DIARY
Rex Murphy was right for once
by
Robert LaFrance
On Thursday, April 23, on the CBC-TV
news program The National, Rex Murphy, who is a veteran common tater, made some
comments clearly aimed at Senator (or not) Mike Duffy and I found myself
agreeing with them.
He implied that the Mike Duffy trial
was irrelevant because it was merely about points of law not about character or
conscience.
“In the context of the Senate,”
Murphy asked, “where is character?” Referring to Duffy, Wallin, Brazeau and
other senators, who super-padded their already generous expense accounts, he
said that anybody of conscience and character “would not maim his moral dignity
to take advantage of (the loose rules).” Meaning: even though the cookie jar
was wide open and no one was looking, good guys would walk by without grabbing
one. These senators took a hundred cookies each because they could.
If the Senate can’t legally be
abolished, why can’t we merely chop their power to that of the Dogcatcher of
Kenora and reduce their salaries and expense accounts to the level of a
McDonald’s busboy’s paycheque? Problem solved.
*************************
On a somewhat less edgy subject, but
maybe not, once I think about it, I want to comment on a recent TV commercial
for a product called Rogers Ignite.
The opening scene of that commercial
shows a father (one assumes, or possibly a pizza delivery guy with privileges)
entering the living room where two or three kids are lying on the floor and
playing with their iPads, iPods, iPhones, iChips and iCokes. He steps over them
and comes across more people doing similar things with electronic miracles. He
passes by all these people, none of whom greet him in any way.
He goes upstairs where his wife (or
not, see above) is lying in bed and watching an online show on her laptop. I
refer to a small computer, not the actual top of her lap. He crawls into bed
and, although she is by no means hard on the eyes, he settles down to exhibit
great joy at being able to do watch TV in bed.
So, to sum up, this working man
comes home to his family, none of whom acknowledge his existence, and crawls
into bed with a woman of no mean standard, and is happy as a clam to be
watching a movie on a laptop computer. Rogers Ignite. Be sure to buy that.
Great for family togetherness.
*************************
I am not sure if you agree, but I
write these words as part of a humour column. Some might say “attempted humour
column” and other would say “a decroded piece of (a word that rhymes with
‘zap’)” but the point is, I try.
Over the years I have not felt any
particular pressure to maintain my high standards of humour (retch) in my
private life, but I think some people feel I need to be funny all the time.
A few weeks ago I made a joke in a
store, in a town far, far away, and the person came back with: “You told that
one last week,” or words to that effect. The same thing happened a day later in
another town far, far away. I mentioned to someone that my wife would hit me
with a rolling pin if I acted in a certain way. “You said that last week,” was
the response.
Is a dentist expected to pull teeth
all day and all night? Does a truck driver get criticized if he isn’t behind
the wheel 24/7? I am not quite sure why I have to be hilarious all day, merely
because I write a humour column. I don’t write a script for every visit to a
grocery store, although sometimes when I visit a dentist I need a laugh.
***************************
One final notes about the odd jobs
that we use words for. Last evening as I sipped on some lemonade and sat in my
favourite chair in the living room, I read that nobody knows who ‘founded’ the
community of Tilley (although I think it was my great-grandfather Olivier
LaFrance dit Pinel). Then a friend from Ontario, on his way to PEI, phoned me and said that he had ‘found’
Tilley and was actually at the house where I was born.
Funny how the words ‘founded’ and
‘found’ are not identical in meaning. When my ancestors arrived in Tilley in
the nineteenth century from the Bois Francs area of Quebec (near Drummondville
today) they had to ‘find’ Tilley because their GPSes were a bit primitive and
road signs on their Trans Canada Highway were rather obscure. “Terra
incognita” it said on their maps. So when they ‘found’ Tilley and if they were
the first settlers, that means they ‘founded’ Tilley. It’s too much for me.
-end-
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