Wonderful Wednesday and the Politics of Joy

PHOTO BY JEAN-MARC CARISSE

In the fall of 1980, I got a job writing briefing notes for the National Liberal Caucus. I heard about the gig from an old Ottawa Journal buddy who bought me a beer at the Press Club. 

That's how you got jobs in the 80s, sitting in the games room, smoking and playing snooker.

Not like today when you need a Master's degree and a French diploma to go to the bathroom in Ottawa. 

I wasn't particularly political. You might say I leaned left, more NDPish, but I was looking for a new opportunity. After the Journal folded, I'd worked freelance for the Ottawa Citizen chasing musicians around the city and writing a column about them. 

My year of Carrie Bradshaw, without the nice shoes.

A year of that was enough. 

Both my liver and my ears needed a rest.

I hadn't realized that, drinking-wise, I was pretty much jumping from the pan into the flames. In those days, booze flowed freely on Parliament Hill. You could get a drink anytime. Night or day, a thirsty Hill staffer could always count on the Press Gallery where you could find sympathetic company and a brewski in the backroom.

Alas, a lot of politicians, scribes and innocent bystanders have succumbed to the lure of hops and grapes that once served as the engine of that place. Veterans still tell the tales of deputy streakers, MPs found snoring in bushes, and cars parked up the steps on Parliament Hill.

I was one of the lucky ones. I got out after Trudeau, Part One.

Still, it was a fun time, what can I say?

During my first day working at Caucus, I was introduced to Wonderful Wednesday by a colleague. It was a chance for Liberal staffers to mingle with Ministers of the Crown, and lowly MPs; it was also a kind of quirky means of career building. 

Wonderful Wednesday inevitably led to Terrible Thursdays, puke stained marble in the bathroom and greasy breakfasts in the West Block Cafeteria. 

But what the hell? We were young, we were cute, and we were dressed, for the most part.

Tonight, we will once again revisit that great Wonderful Wednesday tradition, and remember what Senator Keith Davey once described as "the politics of joy".

It's about time. 

I make no apologies for sounding old fogeyish when I say that politics were so much more fun in the Trudeau era, when it wasn't all about money, it was about principle. You might not have agreed with the principles, but Goddamn it, you didn't set out to belittle your opponents and assassinate their characters.

Politics today has become so mean-spirited, so driven by greed and self-interest that it is frankly sickening. 

And it's not just the politics that has been infected by black mould.

Yesterday, I cancelled my subscriptions to the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star because I'm so tired of what journalism has become -- a chance to be the judge and jury of many people who actually go into office in hopes of making this country better.

It's like we're living in the Hunger Games meets Groundhog Day, an endless nightmare of backstabbing, ball-busting, lying, cheating, and Pierre Pollievre never stopping talking.

Honestly, I've spent the last few days watching reruns of Veep and I now realize Selina Meyer might just be the Voice of Reason. 

Ditto Sheila Copps. 

We can't blame the Orange Clown for our woes. This deep-seeded anger has apparently been dormant within us all along and has been somehow unleashed, like the measles, in our society.

The result is a 24-hour shitshow of wormy faced men and women who have dedicated themselves to ruining the party for everybody.

Today, on the day of our Wonderful Wednesday, I woke up to Jason Kenney becoming Premier of Alberta. Okay, it's Alberta.

But I despair for the young women who now must protect their wombs -- thank goodness for the portability clause in the Canada Health Act -- and the gays and the bullied souls of Alberta who are in for a whole pipeline full of shit. 

In the olden days, those folks could move to Ontario. No longer, now that we are being ruled by a penis-headed, former and current weed dealing wombat who wants to keep everybody drunk, all day, all the time, while doctors hunt for polyps up your gazoo without benefit of anesthetic. He's busy changing licence plates while our forests burn and patients sit on hold waiting for a paramedic.

Oh well, one less bed in long term care. 

Here in Ottawa, it's not much not better.

The politics of joy not longer exist in Ottawa.

The only joyful sounds one hears are the sounds of the women of the Liberal Party hoisting the balls of their leader on a stick, dunking them in maple syrup, and preparing a buffet of sweetbreads for an entitled few.

Oh yes, and the joyful moaning of Andrew Scheer standing on the sidelines salivating about once again qualifying for public housing.

Puke.

So I'm looking forward to Wonderful Wednesday, and hoisting one last G nd T before it's time to call an ambulance that never comes.