Well, it just so happens that they're magnificently, hypocritically full of shit. Most of those assholes wouldn't know the truth if it blackjacked them in an alley, sodomized them roughly and took their fucking wallets before leaving them in a pool of their own goddamn blood.
How do I know this? Well, I saw it firsthand in the treatment NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau received from Liberals, Conservatives and the ghoulishly stupid media during the last couple of weeks of the last election campaign. On the matter of Ms. Brousseau, all three displayed the charm, grace and intellectual consistency of Robert Mugabe.
In any given federal campaign, there are only ever maybe a few dozen races that are truly competive. The parties, however, want to show us all how important and "national" they are by running candidates everywhere. Most of them are what are commonly called "ballot placeholders" or sacrifical lambs. No one really expects them to win, so nobody thinks of their qualifications to govern.
On the other hand, it doesn't really matter if you're qualified these days, not unless you're a party leader (and only occasionally then), a "star candidate", or someone destined for Cabinet. Even if you win, you're only going to be a backbencher. And everybody knows what they are. Pierre Trudeau, prime minister of this good land for sixteen years, referred to backbenchers as "nobodies." They vote how the party leadership wants them to, and if they don't, they very quickly find themselves thrown out of the party. Trudeau began the concentration of power in the Prime Minister's Office, and its only gotten worse over the last forty years.
That being the case, who really gives a shit if Ruth Ellen Brosseau is a bartender that lived outside the province she was elected to represent, doesn't speak the language, had never set foot in her riding and jetted to Vegas in the middle of the campaign? What possible difference does it make? She's just going to wind up doing whatever Jack Layton tells her to anyway. Christ, Stephen Harper could have a backbench loaded with unrepentent child molestors and not only would they still vote for his backward and silly crime omnibus bill, they'd do it with a non-ironic smile. Is a friggin' astronaut any more or less qualified to do what some well-heeled special interest asshole tells them to do than a bartender?
Look, if you shot your average politico or journalist full of sodium pentathol, they'd tell you that to be a player in democracy you need to either be an asshole lawyer, a union thug, a criminal banker or scumbag lobbyist. Anyone else who applies is ruthlessly mocked and easily marginalized. Sometimes an academic like Stephane Dion or Michael Ignatieff will accidently win a position of influence and they inevitably prove the politicos and journalists right.
But if you're Ruth Ellen, you had better watch the fuck out, particularly if you win. The lobbyists and lawyers, so eloquent about the "little guy" during campaign season, will go out of their way to ridicule you. All you've got to do is read what the professionals have been saying about her in the press and on their vanity blogs for the last couple of weeks. Sure, they'll pat you on the head and lie right to your face, but they know what time it really is. They know who's pouring the drinks and who's drinking them. And to them, Ms. Brosseau is always going to be on the wrong side of the bar.
But she's a pretty cute girl who I'm willing to bet has a tight little body, which is more than I can say about the 99.9% of Parliament that isn't Rona Ambrose.
And in the great sham that our democracy has become, that's more than enough for me.
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