Gomery Mania

Well it seems that the media is in full "glitter and glee" mode. The Gomery inquiry has pointed all the right fingers: Chretien Bad, Martin Good. The Globe and Mail could barely hold its contempt for Chretien and his "small town cheap" approach to Quebec separatism.

Yet it is bizarre how this has all come to pass. A man, appointed by a Liberal Prime Minister to discredit another Liberal Prime Minister tells the first man exactly what he wanted to hear. It is Liberal corruption and duplicity at its finest. At the same time, the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star scream for Chretien's head and demand that the public needs answers. In case you haven't gueesed already, this is exactly what the Martin team wanted and the papers fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Martin should enter a fishing contest this year, because he is hooking newspaper cronies all over the country.

It is funny, save for Chretien's court challenge to the Gomery inquiry, the events in Ottawa these days remind me of an old fable about former Sovier Premier Nikta Kruschev and his successor Leonid Brezhnev. Supposedly, when Kruschev was forced out of office, he sat down and wrote two letters and handed them to Brezhnev. He said, "When you get into a situation you can't get out of, open the first letter and you'll be saved. And when you get into another situation you can't get out of, open the second." Soon enough Breshnev found himself in a tight place. So he opened the first letter. It said, "To the problems you are having, there is a simple solution: Blame everything on me." So Brezhnev blamed everything on Kruschev and it worked like a charm. When Breshnev got into another situation that he couldn't get out of, he remembered his old friend Kruschev had left him a second letter. Upon opening it, Brezhnev read the following letter, "Sit down, my friend, and write two letters."

Assuming this fable were true, I wonder how many letters Chretien wrote to Martin, and how much longer Martin can continue to balme his former boss...?

So, assuming that the Gomery inquiry really was a show of smoke and mirrors to discredit the Chretien clan and save the Martin team, I wonder, where are the calls for greater democratic accountability within all levels of government? Where are the media who claim to represent the public?

To be honest, I've always been wary of the media's claim to represent the public. When you watch reporters in scrums, or on television, I always get the impression that the last things journalists represent is the public. First and foremost on their minds seems to be to yell at those in power in such a way to show that the journalist is indeed, "hard hitting" and will one day be the anchor of his/her network. There is rarely any risk in asking these questions. The press gallary reporters are so embedded within the halls of power that there questions, at best, reinforce government spin.

Yet, beyond the media circus, what this scandal shows is that Canadian democracy is weak and needs a drastic overhaul. Majority governments, journalists, and news networks in general, are just too divorced from where real people are. That, in my opinion, is the real scandal. (well that and the several million dollars stollen!)

As an aside, the meatpackers strike in Alberta was tentatively settled yesterday. No front page headlines here. But I wish those brave workers all the best as they return to their (still underpaid and underappreciated) jobs.