TriumphAnt

I was rabbiting about looking for something else to say to augment this most recent addition to Baby Duck, but in light of the recent exchange of pleasantries between the Conservatives and the entire world – or that ever-shrinking part of it that gives a damn about the Canadian election – over a Liberal staffer’s charge that families couldn’t be trusted with the Conservatives’ promised $100 per month for daycare cash because they’d spend it all on “popcorn and beer”, the level of discourse has abruptly begun its retreat from the relatively civil tone of the early campaign.

So while it’s still topical…

(I never promised to stay away from election chat entirely… did I? So permit me a minor rant.)

Early in the second week of this month, you may recall that the Conservatives unveiled their plan for daycare, followed a day later by the Liberals doing exactly the same thing. (By this I mean unveiling their plan, that is, not unveiling the exact same plan.) There followed several days of commentary in which everyone from the media talking heads to the ordinary Joe or Jill in the street (interviewed, often as not, in a daycare centre) had something to say – and usually something reasonably intelligent to say – about the merits of one plan vs the other.

And lo, I say unto thee, a miracle occurred. A number of pundits suddenly seemed to wake up to the fact that people were actually engaging one another in a debate about an issue. “What,” they asked, “is going on here? There’s no name-calling. There’s no dirt. There’s no news conference hastily called for the purpose of attacking an opponent for (a) acting like a Nazi; (b) trashing viewers of a Toronto multi-cultural channel; (c) insulting a riding’s entire Ukrainian community. There’s actually debate happening here!”

But then something else happened. As the media pointed out that the election conversation had taken a decided turn towards the meaningful, the media tone seemed to change to, “Well, that’s not news.”

And as swiftly as they noticed it was happening, the media turned back to waiting for the politicians to start slinging mud and dirt because, “Dammit, that’s what we like to report on.”

I read a bunch of articles and editorials, watched a bunch of TV news stories and heard a bunch of radio rants that seemed to sail off on a decidedly Eliza (Audrey Hepburn's that is) Doolittle – “Just you wait, ‘enry ‘iggins, just you wait!” – tack. In fact, they seemed to be saying to their readers / listeners / viewers, “Don’t worry, the Parties have all promised that immediately after Christmas, they’re going to roll out their attack ads, and viciously respond to the same when it is rolled out by the other guy.” In other words, don’t touch that dial folks!

After all, what kind of audience-grabbing soundbites are,

-- “Martin suggested it's up to voters to decide which vision they prefer, highlighting the fact that Harper opposes government-funded day care.” (London Free Press), or

-- “Mr. Martin said Tuesday his Liberals would make government-subsidized childcare a permanent social program, suggesting that his approach is a basic policy difference with the Conservatives, but one based on principles.” (Globe and Mail), or

-- “[The Prime Minister] said Harper’s plan wasn’t truly costed out because it doesn’t provide operating funds for day-care centres. ‘There’s going to be no early learning, no regulation, no insistence on high quality, so it’s simply an empty box. That’s not a child-care plan. What it really is maybe a kind of baby bonus, but that’s it.’” (Toronto Star) or, on another issue,

-- “‘It's kind of strange to go around preaching that you believe greenhouse gases should be reduced as a number 1 priority and then you preside over a 25 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions,’ Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said while campaigning in Saint John, N.B.” (CBC.ca news)

My God, they’re actually back-and-forthing on the merits of respective policies and promises, instead of insulting each other’s hairstyles!! We can’t have that!

(The image that comes to my mind is the old often-repeated cartoon scene where the main character is bracketed by a little devil sitting on one shoulder and a little angel on the other, both vying for the hero’s attention as he or she agonizes over what way to tilt in response to a clear moral choice. Do I let the cute little bird drown in the pot of water and then enjoy the soup, or do I rescue it?)

Sadly it seems to me that many in the media, having pointed out the absence so far of evidence of what they had all agreed a month ago was going to be one of the ugliest campaigns in Canadian political history, actually have now taken to goading the issue-focused campaigners into getting back over to the seamy stride of the street pronto.

As one medium seems to note hopefully, if not downright wistfully, in a recent article on its website, “CTV's Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife said he expects the mudslinging attack ads to be unleashed after the holiday season ends. ‘What's surprised me, at least in the first week of the campaign, is that we've had a discussion of ideas and there hasn't been a campaign at this point about character assassination,’ Fife said, appearing on CTV Newsnet. ‘But anybody you talk to in the camps will say just hang on here, wait until the real campaign starts after the new year.’”

