuch in people's lives.

Good politics are boring politics.

Posted by aloysius at May 06, 2003 11:43 PM |