Is it just me, or are “bozo eruptions” an epidemic this election?
All over Canada, politicians are finding themselves under increasing scrutiny over videos or past Twitter comments that have returned to haunt them.
One candidate who got in trouble was Chris Brown in Peace River-Westlock. There’s an interesting story about Brown. He has a connection to the Battlefords-Lloydminster constituency. He used to be a political reporter at the Lloydminster Source.
Earlier this year he was at the Battlefords-Lloydminster Liberal association nomination meeting in Cut Knife covering the nomination of Ray Fox. And we all know the story of what happened to Fox on social media.
Despite this, Brown was not dissuaded from running for Parliament. He ran for the Liberals. And then the inevitable happened.
The vultures on social media unearthed remarks from his Twitter account from 2009 in which he used phrases including “your mother was a whore,” and “f**king b**ch” (censored). It turned out these were posted during a low point in his life when alcohol got the better of him, and he apologized.
Compared to some other candidates, this was relatively tame stuff. On the same day, candidate Joy Davies was resigning as Liberal candidate for Surrey over pro-marijuana comments she made on Facebook, including claims that growing it at home did no harm to children.
And, the Conservatives had big problems last week. Two of their candidates in Toronto were dumped after controversial videos emerged.
Scarborough Rouge Park candidate Jerry Bance was turfed after hidden-camera video emerged in which he was caught urinating into a mug while on a repair assignment in 2012.
Another candidate, Tim Dutaud, was removed in Toronto-Danforth after it emerged he had appeared as “the Unicaller” in controversial and offensive YouTube crank-call videos.
As for the NDP, their director of communications Shawn Dearn apologized for tweets he made about the Catholic Church, including one directed at Benedict XVI in which he told the Pope to “go f--- yourself.”
There are other incidents, but to be honest, it is getting boring. The shock value has started to wear off for me.
“Bozo eruptions” are nothing new. Incidents where a candidate makes racially-insensitive, boorish or just plain stupid comment that gets the party in trouble are common. This could include statements at an all-candidates meeting or something in a blog post or social media.
In Canada, parties have routinely used the other parties’ “bozo eruptions” to make the other parties look like they are in chaos. That’s exactly what happened in Alberta to Danielle Smith when she led Wildrose. She had no shortage of bozo eruptions to deal with from candidates, and the Alberta PCs used it against her and made it look like the whole party was insensitive to minorities. And she lost.
So that’s why these parties look for the bozo eruptions, so they can destroy their opponents. It works.
Of course, Gerry Ritz, Battlefords-Lloydminster MP, has seen his own bozo eruption controversy in recent years — the infamous “listeriosis jokes” he had to apologize for during the 2008 campaign. Somehow, he survived politically, but not everyone does.
Nowadays, there is no shortage of venues for where bozo eruptions could happen. We live in a Facebook and Twitter era, there’s hidden cameras everywhere and your entire life is being recorded.
Moreover, we are living in a much more politically correct and uptight time generally. People are easily outraged by comments deemed “racist” or “sexist” on social media.
Of course, many of these people are also involved in politics. So now, if you ever run for office, all your comments and every dumb picture you’ve ever posted on social media can be used against you. That boorish online comment can come back to haunt you and be made to make you look like an insensitive bozo unfit for public life.
I have a mixed reaction to all of this.
On the one hand, I think political correctness is running amuck, and stupid comments on social media are being taken out of context and twisted right out of shape. In politics in particular, many statements are blown out of proportion.
Nobody is perfect, and good people with good intentions end up victims.
Yet you see these other incidents, and they are so appalling you have to wonder why these people are in public life in the first place. How the heck did that guy who urinated into that mug get nominated? Seriously?
As I said before, though, it’s gotten to the point that so many bozo eruptions, real or imagined, have been unearthed they are losing their impact.
Voters are assuming there are bozos in every party. Or that everyone in politics is a bozo.
All in all, the general reputation of everyone in politics in Canada is being dragged down even further, as if it needed the help after the Senate expenses mess.
Moreover, good, talented and outstanding people are increasingly repelled from pursuing public life.
They see private lives being put under the microscope, and candidates’ every statement put under the magnifying glass. Plus, they see the general bitter tone and personal attacks.
You cannot blame them for saying, “I don’t need this! I’m better off in the private sector making money!”
The result we get is more low-quality candidates running for office, including people who are clearly in it for the wrong reasons.
Inevitably, some of them will get elected, and the voters end up stuck with the “real” bozos in office.
Something has to change. A less toxic political environment and more civility would go a long way. Maybe, just maybe, we all ought to take social media posts a lot less seriously, as well.
Maybe if we do that, it will encourage more and better candidates to come forward in the future. And maybe we’ll see a lot fewer of the real “bozos” running for office than we do now.
