DIARY
I
have a bit of a twinge myself
by
Robert LaFrance
I watch quite a few television shows
on the B.C. Knowledge Network and I tell ya, them fellers is quite smart.
Last evening I sat down with a
lemonade and got all ready to watch a show called ‘South Pacific’, but to my
surprise and consternation it wasn’t the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical we all
love, but a show about the 20,000 islands in the south Pacific.
(Funny how islands tend to be in
even numbers like that, like the Thousand Islands of Ontario. Or the salad
dressing.)
Back to the point, I watched about
three minutes of the show up until the narrator said about a certain area of
that ocean: “The water is clean, clear and pristine…”
I tell you my friends, that just
won’t do. How is it that we humans haven’t polluted that yet? What’s wrong with
us? Surely there must be a nickel plant, an oil rig or some raw sewerage we
could haul there.
Flug, just out of hospital and
looking over my shoulder as I typed, said: “A little cynical today, are we?”
*********************
Yes, as a registered journalist, I
am cynical. I have been in the newspaper (and radio) game since 1978 and before
that I thought all the people in responsible positions had gotten there because
of their smarts and their caring for the public, or at least their ‘image’.
Today the elected officials I know
are indeed there because of their efforts and their intelligence, but it wasn’t
always so. I remember one MLA (not from this riding) whose speech I covered in
Perth-Andover and who handed out – on paper I emphasize – some of the remarks
he was going to make ‘off the cuff’ or ‘ad lib’.
It was a 12-page speech,
double-spaced, and (I am not kidding) the last paragraph of the speech that had
been given to reporters was this:
“Those were some of the points I
wanted to raise and I’m sorry my talk took longer than expected so that I can’t
stay for questions.” That sentence was written into the text of the speech that
he had read word for word. He put his papers in his brief case and, followed by
his assistant (who had written the speech), left for his own riding.
*************************
A new dance craze has taken over
Canada and the U.S., particularly the U.S., since Donald Trump got elected on
November 8th. I call it ‘The Trump Scamble’.
It’s amazing how many people now
think – or would like us to think – that they had predicted the Trump victory.
That’s rather odd really, since as late as the afternoon of November 8th
I didn’t hear anyone except Donald Trump himself make that prediction.
Indeed, the people on his own
election team were implying that he had made a good run for the presidency and
they hoped the new administration would take up some of the issues that had
made him so wildly popular, like jobs. Trump had taken lying to a whole new
level, with a statement one day and a completely opposite one the next day,
perhaps in the same city.
I watched the CBC-TV’s The National
last Thursday and Rex Murphy was doing his very best to imply that the reason
Trump was elected was that he had said things many people wanted to hear.
Shocking.
Other commentators, especially those
in the U.S. on shows like ‘Meet the Press’ (although they’ve never met me) were
scrambling to explain why Trump won; it was because he received more votes,
right? Wrong. Hillary Clinton received over a million and a half more votes
than Trump.
Of course I predicted the outcome of
the election. I predicted it on Nov. 9th.
**************************
Flug has been in the hospital this
week for what he refers to as brain surgery. In fact he was having a hernia
operation.
When he told me last week that he
was going to get this surgery – he had been waiting in line since 1989 – I was
astounded. Flug was not a person that one would expect to see lifting a grand
piano and I wondered how he had injured himself.
“Cards,” he explained as he lay
there in his hospital bed, a pitiful sight among the flowers his friends had
brought in. The flower I had brought in was a small bottle of Captain Morgan’s
dark rum.
“Cards, I tell you. I go to the grocery store and I need two
cards, the pharmacy two cards, and every other store in Canada needs a
membership card, a special debit card, and card for this and a card for that. I
had to build a trailer for my Toyota Yaris so I could take them to town. I
ended up having to carry a big bundle of plastic cards all over the place until
finally…POP!”
Although Flug does tend to
exaggerate, I believed him. I have a bit of a twinge myself.
-end-
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