Remember that movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where real people and cartoon characters live side by side in Toontown?
After the last week in B.C. politics, don’t you feel we’re all trapped in Toontown?
Consider the evidence. There’s Gordon Campbell, the premier, who stands accused of being an enormous bully whose temper tantrums are so extreme his own cabinet ministers have to wipe the spittle off their faces when he’s done.
Sounds a little like legendary cartoon hothead Yosemite Sam.
Then there’s his accuser, former cabinet minister Bill Bennett. Yosemite Sam would have a choice word for Bennett, who has wreaked terrible havoc among the Liberals. That word would be “varmint,” specifically that whirling dervish of destruction, The Tasmanian Devil.
Then there’s poor Carole James, the NDP leader, who has been set upon by her own unruly MLAs for being bland and boring. Sounds like Marge from The Simpsons. Marge is long-suffering. But when her shiftless husband Homer goes too far, Marge runs out of patience and snaps. Kind of like Carole James, who has finally found an issue that gets her fired up: her job.
It wouldn’t be Toontown without weird Judge Doom, who chases cartoon characters around and tries to assassinate them by throwing them into a vat of paint thinner called “The Dip.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that sound like Bill Vander Zalm, the flamboyant former premier who seems intent on randomly chasing Liberals around, trying to get them recalled as punishment for supporting the HST?
Vander Zalm’s first candidate for The Dip is poor Ida Chong, the MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head, who seems little more than a pawn in Judge Doom’s game, which is to get the HST rescinded. By dipping one MLA at a time, he says, “We are giving the government every opportunity to get rid of the tax and move on with the governance of B.C.” Until then, one after another gets The Dip.
Like Judge Doom, who is assisted by a number of Toon weasels, Vander Zalm has his own weasels, er, canvassers who aid his manic pursuits.
The rest of us are feeling a little like Daffy Duck, driven quackers by the Loonie Toons who govern our lives here in Toontown. I don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait until Porky Pig turns up and signals: Th-that’s All Folks, the lights go up, and we get to go home.
Meanwhile, you might as well pass the popcorn.
