Yuk-Yuks for Election 2019
Convivium, 17 October 2019
The Rhinoceros Party’s return in the federal campaign is worthy of applause because every election needs its clown car.
Election day is at hand. An election is a serious business, and serious matters are in the balance. But does an election campaign have to be so lacking in humour?
There is much lamenting the partisan polarization of debate, the superficiality of media coverage, the focus on persons rather than ideas. But more than that, it is all so crushingly grave, even grim. Jokes are rarely made; or at least not funny ones, as humour requires a bit of the unexpected, and the unexpected is the one thing that is never to be permitted from tightly controlled campaigns.
The Justin Trudeau blackface/hands/elbows/knees-and-toes spawned a thousand and one jokes across the land, some of them gut-bustingly hilarious. Nary a hint of humour though was permitted into the actual campaign. That’s not new. Back in 1984, Brian Mulroney was cracking wise on his campaign plane about John Turner’s fin-de-regime patronage appointments, noting that, in regard to Bryce Mackasey, despatched to Lisbon as the Canadian ambassador, “there’s no whore like an old whore.” The press pounced, and Mulroney summoned up the faux contrition – he was far more like Trudeau fils than Trudeau père in that regard – and offered sombre repentance that he had even joked about such things. But John Turner had done it, which is even worse than joking about it! Thirty-five years on, it seems that joking about whatever it is may be just as bad, even worse, than doing it.
So as my fellow Canadians puzzle these days over which party to vote for – I have no such burden, having already voted – let me point out that the Rhinoceros Party is still around, perhaps not kicking but alive again. It may not merit a vote, but it does merit consideration, if only to prove that laughter has not entirely been entirely excised from Canadian politics.
How’s that, our younger readers ask? The Rhinoceros Party? Is that the latest save-the-planet activism from the Jenner-Kardashians, deploying the fearsome power of reality TV celebrity against criminal poachers sawing off rhino horns to fashion elixirs and potent aphrodisiacs for NBA executives to present as atonement offerings to the delicate tyrants in the Chinese politburo?
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