The Citizen, 2007-09-06, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2007. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Just have fun
Men…be vigilant. There is an ominous
danger aswirl in the Canadian ether that
threatens to play Whack-a-Mole with your
sense of self-worth and ultimately rip your
manhood from your person to leave you
whimpering wimpishly like a small-l soprano.
And its name is RONA.
I’m not talking about Rona Ambrose, the
Tory bigwig with the gorgeous hair (as
opposed to Stephen Harper, the Tory bigwig
with the hair that looks like, well, a big wig).
I’m talking about RONA, the Montreal-
based, Canada-wide home and garden
hardware retail giant, with 540 outlets and
counting. RONA wants to sell you home and
garden improvement stuff and their sales
strategy is diabolical.
You may have seen their TV ad. It shows a
(female) customer in a RONA store talking to
a (female) clerk. She is complaining about her
doofus, layabout, no-nothing (male) husband
who, she says, is about as much help around
the house as the dust bunnies under the marital
bed.
“That’s okay,” says the (female) clerk.
“They (the husbands) are all like that.”
Personally, I’m not offended. Maybe that’s
because I don’t think it’s a bad thing to laugh
at ourselves from time to time.
But most likely it’s because I am that
doofus, layabout, no-nothing husband
incarnate.
I am not a handy guy. My idea of a garden
improvement is fluffing the pillow on the
hammock.
I am okay with that ad.
Peter Regan, on the other hand, is not.
Mister Regan is a 47-year-old single parent
who lives in Calgary and who took huge
offense when he saw RONA’s ad making mock
of masculinity.
“Why is it okay to bash men?” he asked.
Now…there was a photograph of Mister
Regan in my morning newspaper. It showed
him edging his garden and frowning
meaningfully into the camera.
Mister Regan is exceedingly broad of
shoulder and meaty of thigh. I’d guess he
would run about 250, maybe 300 pounds.
He would not look out of place in the
defensive line of the Calgary Stampeders. If I
ever decided to bash a man, I wouldn’t pick
Peter Regan.
I’d have assumed that Mister Regan would
be robust enough to weather a 30 second home
and garden TV ad poking gentle fun at men’s
ineptness, but I’d have been wrong. Mister
Regan was hurt.
And when a RONA spokesman told him that
the ads were meant to be humorous, he got
furious.
“At what point do you stop joking around,”
he asked. “This portrayal of men as knuckle-
dragging Neanderthals or habitual lazy
drunkards robs our boys and families of role
models.”
Umm, Planet Earth to Peter Regan: Life is
not a Boy Scout commercial. Homer Simpson
is a lousy role model too. So are the misfits on
King of the Hill and Beavis and Butt-head, but
they make us laugh. That’s all they’re
intended to do.
Is it just me, or are we all getting just a tad
too hypersensitive these days?
Apparently it’s just me, because Peter Regan
complained to Advertising Standards Canada
– and they agreed with him. RONA has been
ordered to either yank or amend the
commercial so that it no longer “disparages
men and/or married men”.
Ho hum. A restaurant down in Louisville,
Colorado has been ordered to change the name
of its signature sandwich, something they’ve
been advertising and selling for the past 88
years.
New name of the sandwich? The Italian
burger.
Name under which it has been sold for most
of the past century? The Wopburger.
Well – no contest, right? Extremely
offensive name to Italians.
Except for one thing: the Wopburger was
created and named by Italian immigrants
Michael and Emira Colacci – as a tribute to
their Italian heritage. They had a sense of
humour. The Colorado bureaucracy did not.
Richard Colacci, owner of the Blue Parrot
Diner and grandson of the pioneers, says
“losing our Wopburger is hard to take”.
Get used to it Richard – it’s going around. In
fact, it’s not just going around, it’s coming full
circle. According to a news report in the
Melbourne,Australia Herald Sun, there’s a bar
in town that has just been granted the right to
refuse entry to any customer who is a
practising…heterosexual.
It’s a gay bar, you see. The owners of the bar
maintain that allowing straight men and
women onto their premises would “destroy the
atmosphere which the company wishes to
create”.
Oh – and it’s a male gay bar. So lesbians are
excluded too.
Sometimes, to get into an ordinary bar you
have to show your driver’s licence.
I don’t want to guess what you have to show
to get into that bar in Melbourne.
Arthur
Black
Election has many possible endings
Abeautiful late summer day in 1989.
The sky couldn’t have been clearer or
bluer. The temperature soared, but the
air had an autumn freshness, without humidity
or heaviness.
With my two youngest (and they were
young) in tow, I head into Blyth and find nary
a spot to park. Cars line, not just the downtown
core, but every side street out to the edges of
town.
Then I spy it, the break in the chain. I inch
my vehicle in, turn off the ignition and prepare
for a long, long trek to my destination.
It doesn’t take long after leaving our car that
we begin to hear the sounds that enliven the
fairgrounds on this particular weekend. There
are smells too, and a bizarre sense of stepping
back to a past alive with a modern level of
excitement.
It is 18 years ago and my introduction to the
Thresher Reunion.
I remember walking through the gates that
first time and pausing, taking a moment to
orient myself to the transformed grounds.
