Rose's Cantina

It's now been a week since Jian Ghomeshi told his fans he was taking time away from CBC Radio, six days since the CBC said it was distancing itself from the great man, five days since the CBC fired him for his lifestyle choices, four days since the Toronto Star let loose a can of whoop ass on the host of Q, three days since the first woman put her name forward claiming he choked and hit her, two days since nine women came forward to say the same and worse. The scandal started slowly enough but quickly resulted in a white squall of outrage from women -- and right-thinking men -- who took to social media to express their disgust that the CBC allowed Ghomeshi to walk their halls for even one day after a woman complained about him cupping her butt and promising to fuck her with his Angry Inch. Boy, it must have been some week at the CBC, which is now so blown apart by this scandal that i...

#108274487 / gettyimages.com What is happening to this staid old nation of ours? First we had the crack-smoking mayor, then Justin "The Egg Man" Bieber. Now we have the King of Kink. Merde. Have you seen all the blogs about sweet little Jian Ghomeshi who got bitch slapped by CBC for his love of all things BDSM? Oh my . We thought he was just a creep. Now he's a creep with an attitude. He doesn't fight fair, according to the Toronto Star who interviewed four women who said he punched them and strangled them without their consent. Is he guilty? Not according to him. He told Facebook lovers on Sunday that he's into the scene -- nothing wrong with that -- and this is just a silly prank put upon him by a jilted ex-lover. Then he went on to list all his perversions, like any of us want to know, kind of like a 4-1-1 in case some young ladies on The Facebook might want to, you know, look him up. Got to hand it to Jian. He never met a twisted op...

#82635875 / gettyimages.com A lot of people were making fun of Stephen Harper hiding in a broom closet being guarded by MPs with hand-fashioned sticks last week. There are memes all over the Internet about it. Where was he supposed to go? Have you been in that room? There are no windows to jump out of, like in the Parliamentary Press Gallery's hot room. There isn't even a bathroom. This was not a cowardly act, as some have suggested. You know what the flight attendants say. The big person should always put the mask on first in order to save the country. That's what Harper was doing, making sure the big person would still be alive if his loyal foot soldiers with sticks had been unable to protect him. Most of us would do the same thing. He's our Prime Minister, for Goodness Sake, one of our great symbols of democracy. So stifle yourself, Harper haters. There was no need for him to come out of the closet. Besides, I have no doubt the caucus would h...

#146374231 / gettyimages.com When the planes crashed into the World Trade Center on that bright and beautiful September morning, life as I knew it changed. I'd been struggling for five years to adjust to raising three kids on my own, keeping up with car and mortgage payments and finding part-time work to supplement my child support payments. It was as if I lived on a hamster wheel (my friend Suzanne calls it the ferris wheel of shit) running as fast as a I could, never having a break. My kids were teenagers and two of them were already deeply into drugs and skipping school, and my eldest son had threatened suicide. Nick had taken to the streets for a time and nearly died from refusing to take his thyroid medication, which had kept him alive and thriving since he was a toddler. Every time I tried to take a full time job, something happened, from cops coming to the door to cuff the boys to endless meetings with school officials over truancy. I was living a single ...

      For many of us in Ottawa, Parliament Hill is more than a place of political wrangling and policy making. It's our home.   And the people who work there are more than politicians, bureaucrats and scribes. They are family.   It's been years since I toiled there, but like most Ottawa Hillbillies, I left a piece of myself in those hallowed halls.   My husband, Scott, spent nearly 30 years on Parliament Hill as a cameraman for CBC. He knows every corner, every entrance, every tunnel, every political escape route. Scott stood for hours most days, in the hall beside the very steps that the gunman tore up yesterday, doing the job of all good camera guys -- scrumming politicians and cooling his heels waiting to catch the eye of seven prime ministers.   I worked as both a journalist and a political staffer on the Hill for nearly two decades. I had an office in the Langevin Block steps away from...

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#463047935 / gettyimages.com Watching W5 on Saturday, and its fawning hour-long profile of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, I was brought back to a time in the 1980s when Tom Hayden was running for state legislature in California. Hayden was a famous 60s radical, then married to Jane Fonda, who was trying to rehabilitate his image, to make himself seem more palatable to voters. Getting him elected wouldn't be easy -- Tom was a bad guy in his youth -- so a gaggle of Democratic political consultants were enlisted to undertake a renovation of sorts, putting putty in the cracks of the foundation, giving him a new high gloss coat of paint. The media campaign included television ads, and a glossy brochure entitled Tom Hayden, Growing Up in America. The brochure featured sad images of racism, segregation, shootings of presidents and preachers. It was meant to explain how Tom Hayden and his politics had been shaped by events in America. Not his fault. He was a...