At the risk of contributing to year-end award overkill, I’d like to offer my own version of political kudos, the POLlies. POLlies are translucent plastic figures (asexual, of course) set on a base of grey soapstone and held together by Velcro. They may well be the ugliest awards in creation, but that’s a subject for a whole different competition.
The POLlie awards ceremony was held at the sumptuously tacky Raymond Chandler Pavillion, and featured dull speeches that went on forever, outrageously overpriced drinks and an all but incomprehensible dance number featuring 30 men and women dressed up as Hansards. Naturally, it ran eight hours late. What follows is a list of some of this year;s winners:
The “That’ll Learn ‘Em” Award: to International Trade Minister Pat Carney, who, in response to an American tariff on cedar shakes and shingles that hurt Canadians, imposed a tariff on American books that also hurt Canadians, proving once again that our politicians can play economic hardball with the best of them.
The “The United States May Have the Refrigerator, But We Have a Sinc” Award: to soon to be reinstated former Ontario Solicitor-General Ken Keyes, whose $53 fine for a promising violation of the Liquor Licencing Act (he admitted drinking on an OPP boat while entertaining the head of Scotland Yard) turned out to be the most disappointing government scandal of the year.
The “Hang a Left at Greenland and All You Men Back There Be Quiet – This is Supposed To Be a Secret Mission” Award: to Robert “Bud” McFarlane, who, armed only with a cake in the shape of a key and a bible signed by the President, single-handedly destroyed American credibility in the Middle East. Runner-up: Eugene “Chip” Hasenfus, the American captured by the Sandinistas while running guns to the Contras, who couldn’t make up his mind whether he had been working for the CIA or not.
The “It’s 11 PM – Do You Know Where Your Tax Files Are?” Award: to Revenue Minister Elmer Mackay, who found out that the microfiched tax records of every Canadian had been missing for a month a few hours before they were returned.
The “We’ll Look After the Future and Let the Present Take Care of Itself” Award: to Consumer Affairs Minister Harve Andre, who insisted the legislation giving multinational drug companies a longer protection period against Canadian generic drug manufacturers will benefit Canadian consumers in the long run. “Potentially delayed savings” is not an appropriate euphemism for present cost increases, Harve.
The “Okay, She Can Lose Weight, But How Does She Look in a Crown?” Award: to the National Enquirer, which kept running articles on Sarah Ferguson, who was married to Prince Andrew, long after everybody lost interest.
The “I Don’t Want To Hold the Position, I Just Want To Retire From It” Award: to Roderick Lewis, who agreed to scale down his expectations and accept a mere $60,000 for retiring as Queen’s Park Clerk. A bargain at half the price.
The “Do As I Say, Not As I Do De Doo Doo” Award: to American President Ronald Reagan, who urged European nations, particularly France, to refrain from trading with terrorist states, knowing that the US was sending arms to Iran.
The “Never Create Magic Asterisks and Tell” Award: to David Stockman, whose book, The Triumph of Politics, caused a great commotion to arise in Americaland, but very little enlightenment.
The “If God Created The Heavens and The Earth In Seven Days, Why Is It Taking Him So Long To Create a Presidential Campaign?” Award: to Pat Robertson, famous American weather coordinator, who said he’d run for President if three million of the faithful asked him to. So far, he isn’t even trotting, but these are, after all, times of lowered expectations.
The “You’re Not Douglas MacArthur, So What’s Your Beef?” Award: to Ferdinand Marcos, who claimed he was just vacationing outside his native Philippines, and that it is only a matter of time before he returns once again to lead the country. Also: The “How Much Fun, Frivolity and Shopping Can One Woman Enjoy In Her Lifetime?” Award: to Imelda Marcos and Michelle Duvalier, wife of Haiti’s Papa Doc, who are reportedly getting bored by their respective exiles.
The “Excess in the Celebration of Democracy Is Not a Vice” Award: to Lee Iacocca, whose tribute to the refurbished Statue of Liberty cost more than New York’s contribution to cleaning up the water in which Liberty sits. Bet the French would have loved all those Elvis impersonators, though.
The “Open Like a Rock” Award: to Russian Premier Mikhail “The Mick” Gorbachev for: 1) telling Europe about the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster only one week after it happened; 2) allowing two or three of the several thousand dissidents in the country to be released, and; 3) refusing to acknowledge a prostitution problem in Moscow because Marxist theory states quite clearly that Russia has no prostitutes. Runner-up: Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who stated that an open discussion of free trade was good for the country while releasing a study of the issue with lines and pages discreetly missing.
The “Don’t Rainmaker On Our Parade” Award: to Senator Keith “The Rainmaker” Davey, who counselled national Liberal Party members that voting for a leadership review was not disloyalty to the Party. Now that John Turner has handily won the leadership of the Liberals, how will Davey continue to sell copies of his autobiography?
The “Closer Than Brothers, Further Than The Furthest Journalist” Award: to Ontario Premier David Peterson and NDP leader Robert Rae, both of whom continue to take all the credit for legislation passed during the NDP-Liberal accord.
The “We’re All For Social Justice, Especially If It Coincides With Our Economic Policies” Award: to Claude Forget (Me Not), whose solution to abuses of Canada’s Unemployment Insurance Programme was to cut three billion dollars out of its budget. Jason’s got nothing on you, Claude.