“C’mon guys,” they seem to be bleating as the campaign continues to emphasize substantive exchanges, “let’s have some more of,”

-- “‘I heard and read Mr. Duceppe's remarks and I find there's a little Nazi-like tone to them,’ Mr. Lapierre told reporters.” (Globe and Mail); or

-- “Translation, according to the Liberals? Mr. Harper doesn't love Canada. Some Liberal party members then went to their Blackberries to send out that message. For the rest of the day, it became a ‘who-loves-Canada-more’ match as both the Tory Leader and Liberal Leader Paul Martin professed their undying love for this country.” (Globe and Mail)

The annoyingly hypocritical follow-up, of course, is that if the Parties really do switch over to getting down and dirty after Christmas, these selfsame, self-proclaimed media protectors of all that is good and decent will hit the printed page / airwaves will breast-beating laments wondering whatever happened to the good old days when election campaigns focused on the issues?!!

Well, not that anyone’s polled me but if I were to be given the choice, I’d respond loudly and clearly to the Party war-roomers, keep up the good work! Keep telling me why I should support your people and your platform, not why you believe your opponents will make supper out of a stewed blend of babies and kittens. After all, we can watch abuse every day of the week during Question Period when the House gets back in session after the election.

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As Offspring so thoughtfully reminded me recently, in just two more years I’ll be able to order from the Seniors’ menu at our neighbourhood Perkins Family Restaurant.

And I’m beginning to wonder, as the world swirls around me, if I’m starting to turn into a bit of a curmudgeon – “Old Fart” is how it was proposed recently by someone else in the family who is not Offspring. (We are a candid group, we are.)

What triggered this thought most recently was yet another head-bangingly frustrating experience at the coffee store everyone likes to criticize – Starbucks. My goal on this early afternoon was incredibly simple in the home of more choice than a Punjabi election ballot – I was feeling Picardesque, and all I wanted was, “Tea, Earl Grey, hot”.

(A digression. I know Star Trek fans will instantly recognize the allusion, For those for whom “Trek” still means “Boers”, the Captain of television’s post-James T Kirk Enterprise was Captain Jean-Luc Picard. And his favourite post-, if not mid-crisis calming diversion is to stand by a food replicator and order himself exactly what I wanted this day from Starbucks. Starbucks, it will be recalled from previous rants, seems to feel that “Small”, “Medium” and “Large” are beneath them. So its sizes are called… oh well, whatever the hell they are. For purposes of this jotting, the Starbucks name for its sizes is irrelevant.)

What I noticed, as I stood waiting for the person in front of me to finish delivering his order for something that sounded like the formula for one of the early atomic test explosions at Los Alamos, was that on their enormous wall menu, beside “tea”, they had one price for their small, then a 50-cent increase for their medium, followed by the puzzling revelation that their large was precisely the same price as their medium.

So here’s what makes me think I’m becoming a bit of a curmudgeon. I decided on the spot that I was just not going to let that pass. When the fellow in front of me had finally finished redefining nuclear fission in a coffee cup, I stepped forward, announced I was going to request a cup of tea, but before I did, I added, would the charming young barrista behind the counter first answer a question? “No problem,” she said. So I asked her, why is there a 50-cent price vault between the small and medium tea, but a large can be had for the same price as a medium?

The amount of water and, of course, a minuscule extra cost for the few extra micrograms of waxed cardboard in the larger cups are the only variables in a Starbucks tea order. They use the same size of tea bag for all three sizes. So I was fully expecting to hear a carefully rehearsed message about how the amount of energy required to heat the water does not change very much at all between the two largest sizes, but actually needs a significant thermal kick to make the anything-bigger-than-small jump required in order to satisfy the needs of the overly thirsty or caffeine-deprived customers who want to go for more gusto. But instead, without missing a beat, she replied, “Actually, they’re all the same price.”

Brought up short, I looked again at the board to check that my bifocals hadn’t caused a visual glitch, causing me to misinterpret the price line for the triad of choices listed next to the three-letter menu item, “tea”. But no -- $1.55 for a small, and $2.05 for the next two larger sizes. “So, um...” I pressed on, “Are they all… $1.55 or all $2.05?”

“$1.55,” she said quite firmly.

And this is the other reason I think I’m becoming a bit of a curmudgeon. For half a second (no more, I assure you) I wanted to grab her by her festive green Starbucks apron, yank her halfway across the counter and scream into her oh-so-young and oh-so-confident face, “THEN WHY IN HELL ARE THERE TWO DIFFERENT PRICES LISTED FOR THE THREE DIFFERENT SIZES??!!!!”

But what I said, instead, was, “Oh that’s great. I’ll have a [Starbucks word for ‘medium’]”.

“And that’s all for today?”

[Oh my Lord, no, my dear. Have a seat. I want to talk to you at length about the apparent inability of more and more businesses these days to operate in the same space-time continuum where sits a rational human being’s understanding of simple common sense. Along the way, we’ll explore pretension and the all-too-frequent clash between a customer’s need for fundamental information when pitted against a medium – in this case your enormous, painted, wall menu – which fails to satisfy even that uncommonly simple requirement. I expect you and I will be chatting – well, me ranting, you listening is perhaps a more accurate description of the conversational exchange I have in mind – for the better part of the next two hours.]

“Uh… yes, that’s all for today. Thank you.”

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