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“This is Christmas, and people hope we’ll be wearing furry red outfits. This is not the year of rabbits coming out of hats. We have a lot of reality checks.”
– New city budget chief David Soknacki shows that Toronto does not have a cliché deficit.
Existential Xmas
How sweet to imagine Mr. and Mrs. Governor General toasting troops in Afghanistan at Christmastime. Like Dubya tossing turkeys in Baghdad, Adrienne Clarkson and her hubby, the ever-effervescent John Ralston Saul, will spend a Kabul Christmas allegedly raising the morale of our ill-clad corps. Starry-eyed troops will delight as Saul, in his typically erudite style, reworks the holiday classic to regale them with his reading of The 1,000 Days Of Christmas and exhausts them by leading them in singing extended rounds of carols he’s added dozens of extra verses to.
Boot put to Boot Camp
Nice to see the province put the boot to Mike Harris’s Reaganesque retreat, Project Turnaround. Believing all a troubled young person needs is a good kick in the ass – and a non-union workforce to administer it – the Tories tried to use this pet project as a foot in the door for private prisons. But profit-driven pens don’t make fiscal or moral sense, and this is one Liberal government move that doesn’t involve a mealy-mouthed backtrack.
Wong whacks Rochester
Jan Wong had to go to run-down Rochester to find anyone to have lunch with. The knee-jerk jerk journalist, whose nasty-ass lunch encounters became as predictable as a bad meal at McDonald’s, went to the birthplace of the Brownie camera to see why the hell anyone would take the proposed ferry between T-town and New York’s armpit. Wong’s not surprising conclusion is that only tourists with a death wish would be attracted by that crime-ridden, collapsing city. And much of her info came from Mayor William Johnson, who’s now scrambling to distance himself from Wong’s wretched report. Cheque, please.
Mammoliti misfires
Mayor David Miller spent more time embracing rabid foe Giorgio Mammoliti than other councillors during their swearing in. Was he trying to buffet the blowhard’s bleats of backroom bullying regarding juicy committee jobs? Mammoliti, known for his long lunches and efforts to have a street named after himself, claims poor right-wingers aren’t getting good committee gigs. Giorgio, after nine years of watching most of you bumble, Miller’s right to limit your capacity to fuck things up.