The “QC Or Not QC, That Is The Question” Award: to the Ontario Liberals, who, although acknowledging that Queen’s Council honorifics are at best meaningless, at worst misleading, still couldn’t bring themselves to introduce the legislation that would abolish them.
The “Our Country Is In Great Shape, But Let’s Shoot A Messenger Anyway” Award: to South Africa’s P. W. Botha, who changes States of Emergency as often as most people change their underwear. Why he has noticed that a lack of press coverage hasn’t significantly decreased the violence in his country is a matter of rueful speculation at the Soweto Press Club.
The “Okay, He Uttered Once, But We Can Always Have His Mouth Wired Shut” Award: to lawyers for William “Billy Joe” MacLean, who insisted that their client had a legal right to serve as a member of Nova Scotia’s Legislative Assembly even though he admitted he forged expense claims worth almost $22,000. What do they think a public official in Nova Scotia has to do before he is unfit for public office?
The “Look Up Chutzpah In The Dictionary And You’ll Find A Picture Of This Country” Award: to Turkish officials, who cooperated with the American government’s efforts to stop drug trafficking, then asked for aid to compensate for the revenue they lost from drug sales. They are probably all orphans, too.
The “The Strong Sometimes Need Protection, Too” Award: to Canada Customs, which seized a film about South African civil rights activist Nelson Mandela on the grounds that it promoted hatred, and held it for a month without notifying DEC films, the movie’s distributor. The South African white minority government has been described in Canadian newspapers as “hated” and “racist;” if only they came from outside the country, Canada Customs could stop them, too.
The “We’re Here To Uphold The Law, So We’d Appreciate It If You Would Stop Talking About Morality” Award: to the American Justice Department, which argued before the US Supreme Court, that it had the right to label three Canadian films, Acid Rain From Heaven, Acid Rain: Requiem or Recovery and the Oscar winning If You Love This Planet as “foreign political propaganda. If the Justice Department intended to bury the films for political reasons, why do they still, three years later, insist upon giving them free publicity?
The “If You Won’t Accept An Apology, Will You Accept A Five Page Cover Story?” Award: to Maclean’s magazine, which ran a feature explaining why Joe Clark isn’t the Canadian Gerald Ford. I’ve obviously missed something, but wasn’t the press, including Maclean’s, responsible for saddling Clark with an image of ineptitude (hapless variety) in the first place?
The “Tuna Didn’t Agree With Him, But Politics Sure Seems To” Award: to former Fisheries Minister John Fraser, who was rewarded for his part in the tainted tuna scandal with the position of Speaker of the House.
The “How Do You Make Love To An Iron Lady?” Award: had no takers, perhaps not surprisingly, although Margaret Thatcher’s suitors included Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and Brian Mulroney.
The “We Can Only Hope The Universe Didn’t Start This Way” Award: to the London Stock Exchange, whose Big Bang was delayed several hours because its computers couldn’t handle the flood of business.
The “When Is A Swap Not A Swap, When Is A Summit Not A Summit?” Award: to White House Speakesperson Larry Spok – no, wait, sorry, White House Spokesperson Larry Speakes. The answer, of course, is: when the White House says it isn’t.
The “I Don’t Mind A Budgetary Problem, But When Their Idea Of A Major Canadian Series Is Another Show About Hockey, I Really Worry About The Network” Award: to the CBC, which lost $57 million due to a changeover in accounting procedures (to computers), but gave us He Shoots, He Scores anyway.
The “Look, It Sounded Great At The Summit, But Couldn’t You Tell I Was Joking?” Award: to Ronald Reagan, who went back on his pledge of five billion dollars towards cleaning up acid rain, claiming budget restraint. Of course, the silly Iran/Contras affair gave him an excuse to drop the environment to the bottom of his list of priorities, but it wasn’t a very long fall.
The “Free Enterprise Has Made Ottawa The Great National Capital That It Is Today” Award: to Jack Threader, reinstated former assistant deputy minister in National Resources, and John Spinks, reinstated former branch director in Transport, who were dismissed for organizing a seminar for fee-paying businessmen entitled “How To Maximize Opportunities for Selling to the Federal Government” on the grounds that they were profiting from their public positions, only to be given back their jobs by the Public Service Staff Relations Board. What does an official in Ottawa have to do before he is unfit for public office?
The “One Law Is Too Many, A Thousand Not Enough” Award: to Ontario Conservative Leader Larry Grossman, who accused the Liberals of using studying issues as an excuse for not bringing legislation before the House even though the government has passed voluminous amounts of legislation since the Liberals took office, and the Tories opposed almost all of it.
And, finally, the “It’s Fitting That Folks With Such A Great Sense Of Humour Should Be This Year’s Comic Relief” Award: to those nutty guys and gals at the American Security Exchange Commission, who fined risk arbitrager Ivan Boesky $100 million for insider trading. Unfortunately, Boesky is worth over $200 million, and may control as much as one billion dollars. On Wall Street, does the punishment fit a fraction of the crime?
Is it too much to hope that we’ll find Tommy Douglas in the shower and that this year will have all been a horrible, horrible dream?