Relics of yesterday stood like sentries at the
entrance of a time warp. Steam engines
blasted, men in coveralls and straw hats
sauntered. Between the bursts of bells and
whistles, riding above the chatter of friends
and neighbours, could be heard the sounds of
banjo and fiddle.
There were no hurried strides, no urgency in
those present.
My children, standing quietly beside me
seemed curiously bemused. After all, if I’m
feeling I stepped back in time, imagine what
this was like for them. It had to be almost
other-worldly.
We began our determined steps through the
grounds, not just looking, but absorbing. I
explained things to the best of my ability,
which unfortunately wasn’t the best. Yet, they
seemed mesmirized by it all.
At day’s end, it was clear this had been a
positive, interesting experience.
In the years since my first Thresher Reunion
there have been many changes to the event.
They have expanded the activities to appeal to
a wider audience. They have expanded the
campgrounds to accommodate the faithful
who come back by the hundreds year after
year after year. They have expanded on each
and every success, while maintaining the
familiar feeling of old.
The success of the event can be attributed to
the Thresher Association members. They have
recognized from day one what is needed to
entertain. And in doing so, have built upon
their successes.
The craft show grew out of a need to give the
wives something to do. The entertainment
became as much a part of the Reunion as the
original idea of a steam show. As a result
music is found in every corner, every stage,
every venue throughout the weekend.
People began arriving earlier and earlier to
camp, and the Association planned ahead
acquiring land that has resulted today in
hundreds of serviced lots, benefitting not just
their own event, but the municipality as well.
This dedicated group of volunteers is
committed to both the organization they serve
and to its goal, explained on the website as “to
continue to attract and entertain people from
ages five to 90 and ensure that when you leave
our show we have either brought back
memories for you or have given you a better
understanding of our heritage in an
entertaining manner.”
Most of all, however, they just want folks to
have fun. Seems to be working.
Other Views
We truly live in sensitive times
With only a few weeks to go
Ontario’s Oct. 10 election has more
possible endings than a shelf-full of
Harlequin romances, although not all will be
as happy.
The Liberals under Premier Dalton
McGuinty suddenly appear to have an outside
chance of hanging on to government with
another majority, which would not have
seemed feasible a few weeks ago.
The Liberals were then seen failing to guard
against lottery fraud and generous with cash to
immigrants connected to their party. They
were running only neck and neck at around 35
per cent support with the Progressive
Conservatives.
But three new polls have suggested
McGuinty’s party has clawed its way back to
around 40 per cent, largely because it has
promised $20 billion in new spending and
Conservative leader John Tory’s vision of
funding private faith-based schools is being
seen as divisive.
Forty per cent normally has not been enough
to win a majority of seats in the legislature
even when votes are divided reasonably evenly
among three parties.
But Conservatives in recent decades have
won majorities with only 41 and 42 per cent
and the New Democratic Party won in 1990
with only 37.6 per cent, a huge aberration
unlikely to be repeated readily.
The Liberals need to attract only two or
three per cent more to have a chance of
winning a majority and, while this will not be
easy, they have some momentum.
If the Liberals win a second majority,
McGuinty will have struggled through a first
term in which he could not pay for some
programs he rashly promised and often looked
pained, and be more comfortable and
confident.
He will be looking to create his legacy and
the most obvious would be as the premier who
protected, because he has done more to
safeguard residents than any previous premier,
but not emphasized it, because opponents
would love to accuse him of creating a nanny
state.
If the Liberals win more seats than any rival,
but fall short of a majority, they presumably
will ask the New Democratic Party to support
them for a specified period, as earlier Liberals
under David Peterson did in 1985.
Peterson in return had to enact nearly a score
of NDP policies, including pay equity, which
mostly proved popular. But the Liberals got
the credit, called an election after two years
and won a massive majority and the NDP had
the worst of the deal.
The current NDP under Howard Hampton
presumably would demand the Liberals
increase the general minimum wage, from $8
an hour since last February, to an immediate
$10 and set a timetable for early further
increases.
McGuinty has said he sympathizes with
their goal, but worries business cannot afford
it. To stay in power, however, he would find
the demand difficult to resist.
The NDP would demand McGuinty rescind
all or part of the massive 25 per cent pay raise
the Liberals and Conservatives gave members
of the legislature, claiming they are treated
miserly compared to federal members. The
increase has been unpopular with the public
and if the NDP forced a reduction, it would be
a dramatic sign it is protecting taxpayers.
The NDP would want the Liberals to
appoint a job-protection commissioner to
bring employers, employees and government
together trying to head off layoffs and
shutdowns, which McGuinty has said is
unnecessary.
The NDP in a novel move would ask the
legislature to name a woman Speaker for the
first time, which would be publicly acceptable.
Hampton also would want some mechanism
to show his party was responsible for the
changes, so this time it would not go
unrewarded.
The Conservatives seem unlikely to win a
majority government, because they have been
stuck around 35 per cent in so many polls. But
their chance of winning a minority
government still cannot be ruled out and they
also may be seeking NDP help.
There could be a lot of wooing going on –
like in the Harlequin novels.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
“Everything should be made as simple as
possible, but not simpler.”
– Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Final Thought